In a piece appearing on the Star website, former Senator Isaac Mwaura purports to make a case for why ODM leader and former Prime Minister Raila Odinga is a hard sell in Mt Kenya.
What Mwaura has done is what is known in logic as hasty generalisation, meaning he has taken something that may be true with a small group and concluded it therefore must be true to everyone, which is fallacious.
Mwaura offers many reasons which are not reasons, starting with the false claim that Raila has “tried getting the support of key people from the region, including S.K. Macharia” who openly supported Raila “but it hasn’t worked.”
Perhaps Mwaura could explain why support for Raila by moguls like Macharia from Mt Kenya region has not worked, but he knows that would undercut and undermine his anti-Raila thesis.
Let us just say there is a difference, like day and night, in how Raila has sought votes in Mt Kenya before and how he will get votes in 2022, if he vies again as everyone expects him to.
This is particularly so if Raila is supported by President Uhuru Kenyatta and at least most of the system, and every indication now is that's exactly what is afoot.
The fact that Raila is “demonized as the antithesis to the aspirations of Mt Kenya as a region” as Mwaura posits, does not make him a hard sell to all voters in Mt Kenya. Rather, this only means Raila will not get the Mt Kenya vote as a bloc, and neither will anyone else so that is a fact which is neither here nor there.
Raila has always garnered good votes in the region notwithstanding the demonisation and the region always voting as a bloc for one of its sons.
That will not be the case in 2022 and specifically, the region will not vote as a bloc for anyone, given one of their own is not contesting. That is a net plus for Raila and a total loss for Deputy President William Ruto who must have the region as a bloc, if he were to stagger to State House as our next president.
Mwaura says Raila’s “rhetoric of reform and change movement has been sold as anti-business and to mean 41 against one.”
This is an old smear that has no legs to stand on anymore as some of those who propagated it have long since abandoned the smear and are now with Raila.
“He is the object of hate for many people in the region because the older Kenyatta differed with his father Jaramogi, the fallout in Ford and later on with Matiba, the frosty relationship with Kibaki under Narc, and later on under the Grand Coalition government under the National Accord,” says Mwaura in a mouthful that does not amount to much other than to state the fact many people in the region hate Raila for these and other reasons.
As noted above, Raila does not need ALL the votes from the Mt Kenya region, he only needs to get a respectable share to deny Ruto the vote as a bloc. If his haters remain and vote for Ruto, that is fine for he has a pathway to the presidency without those haters.
“During the last election, one only needed to shout Raila Bondo, meaning he retires and goes home, as a means of mobilising voters to turn out in large numbers to send him home and deny him the presidency,” Mwaura almost gleefully and wishfully says looking ahead to 2022.
That may have been so and the same tactic may be tried again but in the end, Raila will likely get enough votes from the region to get 50%+1 and be sworn as our next president.
Mwaura contends that Raila is “so unpopular that it has personally cost President Uhuru Kenyatta the near-fanatical following in his own backyard, by simply associating with him.” This is true but only half true.
Yes, as admitted, there are those who have been programmed to hate Raila for no good reason and now hate Uhuru for embracing Raila, but they are not Kenya and their numbers will in time dwindle when the campaigns go into full gear.
And yes, it may be true as Mwaura claims, that people in the region “actually turn up to vote against Raila more than to vote for their own preferred candidate”. But again, Raila’s objective is not to get all the votes but enough to deny Ruto votes as a bloc from the region, which is the only way he sees the inside of State House as president. Raila need not have the bloc vote from the region to get there.
Mwaura claims that Ruto “stands to benefit greatly” because there is no serious presidential candidate in the 2022 general election and because Ruto “stood with Uhuru two times in the presidential elections in 2013 and 2017.”
Ruto benefitting greatly in the Mt Kenya region for whatever reason means nothing unless he carries the region as a bloc and nobody thinks he can do that.
Mwaura moves on from the region to claim that Raila has “also lost considerable support in his erstwhile strongholds of Coast, Western and Eastern, especially now that both ANC and Wiper have quit Nasa.”
Mwaura has cited no basis to support his claim that Raila has lost “considerable” support in these regions and the exit of ANC and Wiper from NASA is a yawn, not a reason to believe Raila has lost support he cannot replace.
The former senator returns to Mt Kenya to claim the people there “have suffered a lot economically and they partly attribute this to the handshake.” This is Trumpian speak in that these “people” could only exist in the utterer’s mind and not in real life and if in real life, they must be one confused lot for the handshake saved the economy, not made it worse.
The fact that Raila's allies like David Murathe, Maina Kamanda, Sabina Chege, Wambugu Ngunjiri and Kanini Kega have not joined him in the tour does not “say a lot” as Mwaura claims. What matters is these and many others in Team Uhuru are methodically laying the ground for Uhuru to declare 'Raila Tosha' and when that happens, you can take it to the bank Raila will be sworn as our next president.
The fact that Uhuru has been “widely received with warm cheers and ululation as he tours Raila’s home region” as Mwaura notes is a good thing and is part of this quest to permanently bury the hatchet and open up the whole country to the oneness we all want save for the few backward society will always have.
It may be the case and true that there is a younger generation that doesn’t connect with Raila’s credentials on reform, which Mwaura dismisses as “a narrative that [Raila] has sold for over 30 years since 1992,” but it is a narrative that will still yield fruit among many a voter.
It is, of course, not true as Mwura claims that the demonisation of Raila in Mt Kenya previously by President Uhuru and Jubilee cannot be undone. Quite the contrary, it can and the only question is how much of it will be undone.
The answer is enough to deny Ruto a bloc vote from the region and that is easily doable as it shall be.
Mwaura draws from his own experience to try and pull in the reader to believing his tale that Raila is a hard sell in Mt Kenya, noting even after he left ODM and vied for Ruiru MP in the Jubilee primaries, “the voters still said that I ‘smelled’ of ODM. My yellow posters were profiled as being Orange in colour, meaning that I was still in ODM.” That may have been the case but what does it have to do with Raila harvesting more voters from more progressives in the region? Nothing.
That being the case, it is therefore obviously not the case that “Any candidate who is seen associating with Raila is most likely going to suffer the same fate at the ballot” as Mwaura and others hope or wish.
Ditto Mwaura’s claim “that's why those who shout themselves hoarse in boardrooms cannot be seen with him in public.” Raila has always built a formidable campaign machine though less so in 2013. Whether in the boardroom or out in the public, all that matters is having a winning strategy. The man can do just that so whining about who is where or being seen with who can only impress those who know not how these things work.
We can all agree to let the people decide for ultimately it’s God, through their votes, who counts.
Legal analyst and political commentator
