Mudavadi is the latest State House powerbrokers’ preferred presidential successor. And he has all the puffed up, primed and set-up delusional haughtiness of the candidate with “strategic” but hidden wind assistance that has nothing to do with actual voters.
Whatever else happens to him for the balance of his life, Deputy Prime Minister Wycliffe Musalia Mudavadi, 52, will never live down three images of him that were vivified by the great all-party fallout of alliance making horse-trading ahead of the 11th General Election.
First there is the image of Mudavadi signing on to the shortcut of taking the Jubilee Alliance presidential ticket from fellow DPM Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta through the expedience of a secret MoU brokered in his own living room on December 4, 2012, in the diplomatic district suburb of Riverside, Nairobi.
Secondly, there is Mudavadi weeping in a TV studio during a live telecast because Uhuru had reneged on the behind-closed-doors deal-making under terrific pressure from his own The National Alliance (TNA) party and other handlers.
And finally there is Mudavadi, having endorsed yet another piece of paper, this time declaring an amicable parting of ways, writing to the Registrar of Political Parties demanding arbitration over the MoU fallout and pretending to have been unaware of the Jubilee Alliance’s National Delegates’ Council meeting of Sunday December 23, 2012, that nominated Uhuru presidential candidate and Ruto Deputy President.
Latest 'project' model
The battle of the DPMs is beginning to look tedious indeed, and all the tedium is flowing from Mudavadi, who made an acrimonious exit from Prime Minister Raila Odinga’s Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) earlier this year, ostensibly over the PM’s reluctance to hold presidential nominations through the delegate system.
In the Jubilee Alliance Mudavadi attempted the Samson Option of setting aside the nominations by delegates’ method and instead settling on an amorphous “consensus” manoeuvre.
Either way, a brazen Mudavadi, an operative who has neither built nor significantly invested in a political party or movement, did not bat an eye and appeared to be completely unaware of self-contradiction.
The only reason that Mudavadi is “going it alone” while hovering around Uhuru like a pest is that he is the latest of a political breed that in Kenyan electioneering culture begun with his fellow DPM himself in 2002 at the end of the Daniel arap Moi era.
Mudavadi is the latest model of State House powerbrokers’ preferred presidential successor. And he has all the puffed up, primed and set-up delusional haughtiness of the candidate with “strategic” but hidden wind assistance that has nothing to do with actual voters.
Again, another set of outward-bound regime old men has found another middle-aged succession project. For the first time in his political career Mudavadi has backers with money behind him.
But he still commands no significant vote bloc numbers. What’s more, even if the old men of the outgoing Kibaki regime in their political dotage stick with Mudavadi to the end, abjuring Uhuru and Ruto and being seen by the Kikuyu and Kalenjin vote blocs as abandoning them to their fate at the International Criminal Court at The Hague in one of the most cynical manoeuvres of Kenya politics, there will be no vote-bloc transference to the Mudavadi brand from both Mountain and Valley.
If a vote transference happens, it will be across the political aisle and into the PM’s and Vice President Kalonzo’s Coalition for Reform and Democracy (CORD).
Forty MPs on the TNA side of things warned early in the Uhuru-Mudavadi drama that “all roads will lead to Bondo”, the PM’s rural home, in the event of powerful but hidden-hand forces coercing Uhuru into stepping down for Mudavadi.
Every which way but lose
And even if the old men of State House relent and leave Uhuru alone to be on the ballot, Project Mudavadi 2013 will still suffer a far more humiliating fate than Moi’s Project Uhuru 2002.
Between Raila Odinga and Uhuru Kenyatta, a Mudavadi Third Horse bid will be ground to a fine dust. Among his “strategies” Mudavadi is doubtless hoping and praying that, far behind closed doors, the State House powerbrokers that have put such a gleam in his eye will pull another quick one and prevail upon Mrs. Ndung’u to undo the Jubilee Alliance presidential nominations on one technical ground or another and to do so just in time for an adverse judgment from the Judiciary on the suitability of ICC suspects being seen to be presidential candidates.
The Jubilee Alliance as at present constituted would be in a very awkward position indeed if there were to be such a confluence of legalistic challenges from both the pillars of the retiring status quo and the reformists.
Mudavadi and his backers and handlers would be very ill-advised indeed to go rollicking around the country celebrating Uhuru and Ruto’s setback.
That is no way to win the hearts and minds of millions of voters in a transition, legacy and succession presidential poll that is above all else a game of sheer numbers. Whichever way Mudavadi turns, he is a man in trouble.