KALONZO WILL BE THE GREATEST LOOSER
Over the weekend, the PNU side of the coalition government started another outfit in a series of their political experiments. They formed something akin to a conglomerate with a name movement at the end, with the acronym PDM. The whole idea seems to be driven by a belief among them that with the word movement, they will be able to compete with the orange democratic movement at the same political level. The folly behind this idea is the assumption that ODM attracts the following it has because of the name. They forgot that masses easily get impressed by stategy, ideas, and values that guide the movement. Ironically the greatest qualification for those who are in the new PNU outfit appears to be vices related to how our economy has been plundered. If you want to read the list of shame, don’t look for it anywhere else; just find out who is who in the new PNU outfit.
In politics, people usually make partnerships on the basis of specific value added by respective partners .in the Kenyan context, political value of any individual is judged by three factors;money,ideas and the votes (people)(masses).its very easy to tell that those who have been made to lead the group can only sustain the leadership if they bring in at least one of the above mentioned factors.saitoti(of the Goldenberg fame) who heads PNU,has enough money to bring to the movement at least for the campaigns, just in case they agree on one candidate.uhuru Kenyatta,being the son of the world’s greatest land grabber cant be left out when it comes to raising money. A few Kikuyus (the Kikuyus from Thika-because other Kikuyus will be voting for Martha Karua or someone else) may also decide to support him, and thus he is capable of bringing in a voting block apart from the money that he can easily access from what his father stole from Kenyans when he served as Kenya’s first African dictator. I do not hope that that this group can attract votes from Kenyans who are so enlightened these days that they know who is corrupt and who is not. The only point of interest could be how they are going to arrive at the presidential torch bearer.
The person to sympathize with in this group is one Stephen Kalonzo Musyoka, who has absolutely nothing to offer. He is likely to come out as a looser because apart from him lacking strategic political ideas, he is broke and seriously troubled by a loan he took after being cheated that he could grow flowers in Canada, a project that has proved futile. The only hope for him which no longer exists is the Ukambani people who no longer recognize him as their leader. In fact they have never, save for the time when he lied to them that he could make it to state house only to come a distant third in 2007 garnering a paltry less than 8 percent of the vote .Kambas are really troubled by the kind of petty politics played by this man Kalonzo. They thought that at some point Kalonzo was going to become wise and change his way of doing cheap politics by using petty tricks to auction Kamba people for his own personal and selfish benefits. He has even made sure that his wife earns a salary from the state without working anywhere. He argues that by him being the vice president, his wife too deserves a salary from public coffers because he enjoys having sex with her. They draw these huge salaries as a family while many people from Ukambani are still vulnerable to famine. Due to this selfish behavior of Stephen Kalonzo Musyoka, the Kamba people have decided to dump him. Most Kambas are now working on a formula of entrusting their votes to someone more reliable and one who can seriously represent their true interests. Kalonzo’s opportunism has seen the Kamba people continue suffering even when they have one of their own as Kibaki’s Principal Deputy.
The above scenario makes Kalonzo the most vulnerable person now that he has no money, he has no people behind him (no votes), and he has no political ideas to bring the table of the new PNU outfit that is supposedly fronted by Uhuru, Saitoti and Kalonzo.
Kalonzo is a confused man, trying all sorts of experiments which aren’t working. It’s likely that when Saitoti and Uhuru will discover that Kalonzo doesn’t attract even 10 percent following in Ukambani, they will dump him and leave him alone in political wilderness.
It will be difficult for Kalonzo because, even when the new constitution is passed, there will be only two senior positions and thus the method the new PNU outfit will try to apply will not work. The outfit will rather front Uhuru or Saitoti as the presidential candidate since Kalonzo will have nothing to offer. the position of the running mate will also be given to either Uhuru or Saitoti .in fact, the whole group appears to be seriously confused on this, since while they are advocating for a presidential system of power in the new constitution, they are also having more than three people to front for the top positions which only happen to be two if the constitution is passed as it is.
The Kamba people are now very careful, being wise people they will not allow Kalonzo to lie to them again like he did in 2007.they voted for him after he made them believe that he was capable of being president. They were surprised when after the results that Kalonzo was not capable of getting votes anywhere else. They are bitter that he lied to them so that he could get a job for himself and a free salary for his wife under Kibaki, a position that hasn’t helped them at all as a community. That is one reason why Kambas are waiting for 2012 to teach Kalonzo a lesson by ensuring that he loses the Mwingi North parliamentary seat, just like Luhyas did to people who appeared like sell outs of Kalonzo’s type in the past. Thee examples being when they voted out the then vice president Musalia Mudavadi in 2002 who had been confused by Moi’s tricks and attempted to mislead Luhyas using the short-lived tenure as the vice president. He learnt a lesson and he only made it back to leadership after learning his mistakes and correcting them. He is now the deputy prime minister. The same fate befell Moody Awori when, against the people’s wishes he endorsed Mwai Kibaki in 2007, he lost his parliamentary seat despite him occupying the second highest political office in Kenya. That is the fate that awaits Stephen Kalonzo Musyoka.the Ukambani people have known the tricks of this man and come 2012, they are going to remind him that they are wiser than him. Unlike Mudavadi, Kalonzo is limited both in options and opportunity to redeem his political career.
JOSEPH KIPKORIR,
