It is difficult to pinpoint UDA secretary general Cleophas Malala’s call-to-order letter, dated Wednesday (May 29), as the trigger, because a lot was going on before that. However, Malala’s warning to elected UDA leaders and serving Cabinet members to toe the line or ship out helped to fuel the acrimony to new levels.
For about 72 hours between Wednesday and Friday last week, it looked like everyone in the ruling party was attacking someone or defending themselves from a fresh attack. Former Bahati MP Kimani Ngunjiri was first off the block. He berated Rift Valley leaders close to the President, for antagonising the DP, while allegedly enriching themselves at the expense of Kenyans. He was specifically harsh on Kapseret MP Oscar Sudi and Transport CS Kipchumba Murkomen.
While social media users were busy refreshing Sudi’s pages for the obligatory response, Malala, fresh from a trip to China and obviously feeling like flexing his newfound communist muscles, shot out a missive, naming several leaders who had “disappointed the party”.
He hadn’t contended with the unhinged reply from Nyeri Governor Mutahi Kahiga, who promptly declared that the UDA SG was a stranger in the party, terming the latter a “square peg in a round hole that couldn’t fit”.
First, I can’t find a compelling reason for Malala to fire warnings at CSs, who work in the Executive and therefore report directly to the President. But even the messages directed at elected leaders was totally unnecessary. It was as if Malala was looking to start a fight out of nothing. Indeed, many pundits even suggested that the UDA infighting was staged to distract the nation from the more pressing bread and butter issues. But I can guarantee you that Kenya’s politics is plain and simple, and there is never a hidden long-term strategy.
I have to say that it’s a bit satisfying to watch the UDA brigade go for each other’s neck politically. I have stated numerous times that the union wasn’t built on any credible ideology or philosophy, but was instead a convergence of tribal interests, which as we now know, do not have a long shelf life. But even those of us who detest the ruling coalition are surprised by how fast this one has unravelled. At face value, it seems merely as a fallout between the President and his deputy, but there are obviously more fundamental issues that go deep into the foundation of the party.
When the relationship between then President Uhuru Kenyatta and his then deputy, William Ruto broke down, both of them for long spoke in cryptic tones without mentioning each other. In fact, it wasn’t until close to the 2022 elections, when, spooked by the possibility that his own Mount Kenya backyard may ignore his warnings and elect Ruto, that President Kenyatta went out and mentioned his deputy. It looks like this one between Ruto and Gachagua will get messy and loud quite early, and initial assessments indicate that they will be generously mentioning each other pretty soon.
The Uhuru-Ruto disagreements should have provided good lessons for the current rulers, because that fight practically grounded many government services as divided interests took over state agencies. I am certain that soon, even in this regime, there will be civil servants unofficially classified as Ruto people and others as Gachagua’s.
From there, government delivery can only suffer. Incidentally, before the 2022 elections, both gentlemen vowed that they would treat each other with more decorum and dignity than the Uhuru-Ruto pair had done. The joke, I think, is on Gachagua for believing his own hype.
There is an interesting national security angle to all this drama. The political marriage between the Mount Kenya and the Rift Valley regions, dating back to the 2013 elections, has been premised on the restoration of peace between the Kikuyu and Kalenjin communities, following their infamous post-election conflict in 2008. Both the UDA and its ruling predecessor, Jubilee party, have made it a central theme to their unity. I often wonder how this delicate balancing act will pan out, the more an embittered Gachagua cries foul against Rift Valley leaders.
On top of this, given Kenya’s history with transitions, I don’t understand what informs the desire to antagonise a sitting DP. In response to the DP’s accusations against him for engaging in “political tourism” while stepping on the toes of other leaders, Sudi’s reply was nothing less than contemptuous. With a mighty sneer, he let the DP know that he wasn’t one to be intimated, and practically invited the DP to go and jump into the sea.
The country has already been regaled with juicy anecdotes of how former power brokers under President Jomo Kenyatta were scampering for safety, some leaving the country in fear as others hurried to pledge allegiance to the new dispensation, after they woke up one day in August to find that the founding President had passed on.
More recently, the 2022 elections brought home very uncomfortable situations for senior government officials close to President Kenyatta, who had made it their mission to frustrate Ruto, after the latter was declared President in that election.
Because things happen, and the constitution places a heavy responsibility on Gachagua should “something” happen to Ruto, I had taken it for granted that the default setting for senior Kalenjin leaders would be to keep Gachagua both close and happy. Unless of course they don’t read history and are detached from the realities of both the 1978 and the 2022 transitions.
I don’t think keeping a DP happy takes that much work. I am convinced that if you were to remove power brokers from around the President, the two most powerful men in the country would probably get along just fine.
Meanwhile, as a side note, one cannot help but notice that the UDA cracks are getting louder at a time when media “ambulance chasers” had been camping at the doors of former PM Raila Odinga’s ODM, expecting the juiciest frictions to come from there. The anticipated scramble for power within ODM, which was widely believed would accompany Raila’s gradual fading off the Kenyan political scene as he prepares to set up camp in Addis Ababa as the next AU Commission chairperson, has failed to light up.
Instead, it seems everyone angling to succeed Raila is doing it within the party’s frameworks and conducting themselves with admirable decorum. Well, it may heat up the closer we get to February, but by then, their UDA counterparts may already be in their house-burning phase, especially now that there are reports of senior regime officials hunting for political vessels should the marriage break irretrievably.
We however have to remind UDA as a party and Kenya Kwanza as a coalition that unlike ODM, they are the ruling party and their bickering may have a negative impact on government programmes. Besides, the infighting automatically places all actors on a 2027 election footing, with a whopping three years to go, which, simply put, is unfair to the long suffering taxpayer.
Political commentator
