Will the Moi orphans capture State House?

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By MAKAU MUTUA
Posted  Saturday, December 31  2011 at  15:51

IN SUMMARY

• The next General Election will be between the anti-reform cabal and progressive reformers

This year – 2012 – will be a make-or-break year for Kenya. But that’s not all. This year will be a do-or-die year for the political scions of former President Daniel arap Moi.

The Moi Orphans — the moniker used to describe Mr Moi’s political and ideological children — have their most fateful date with destiny.

Either they’ll be politically buried en masse, or they’ll tighten their stranglehold on Kenya. If the former happens, Kenya will become a true democracy. If the latter comes to pass, the new Constitution will die on the vine.

It’s that simple — 2012 is the defining year for Kenya as we know it. No political contest has meant more for Kenya than the next General Election.

I will tell you why. Kenya has a simple political narrative. Since 1964, the State’s political history has been a deadly contest between reformers and anti-reformers. Progressivism pitted against primitivism.

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The rule of law suffocated by impunity. The people under attack by a greedy, thieving, and myopic elite.

This is the ethos of the State constructed by Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya’s founding father. Mr Moi followed Mzee’s “nyayo”(footsteps) and perfected the predatory patrimonial State.

President Mwai Kibaki, Mr Kenyatta’s early pupil, badly botched an historic opportunity to purge Kenya of tribalism and oligarchic rule.

He’s at home with the Moi Orphans. At heart, he’s truly “Kanu” — anti-reform, conservative and tribalistic. I wish I was wrong, but I’m not.

The question now is: Will the Moi Orphans capture State House, or will reformers decisively beat them? Will Kenya cross the Rubicon and entomb the cabal that has held it back since independence?

The prefects of this cabal — Mzee Kenyatta, Mr Moi and President Kibaki — have triumphed in every meaningful contest for power since 1964.

Will history repeat itself again in the next elections? We know that in the past they’ve won by any means necessary.

At the dawn of the State, they killed Oginga Odinga’s KPU. Then they banned it and made Kenya a de facto, and later, de jure Kanu-party State. Sycophancy was normalised.

In 1992, Kanu used skullduggery, “ethnic violence,” rigging, and electoral corruption to defeat the opposition in the first open elections since 1964. It repeated the same script in 1997.

But in 2002, Mr Moi — the “professor of politics” — badly bungled the “selection” of his successor. Mr Kibaki teamed up with Mr Raila Odinga in Narc to administer a severe beating to Kanu.
And, just like that, the “independence party” was out of power. But — and this is key — Kenya’s anti-reform cabal quickly reconstituted itself under President Kibaki.

Narc reformers were either jettisoned, or swallowed up by anti-reformers. Kanu may have been out of power, but the Moi Orphans were in charge of the State.

Fast forward to 2007. In 2005, Mr Odinga fell out with President Kibaki. The sticking point was President Kibaki’s refusal to share power with Mr Odinga and agree to key reforms.

Mr Odinga left Narc and formed ODM. Mr Odinga “stole” a number of key Moi Orphans from President Kibaki. But they would not suffice to assure him of victory in the presidential contest.

That’s because the President and the bulk of the Moi Orphans controlled the State. That’s how President Kibaki’s PNU beat Mr Odinga’s ODM.

Political titansThe party with the most number of key Moi Orphans triumphed in 2007. The “Kenyatta-Moi-Kibaki cabal” retained power.

So, what’s going to happen next? As I see it, there are two political titans in the field. The next electoral contest will be between PNU-G7 versus ODM.

In the PNU-G7 tent will be the heart of the Moi Orphanage — VP Kalonzo Musyoka, Finance Minister Uhuru Kenyatta, Internal Security minister George Saitoti and Eldoret North MP William Ruto.

In the ODM house will be Mr Odinga as the flagbearer. He will most likely keep Agriculture minister Sally Kosgei and Local Government minister Musalia Mudavadi, two Moi Orphans.

But my educated guess is that the reform lobby and the progressive forces will throw their lot in with Mr Odinga and ODM.

But can Mr Odinga do in 2012 what he couldn’t do in 1997, 2002, and 2007? Will the political reform lobby — which he has personified for several decades — wrest power from the Kenyatta-Moi-Kibaki anti-reform cabal?

Can he boot this entrenched nomenklatura out of the inner sanctum of the Kenyan State for the first time since 1964? Kenya’s break with the past — through the implementation of the new Constitution — may depend on it.

My contention is that Mr Odinga won’t make history unless he reconfigures ODM and makes it the party of the striving masses, the middle class, and reform. He must offload political baggage and detribalise ODM. All his key advisers must be proven reformers.

Mr Odinga must reunify the reform lobby. He needs to attract key reformers like Gichugu MP Martha Karua, Mandera Central MP Abdikadir Mohamed, Safina leader Paul Muite, Imenti Central MP Gitobu Imanyara, former Ufungamano honcho Mutava Musyimi, former anti-corruption czar John Githongo, Gatanga MP Peter Kenneth, former Makueni MP Kivutha Kibwana, Rev Timothy Njoya, and leading civil society figures.
This would underscore that he’s the agent of change.

It’s a strategy driven by ideas, not ethnicity. That’s the only way to keep the Moi Orphans out of State House and truly reform Kenya.

Makau Mutua is Dean and SUNY Distinguished Professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo Law School and Chair of the KHRC.