Last week I wrote that the evident discontents within the opposition Cord was Christmas come early for President Uhuru Kenyatta.
For it is out of such rivalries within the opposition that Kenyan presidents usually find their way to a second term in office. And so it seemed to me that Uhuru may well be on an easy cruise to re-election in the 2017 general election, provided he does not make any major blunders.
But here is something that should worry the President’s men: They have begun their celebrations a little too early, and that is never a good sign. It is one thing to have a well-concealed feeling that your chances of victory are pretty good. It is quite another to make this expectation of victory perfectly obvious, and to even go so far as to start quarrelling over the election beyond the one to be held next year.
You know there has to be something wrong when any political grouping is so confident of their victory in an election that is just a year away, that they begin arguing over the subsequent election, which is easily six years away.
And you do not have to take my word for this. Noah Wekesa, the former Cabinet minister who has in recent months played a key role in planning for the merger of all political parties in the President’s Jubilee Alliance, said much the same thing on a recent visit to the Coast.
He is reported as having cautioned that Cord’s internal wrangling, which seemed to set the Jubilee Alliance on the path to an easy victory, might in the end prove to be Jubilee’s downfall.
His point was that this expectation of easy victory might make the Jubilee partisans relax and take victory for granted – which was precisely the frame of mind likely to lead to a defeat for Jubilee in the elections.
This was a very perceptive insight that Wekesa pointed to. For Kenyan general elections are usually not won by the man who starts off as the red-hot favourite a year ahead of the election. Consider Kenneth Matiba in 1992; Mwai Kibaki in 1997; and Raila Odinga both in 2007 and in 2013. In each case, the early lead in the polls was to evaporate by the time the votes were counted; and in the end, the red-hot favourite lost.
So Uhuru’s huge lead in the most recent reputable opinion polls should actually be a cause for secret and cautious satisfaction among those who support him. It should not lead to arrogant chest-thumping; declarations that the outcome of the 2017 presidential election is as good as settled; and that plans within the governing Jubilee Alliance should now be focused on securing victory in the faraway 2022 election.
But if Wekesa was farsighted in warning his political allies not to celebrate too early, he was even more perceptive when he told Jubilee that the surest way to mess up the new party was to have flawed nominations.
When there is a party powerful enough to ensure that just having its ticket is a direct path to victory in its strongholds, the nomination exercise is a matter of life and death for political aspirants.
In this context, it is a really bad idea to try and create – at such short notice – one great and powerful political party.
The history of such efforts shows that within these mega-parties, nominations usually go to those favoured by the party elite, rather than those with genuine grassroots support, who may actually add to their presidential candidate’s final tally.
This will often lead to those who end up with the party ticket being candidates who depend on the President’s popularity to win.
While the men and women with strong grassroots appeal - but with no godfathers in Nairobi – end up having to seek alternative party tickets on which to pursue their ambitions.
In short, a newly minted political party, created by a serving President from various smaller parties, may be a very useful vehicle for the political insiders who will control it.
But it may not be best for the President himself.
