Raila Odinga’s swearing in is act of desperation

        “There comes a time when national interests come above individual interests”. Those were the words of the late Kenyan Professor George Saitoti after falling off with his boss, the former president of Kenya Daniel Arap Moi.

Being the vice president at the time, he thought that he was the natural Kanu party flag-bearer and subsequently, the next president. Much to Saioti’s chagrin, and to the surprise of many, Moi fronted the incumbent President Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta instead of him, drawing bad blood between the two. Prof Saitoti later died in a chopper crash suspected to have been an assassination.

The words ring true, years after his untimely death. Even after the annulled August 2017 and subsequent elections held on October 26, which the opposition boycotted, there have been rumbles of the opposition National Super Alliance (Nasa) misguided urge to go into a chest-thumbing spree and cheap posturing. They have peddled the notion to all and sundry that the Jubilee administration is illegitimate even after being sworn in as per the dictates of the constitution.

Hungry hawks

At the helm of the opposition pecking order, like a hungry hawk lurks the indefatigable oppositionist Raila Amolo Odinga and Kalonzo Musyoka and a battery of other opposition leaders. He has vowed that he will be sworn in as the “the people’s president” (whatever that means). He has gone ahead to say that he will be the president even if it means doing it from the exile.

On the flipside, the ruling Jubilee Party is a tad-panicky with the Attorney-General, Prof Githu Muigai breathing fire, threatening the opposition with treason suit. This has divided the country right in the middle with half of Kenyans feeling that Kenyatta won squarely while the other half has been whipped to believe that they were cheated of the elections, they are entranced by the lies that opposition propaganda machinery has over decades filled their minds – that Raila is a freedom fighter, some sort of “messiah” to send to the proverbial Canaan.

Infantile intelligence, self-seeking ploys and fuelling of tribal sentiments

Politicians are either naive or too smart. Even a visible crackpot can sway the intelligentsia with vitendawili (riddles in Kiswahili). Adolf Hitler rode on the wave of change. According to Joachim Fest, a historian-turned-journalist in his book Hitler, the forces that catapulted a deluded man to the helm of the Nazi was the leadership vacuum that existed at the time. The same parallel can be said to apply to Kenyan politics. Now, the question is whether Kenya’s opposition is genuine or it is that its leaders are wallowing ego-driven ambition and not nationhood. The latter is true.

The appetite for self-aggrandisement has been the driving force in Kenya’s politics – a kind of adolescent intelligence that seeks to satiate only the egos of opposition without consideration for the republic. It is a deep-sited notion the opposition principles are indispensable and the urge to remain relevant.

What has been running deep is desperate ignorance and bitter hopelessness of dispossession and hatred fuelled by impotent revolution that has been neither here nor there.

What can be said of Kenya’s opposition is that their brand of politics (and that of the ruling party) are mere theatrics – the have been reading from comic scripts. The annulment of the August elections by the Supreme Court proved two things. Even listening at senior counsels arguing out for the opposition it was clear from the onset that the elections were illegal and irregular. The legal system in Kenya has weaned itself from the influence of the executive.

Nasa hopes to ride over the Constitution to create a constitutional crises. Jubilee will this time not be caught napping like it happened last year. Its best brains are working day and night to counter any eventuality after “swearing in”.

Will this “searing in” hocus-pocus bear the fruit? It is very unlikely the stunt will be no more than a street magician’s roadshow. Odinga with his many hat tricks seems to have taken the confrontational route. It will be interesting to see the outcome. As of now, Kenyans are too bored with electioneering and all that goes with it.

Manipulate the poor, render incumbent ungovernable

None of the Jubilee or Nasa politicians will ever admit openly that they are tribal. To a keen observer, the Kenya’s poor have been polarised along tribal lines since independence. Personality cults around Raila have always peddled disguised and sometimes open tribalism innuendoes.

Simple people in the grips of pipe dreams fuelled by politicians, people that cannot articulate or rationally defend the personalities for whom the so zealously are willing to sacrifice friends, family, business and the goodwill of the neighbours and even their own sanity and their children’s sanity.

What stinks to the high heavens about the opposition in Kenya is that there is a notion that distracting the incumbent from achieving the national goals makes them heroes. Heckling, picketing, rowdiness and demonstration of cheap high school demeanors earn nothing for the opposition except loath.

As Kenyans wait for the so-called “swearing in” of the “people’s president,” the nation is hankering on the unstable illusion of stability. This final card is bound to fail very miserably.

Peter Muthamia is a journalist and social and political commentator based in Dar es salaam