AJUOK: Ending big tribes’ perennial power contest key to political sustenance

Back in the day, when the long Kanu rule was ending and the quest for constitutional reforms picked up, many proponents of a parliamentary system of governance loved to remark that this model was the only way to guarantee that “even someone like Dr Bonaya Godana can rise to the leadership of Kenya”.

The late Dr Godana was then one of Kanu’s deputy party leaders, Foreign Affairs Minister and a widely respected national figure, despite coming from a small ethnic community in North Horr, Marsabit county.

Among the foremost proponents of parliamentary democracy in Kenya, via an executive Prime Minister elected by Parliament, has been ODM leader Raila Odinga. His more right-wing opponents have always fought against the dream.

The basic principle behind the push for the parliamentary system was that even though an admittedly brilliant man like Godana could rise through political party ranks to the apex of its leadership, despite coming from a marginalised community, if the same person ran for President via universal suffrage, tribal numbers would be the first consideration, and end up being a limiting factor.

And even though everyone who has held power after former President Daniel Moi has previously condemned the all-powerful imperial presidency, each one, on taking power, has worked hard to entrench the domineering nature of the presidential system, complete with its attendant influence on skewed distribution of state resources. The unspoken net effect is that a big tribe in Kenya can practically line up its most vile member, partner with a few more communities and claim state power in elections, even where the individual could end up negating all gains made by the country thus far.

But something about the Kenyan presidency hides in plain sight. Between independence in 1963 and the death of founding President Jomo Kenyatta in 1978, the Luo and Kikuyu communities engaged in an unending rivalry over state power, the former feeling that they had been unfairly shut out of a shared destiny. The latter, meanwhile, did everything possible, including an alleged mass oath in 1969, to keep their Luo counterparts away from any access to power and wealth bestowed by the state.

As fate would have it, however, then President Jomo Kenyatta passed on in August 1978, and somewhat unexpectedly despite his Vice President position, Moi arrived in State House, tagging along his Kalenjin community. Twenty-four years of his reign opened the doors for his tribe to become the third power player in this previously two-way rivalry between the Luo and the Kikuyu, thereby entrenching Kalenjin might within the country’s national security, economic and political spheres.

This milestone meant that future elections in Kenya’s multiparty era would predictably become vicious ethnic contests between these three powerful communities, with two always ganging up against the third, while the rest of Kenyan communities were content to play supporting roles in the political parties led by the three. In fact, one can easily analyse the country’s political patterns by predicting which two of the three will partner to defeat the third in the next election.

Quite tragically, this three-tribe power contest degenerated into civil war after the 2007 election, testimony to how toxic it had indeed become. But rather than walk away from it, political players in subsequent elections in fact used the 2008 post-election violence as a basis for formation of subsequent political alliances, in the guise of uniting former warring tribes. The effect was that it led to the alienation of other ethnicities, but created another problem; the two partners in government fighting for control of the status, on perceived equal status.

Both the Uhuru-Ruto union between 2013 and 2022, and the Ruto-Gachagua political marriage from 2022, were premised on helping bring the Kalenjin and the Kikuyu together, but suffered turbulent times from the start, because they were both based on the equality of two regions controlling government, creating the spectacle where the deputy president in each case saw himself not as the president’s principal assistant, but a co-president of sorts. And each time, the fight for control caused long paralysis in government, forcing the president to turn to ODM boss Raila Odinga and to a large extent, his Luo community.

Of course, the jilted partner always responded with resentment, vowing to bring down the newfound partnership in the subsequent election. Essentially therefore, President Uhuru Kenyatta created the Ruto phenomenon just like President Ruto created the “Wamunyoro” political movement. Today, impeached former DP Rigathi Gachagua has turned out to be Ruto’s biggest headache, rudely grabbing his Mt Kenya base from Ruto’s grasp and turning into a national security nightmare for the government.

Be as it may, the truth is clear; the country cannot sustain the economic disruptions caused by the stalemate. The Mountain, the Lake and the Rift have engaged in this push and pull for far too long, and given that the parliamentary system isn’t coming soon, perhaps it is time for the country to find a mechanism of keeping an individual from any of the three from the presidential ballot until a generation is born that doesn’t consider tribe the first tool for political mobilisation.

The alternative is that whatever poisonous siege mentality that Gachagua manages to build among his people will possibly meet the combined force of a Raila-Ruto charged electoral machine in 2027, which would have the effect of driving national cohesion backwards for a time. The difficult question is whether the three feuding big tribes can sit out a presidential election by voting for others while not fielding one of their own. To a certain extent, this desire may be aided by the fact that Raila may not run again, and there is no one of Luo ancestry after him with the stature, at this time, to command a large enough following for a presidential run.

You can scan the landscape and see former Interior CS Fred Matiangi or Wiper boss Kalonzo Musyoka, as emerging hopes in this pursuit. Unfortunately, once they hit the ground, they soon discover how the other three communities have made themselves fixtures in coalition building, in which they demand the fattest portion of the hunt. Meanwhile, there is DP Kithure Kindiki, but the worst kept secret in these shores is that he is merely a stop-gap measure until the elections, when Ruto will most likely pick another big-tribe partnership and running mate, to sustain a second stab.

No matter how difficult the choices to be made, the country must wake up to the reality that the big tribes’ power rivalry is slowly sending the country to the abyss, and it is in the interest of the nation to find an alternative political model that brings on board smaller ethnic groups to the power centre, while moving the big-tribe rivalry to the back burner, for the sustenance of this democracy.