MUGA: Challenges in forming coalitions

Back in March this year I confessed to being incapable of understanding the voting priorities of Western Kenya when it came to presidential politics.

I noted that, “Western Kenya has the unique distinction of having twice voted out a serving vice president. That would be Musalia Mudavadi in 2002 and Moody Awori in 2007. The odd thing is that each of these two men was a political heavyweight in his own right, and more significantly, each lost a seat that they had [previously] effortlessly held for decades.”

Such thoughts are of relevance now, given that both the major political coalitions we have going into the August 2022 election have selected a running mate for their presidential candidates.

The crucial question at this point is, “What, if anything, can these running mates deliver, in terms of regional vote blocs?”

For although in theory we can have swing vote zones in which the Deputy President Dr William Ruto for his Kenya Kwanza coalition and the former Prime Minister Raila Odinga for his Azimio-One Kenya coalition, could share the vote equally, that is not how this usually goes.

Kenyan presidential elections are largely predicated on political “waves” – with all of a given region leaning strongly to one side or another.

But at this point, can we really know if either running mate – Rigathi Gachagua for Kenya Kwanza and Martha Karua for Azimio-One Kenya – will be able to generate any such “wave” in their own backyard?

This reveals a central flaw in our current presidential system: that even the most popular candidates find that they are obliged to, basically, make an educated guess, as to the electoral potency of those they select as their running mates.

This need not be the case. A great deal of clarity on such matters could have been achieved if only the Building Bridges Initiative had been successful.

For one of the outcomes of the BBI would have been that such electoral pacts would only be struck after the votes had been counted – and not before there was any voting.

In this way we would have a clear indication of which political giants retained their influence over their regional vote bloc; and which giants had proved to have feet of clay.

An example here which it might be worth our while to consider is the way in which Germans elect their Chancellor.

I will not go into the complexities of their “mixed-member proportional representation system” nor yet their system of “overhang and levelling seats”.

The bigger picture here is that after the votes are cast for the members of the Bundestag (ie, MPs) the new members will subsequently be sworn in.  And only thereafter does the Bundestag set out to elect the Chancellor (though to astute observers it is usually obvious on election night who is likely to be forming the dominant coalition, and thus who is likely to be the next chancellor).

And this is no simple process, as Germany’s constitution makes it virtually impossible for any one party to have a clear and incontestable majority in the Bundestag. The only way forward for any such election of a Chancellor is via the formation of issue-based political parties, which then vote together for a candidate they have all agreed on. Such a candidate would necessarily be the leader of one of these parties.

As a result, the three or four leading political parties with the most seats in the Bundestag, will engage in intense lobbying and negotiation in the period immediately after an election. This is not so much over who will be the next chancellor as how best to merge the party programmes to bring about a “coalition agreement” that spells out what the government will prioritise over the next four years.

But the important thing from the Kenyan point of view is that such negotiations take place between parties that have only recently proved that they still command strong support.

For Kenyan history suggests that a leading presidential candidate here may select a running mate who has an impressive national profile; only to find out that this carefully selected running mate has no ability to deliver any bloc of votes at all.