The Uhuru Kenyatta succession clash confirms, more than anything else, the need to amend the Constitution. The amendments should free the incumbent from the divisive stranglehold of hawkish, partisan politics.
The succession clash has generated two factions: One orbits around the President, the other rallies around the Deputy President. The President is serving his final term. The DP wants to succeed the President. Team Tangatanga wants the President to support DP William Ruto’s ambition for president in 2022. The other group wants presidential space for Uhuru to unite the country, while cementing his legacy
The presidential column enjoys an inclusive agenda for Kenya, especially after the consummation of a shared vision with the People’s President Raila Odinga. The presidential handshake has thus triggered the soaring suspicion and feeling of spurn in the Tangatanga column. Team Tangatanga demands the DP should be the automatic Jubilee successor of Uhuru. But Triple T does not understand the two strands of Uhuru.
There is Uhuru Kenyatta, who is doing his final term as the President of a country of 43 ethnic groups. This Uhuru has to decide between national imperatives and the interests of the party on whose ticket he ran for president. The presidential Kenyatta is transfigured in a Saul-Paul kind of way. He has made a 360-degree turn, baffling those who hoped to ‘own’ him in the party until the 2022 General Election.
There is also Uhuru the Jubilee presidential candidate of the 2013 and 2017 elections. This Uhuru was a party hawk, who spoke the partisan language of seduction. The territory of Candidate Uhuru was limited to what was then the URP and TNA factions of the Jubilee Alliance. The formation is dominant in Rift Valley and Central, with top-up interests in some parts of the country.
Uhuru the Jubilee Alliance leader and Uhuru the President are in conflict ahead of the 2022 election. But Uhuru the President has risen above the conflict in a way that baffles partisan Jubilantes. Jubilantes see only one Uhuru, which has escalated the clash around the succession. They cannot tell the difference between party politics and presidential responsibilities in an ethnically disparate country.
Are they ‘drunk’ on something, as owners of the season of insults would say?
People are not always addicted to drugs alone. Some get high on handouts. Some get intoxicated on ethnic hubris. But the compromised do not always cheer and jeer out of sheer love for their leader.
They may be under some influence. Like some cash considerations, promises of power-cushioned brokerage, positions and proximity to the kitchen. The observant know the maddening influence of easy money. It blurs vision; turns liberators into oppressors, patriots into traitors, and friends into enemies.
They do not know the ground beneath them has shifted. Or is there something else?
There are inducements that politicians, who do not have transformative ideas, dish out to win favour with the vulnerable. The vulnerable are not merely the poor voters, but politicians who thrive on patronage. There are also brokers eyeing steak in political formations. These people can be viciously callous. They imagine enemies where none exists.
When the vulnerable get drunk, they bark ceaselessly to top up their stock of patronage. How would the benefactor know they are working if they do not heckle? The inebriated imagine everyone else around them is high on something. Their reasoning gets blurred. Their vision gets impaired. Their world orbits around the paymaster.
Some get inebriated on sycophancy. Some get high on ethnic hubris. Of all these, addictive pursuit of power - any type of power - is the ultimate nation-killer. Party identity is the icing on the cake. This is a struggle for space around power. The architects of the Building Bridges Initiative tell us the time to destroy the nation is over. The time to build has arrived. To spite the fad is to stall on the wrong side of history.