The lonely hue of the Republican Party presidential candidate on the eve of United States elections echoes the isolation of then President Daniel arap Moi during the months leading up to the 2002 general election.
The man who had ruled Kenya for 24 years was lonely at the top. Moi felt betrayed, as his former loyalists walked out on him to redeem their credits. Then Vice President George Saitoti, who had styled himself a possible Moi successor, was among the high-ranking end-era Kanu quitters.
Kalonzo Musyoka, who had then established himself as a party loyalist, more like Moi’s political son, was among the early quitters. Then Mwingi North MP, and a senior member of the Cabinet, Kalonzo was least expected to desert Moi.
William ole Ntimama, then Kanu chorister from Narok, the land of the Maa, a leading minister for years in the Moi Cabinet, also decamped. The amenable and loyal Moody Awori was also among the Kanu deserters.
Musalia Mudavadi, another Moi protege, left with the initial wave of defections, but retreated to be appointed vice president, replacing spurned Saitoti.
Raila Odinga, who had joined Kanu shortly after the 1997 general election, then the party secretary general, was widely regarded as the leader of the rebels. They later acquired the defunct Liberal Democratic Party.
The Kanu defectors quit to reclaim their political careers in another party, now that Moi was retiring. Moi had served his purpose, including patronising some of them for decades. They had to secure their future beyond the Moi era.
Moi wasn’t running for president because he had exhausted his constitutional term, but he was fronting a younger version of himself on his Kanu 'Mama na Baba' party ticket. Moi’s preferred successor, Uhuru Kenyatta, was the president’s political son.
The Kanu defectors became part of the ‘Rainbow Coalition’ that pushed Mwai Kibaki to the presidency in 2002, after two failed attempts. The younger Kenyatta succeeded Kibaki in 2013.
The Grand Old Party is haemorrhaging when it needs every member on deck. The leakage is attributed to former President Donald Trump, who is making a second bid for the White House after a four-year break.
The Democratic National Convention, which ended in Chicago last week, exposed the crisis of leadership in the Republican Party. The star-lined Democratic National Convention also exposed the nakedness of the Republicans’ cantankerous presidential candidate.
Former Democratic presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama generously endorsed their party’s presidential candidate Kamala Harris during the DNC. Their spouses Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama paid tribute to Kamala Harris, a woman of mixed heritage who is about to break the ‘stone’ ceiling.
House Speaker emeritus Nancy Pelosi was among the notables of the Democratic Party cast at the convention in Chicago, cheering Dems to a possible retention of the White House when President Joe Biden leaves in January.
Michelle Obama captured the historic moment: “We are on the cusp of history. Trump better be careful, the office he craves may be a black job. It could be a woman’s job.” National opinion polls increasingly give Kamala Harris an edge over Trump.
Trump is notorious for denigrating immigrants, especially blacks, East Asians, Muslims and Latinos. Kamala Harris is the first woman of mixed heritage – Indian and Jamaican – to be nominated for president by one of the two dominant political parties in the United States.
Trump has no one of consequence from his party to stand by him, except his running mate, JD Vance, who has been described as a “trumpling”. To be fair, Democratic Party renegade Robert F Kennedy Junior dropped out of the presidential bid to support Trump, but the family of the loner from the President John F Kennedy clan has disowned the endorsement.
The only surviving former Republican President, George W Bush, has been asked to keep off Trump’s cultic show, lest he overshadows ‘The Leader’.
Former Republic Governor of Georgia Geoff Duncan captured the turbulence of the party, describing the GOP as a “cult worshipping a felonious thug”. The former lieutenant governor is one of the many Republican defectors who are standing up as Americans to stop the possible return of Trump.
An unexpected lobby, ‘Republicans for Kamala Harris’, exposes how a cultic narcissist can kill an institution as old as a party founded in 1854.
