At this point in our national history, and with over 20 years of recent multiparty elections, it is fairly clear what the path to the presidency must involve for any leading candidate.
First and most important is to have a united regional voting bloc firmly behind you. Second is to be able to negotiate with other regional “political barons” to form the kind of multi-regional coalition without which no presidential ambition can be fulfilled.
But there is a third factor, which does not receive quite as much attention and which is every bit as crucial. And this is the ability to keep a regional vote bloc united in the face of setbacks that every serious presidential candidate faces, sooner or later.
Consider the case of Mwai Kibaki: he was third in the race for President in 1992 and a close runner up in 1997. Only in 2002 did he find the winning formula.
But he would not have won in 2002, if he had not managed to keep his core regional support intact through those two defeats. By 2002 he would have had nothing to negotiate with if his Central Kenya supporters had deserted him in that decade he spent on opposition benches.
Former Prime Minister Raila Odinga too lost his first presidential race in 1997, coming third behind President Daniel Moi and runner-up Kibaki. Only because Raila was able to keep his Nyanza support intact was he able to make a series of critical deals and compromises. First he served as a senior Cabinet minister in Moi's government, then in an even more senior capacity in Kibaki's government. Finally he ran Kibaki to a virtual tie in the bitterly contested 2007 election and ended up as Prime Minister in the Grand Coalition government.
From this perspective, it is clear there is nothing unusual in the difficulties former Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka now faces in his increasingly hostile relationship with key regional ally, Senator Johnson Muthama.
It arises from a difference over whether the Akamba community should only support the Cord political coalition if Kalonzo — a political veteran out of Parliament for the first time in almost 30 years — is the presidential candidate. Or if the community should support Cord, regardless of who runs against Uhuru Kenyatta in 2017.
How Kalonzo manages this tricky situation will determine whether in the end he does indeed ascend to the presidency.