If ever there was a time that the handshake between President Uhuru Kenyatta and opposition leader Raila Odinga’s faced a real balancing act, then it may as well be in the Kibra by-election. It is probably the greatest test yet on the pact between Uhuru and Raila.
As the political situation unfolds, and with the 2022 political equation being calculated by political formations, both old and forming, it is getting hotter in the kitchen. And it promises to get uglier as we move towards 2022.
Since the handshake on March 9, 2018, it is not lost on political minds that it unsettled many. NASA co-principals felt shortchanged, while its supporters felt abandoned in their quest for justice.
In Jubilee, some see Raila as a good friend, others see him as someone out to to rock the boat from within to spoil the party for Deputy President William Ruto's 2022 presidential ambitions.
This is further complicated and compounded by the uncertainty of whether Raila will be on the ballot in 2022 or not. The potential entry of Raila into the 2022 presidential contest will complicate Ruto’s game plan when he is on the doorstep of the highest political office.
The handshake politics, depending on where one looks from, has sidelined other agendas in Kenya’s development framework and President Uhuru Kenyatta’s agenda. From the war on corruption to parliamentary oversight role, the handshake narrative has been central—those for and those against.
Indeed, any pronouncement has been viewed under this political lens - Raila and the handshake have been used as a pawn in the political chessboard.
And now the Kibra by-election has provided a perfect opportunity for those who are against the handshake. Although opposition to the handshake got off to a slow start, the tempo has been rising explaining why it is already sailing in unchartered political hot waters now than ever before.
As campaigns for the Kibra seat hit crescendo, prospects of the handshake getting fatally destabilized look real and the aftermath may be worse depending on the outcome.
Earlier efforts to have ANC and Ford Kenya field one candidate to face the Jubilee and ODM candidates flopped. It is understood in certain quarters that these rival parties within NASA may have fielded candidates to get back at ODM or Raila because of their exclusion in the handshake.
The sibling rivalry between ANC and Ford Kenya will worsen the situation for the handshake and the moribund NASA. Jubilee is likely to exploit this situation in NASA and make what is now fashioned as a Ruto-Raila duel, which further threatens to undermine the handshake.
And the situation can only get murkier but it all depends on how Uhuru handles the by-election politics in Kibra. Whatever action or words he makes about Kibra will be taken weightily by both sides of the divide.
Whether he will come out in the open and campaign for McDonald Mariga, the Jubilee candidate against ODM’s Imran Okoth is another matter. Were it to happen, it will completely change the politics of Kibra, and perhaps the outcome.
More importantly, it will change the handshake and politics in the country, depending on how either side reacts to the outcome of the by-election. Simply put, the Kibra by-election may just be NASA’s Waterloo and a real litmus test for the handshake.
