By Kodi Barth
Kenyan media was unanimous last week that the Deputy President William Ruto’s wing of the Jubilee coalition is being tossed out of town. What may not be obvious is who is walking back into town.
In the week of long knives when with the push from State House the Senate fired its Majority Leader Kipchumba Murkomen, Majority Whip Susan Kihika and deputy speaker Kindiki Kithure, all allied to DP Ruto, a three-year old video of Siaya Senator James Orengo warning colleagues that government is a cannibal circulated on social media.
“You know how governments are in power, how they behave; sometimes revolutions eat their own children!” Orengo said in the January 5, 2017 video by KTN and NTV.
“Governments eat their own people!” Orengo cried in the videos still on YouTube. “This government is going to punish you more than they will punish me, I’m telling you!”
At the time, Orengo, a leader in the NASA coalition, which had just been thumped in the polls, was urging fellow lawmakers not to rubber-stamp a bad electoral law for expediency. True to his prophesy that government is a cannibal, last week the media chronicled a President throwing out his deputy’s loyalists from leadership positions in parliament.
The previous week, the DP’s sacked troops had snubbed President Kenyatta’s invite to State House for a parliamentary group meeting. So, true to Orengo’s prophecy, State House decided to eat its own children, senators allied to the ruling party’s wing with the most number of lawmakers that got the President elected, twice.
It wasn’t personal, you’ll see in a moment; this was just business. The DP’s loyalists who went out kicking and screaming may have been mere pawns in a chessboard arranged 18 years ago by, now, a dead man.
Look at the choreography.
The week before the long knives, the President’s men succeeded in wresting control of the ruling party from DP Ruto, by placing Kenyatta’s loyalists at the top of the National Executive Committee, all media reported.
With the two plots satisfactorily executed, the President’s wing of the ruling party then showed a hidden card. It “formalized” a coalition agreement with KANU — you know, the independence party whose symbol is the cockerel.
Kenya’s Constitution allows both pre-election and post-election coalition agreements. Now, all along everyone has been under the impression that only two wings of the ruling coalition, the President’s and his deputy’s, had an agreement. Well, it turns out there was another agreement quietly lying in some desk drawer.
“We need to make this point very clear, that we had a pre-election coalition agreement with KANU, and KANU endorsed the President, Uhuru Kenyatta, in 2017,” said Jubilee vice chairman David Murathe on KTN May 11.
“We were supposed to register that collation [sic] with the Registrar of Political Parties. For some reason, that didn’t happen. So, what we’ve done now is to formalize an existing agreement.”
Murathe, who is widely understood to speak for the President, underlined that Article 9 of the Jubilee constitution gives the party leader “power to enter, without reference to anybody, into coalition with any other party.”
Who is the Jubilee party leader that just formalized a coalition agreement with KANU? President Uhuru Kenyatta.
And just like that, the cockerel is back. While we were away, KANU’s former chairman Uhuru Kenyatta and KANU’s current chairman Gideon Moi, son of another former KANU chairman, Danial arap Moi, signed a coalition agreement.
In other words, KANU entered into an agreement with KANU. To jointly run the Kenyan state. “Jointly” is an oxymoron.
During President Kenyatta’s first swearing in at the Kasarani stadium, comedian Walter Mongare, aka Nyambane, rubbed it in with humour.
At the time, KANU’s retired President Moi did not attend the 2013 swearing in of his protégé, a former greenhorn that Moi unsuccessfully pushed to succeed him in 2002. But Moi entered the stadium in Nyambane’s skin.
“Miaka hamsini iliyopita, leo tunasheherekea 50 years,” the comedian started in a perfect mimicry of Moi. “Na hiyo miaka hamsini, 27 ni zangu mimi mwenyewe. Nilisema Moi ni mutu anaona mbele. Mkasema, Oh Moi, Oh Moi! Nikasema kijana ndiyo huyu, na sasa ndiyo huyu!”
Look at the rear view mirror.
In 2013 a Jubilee horse may have romped into State House. But the jockey was the same Moi’s man. We just didn’t see he was wearing a different coloured jacket.
Anyone hear Moi’s last laughter from the grave?
As we head to the post-Kenyatta era in 2022 – or maybe not – media should prepare to report that the cock will crow again.
