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| Ngunjiri Wambugu |
Several months ago I suggested that Uhuru
Kenyatta should go and engage Luo-Nyanza on his political ideologies. My
rationale was that there was no way he or anyone else would genuinely say they
were running for President of Kenya, while ignoring engaging one of Kenya’s
most political communities. I specifically called him out because his absence
in the region has been quite visible. I believed he needed to do it if he was
to convince the skeptics amongst us, that he was not running for President as
an ethnic chieftain.
I also built my argument on the fact that Prime Minister
Raila Odinga; his primary rival for presidency next year, was deliberately
going out of his way to engage Central Kenya on the stereotypes and myths that
the region held of him. I was of the opinion that Uhuru Kenyatta could move his
nationalist credentials a notch higher by replicating the PM’s engagements with
Kikuyus; amongst Luos in Nyanza.
My arguments was buttressed by the fact that the
Odinga-Kikuyu; Uhuru-Luo relationships are the most glaring of Kenya’s ethnic
political divisions and if both leaders were seen to be deliberately reaching across
to the other community, Kenya would fare better as far as ethnic relations in
politics are concerned as we head to the next general elections. I even
networked them with a Nyanza-based NGO that was willing to host the first Uhuru
& Luo Community forum in Kisumu.
Surprisingly the reactions I got from Team-Uhuru were
extremely hostile. Uhuru’s spokesman went as went as far as to question my
motives, and then to state on my facebook page, that Uhuru Kenyatta did not
need people like me telling him where to go and when, in his politics. When I
asked Team-Uhuru when Uhuru was last in Kisumu I was basically told to mind my
own business. Clearly and without realizing, I had touched a raw nerve.
Fortunately the Deputy Prime Minister finally visited Kisumu
last week.
Uhuru did not set aside time to explain his political agenda
to members of this region; or to explain how Luo-Nyanza would look like under
an Uhuru Presidency next year; or explain several statements he has made around
his woes with the ICC which directly suggest that the Prime Minister is to
blame for his case at the ICC; or explain why he rarely campaigns in Luo
Nyanza, etc. This, I hope, he will do the next time he is there.
However what he did was simply brilliant. He made one of
those innocent statements that political analysts are prone to call
‘game-changing’; a statement that not only opened the door for future
engagements with the region’s inhabitants, but indicated that whatever
political competition there is between him and Prime Minister Raila Odinga is
not a matter of life and death.
Uhuru Kenyatta, while in Ndhiwa, publicly and for what I am
sure is the very first time, stated that should Raila Odinga win the next
election, he will support him! This is the proverbial paradigm shift in
Uhuru/Raila political competition dynamics, especially considering that Uhuru
has in the past been known to bang tables in frustration with Raila Odinga.
I am also grateful that Uhuru made this clarification
publicly because it puts to shame those unscrupulous politicians and their
political operatives who have been trying to sell the message that a
Raila-Odinga Presidency will bring nothing but doom, blood-shed and destruction
in Kenya. I am especially concerned that this statement be circulated far
and wide in Central Kenya and sections of Rift Valley where these unscrupulous
operatives have been trying to build a siege mentality amongst Kikuyu voters by
telling them Raila Presidency would be nothing but added hardship to them.
Someone must explain to them that if even the ‘muthamaki’ (‘King’) has said
that he can work with him should he win, then clearly he cannot be all bad.
Uhuru Kenyatta has lit a candle in the dark room of negative
ethnicity in Kenya’s politics and he must be commended. Prime Minister Raila
Odinga has responded in kind and at a rally in Kangema he also confirmed that
should Uhuru Kenyatta win the presidency in 2013, he will work with him.
This is a powerful statement of intent coming from what is
essentially the front-runner and first runner’s-up in the 2013 presidential
polls. Raila Odinga and Uhuru Kenyatta are basically telling Kenyans and the
world that Kenya is larger than their own individual ambitions, and that they
are willing to lay down this ambitions should Kenyans choose another way apart
from them. It is also a call-out to all the other Presidential aspirants to do
something similar.
It could even be an answered prayer to Chief Justice Mutunga,
who some time back asked if all Kenyan Presidential aspirants are willing to
share a common platform where they call for peace, state that each will support
whoever amongst them wins, and declare their commitment to a peaceful Kenya
during and beyond the next general elections.
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