We're just pawns in Jubilee, CORD chessboard

What do our political parties stand for? While reflecting on that, I think that at best, our main political parties, which keep on laughing at each other, have remained the case of the proverbial pot calling the kettle black.

To our horror, the common denominator among our political parties is the intolerance to dissenting opinion (meaning any voice contrary to the leader's).

That is why Kiambu Governor William Kabogo unashamedly declared he was backing out of the referendum push because the President had said so.

It is also the reason why the only rival to Moses Kuria in the fight for the Gatundu South seat, Mr Joachim Kamere, stepped down, again because, his aides concede, the President had said so!

In the Orange Democratic Movement led by Raila Odinga, who also doubles up as the leader of the main Opposition – the Coalition for Reforms and Democracy – Budalang'i MP Ababu Namwamba is under pressure from Tinga for singing a tune other than that of Baba.

It is the same case with Aldai MP Alfred Keter, who has gone quiet in William Ruto's United Republican Party.

Only a few months ago, he would excite crowds in Mr Ruto's home turf, using the analogy that the chap they had sent up the tree to harvest honey had gone quiet and no amount of shouting (if the hive was dripping with succulent honey) would make him respond.

Apparently, the man up in the tree is busy eating the honey and won't risk choking by responding to their calls.

He then said the only solution (because the tree is thin and only one person could climb up at a time) was to chop it and spoil for everyone.

He added that whenever they ask for a chance at the Jubilee honey pot, they are told to be patient because theirs is frothing and will be 'ready' in 2022, when they are 'assured' by the URP majority shareholder that his turn to rule Kenya would come.

What was the big man's response? Mr Keter is a political broker, a saboteur, a liar.

Meanwhile, the same people the two people represent continue to ask questions on how far the smoking Uhuru-Ruto vehicle will go and if at all it would cross the floodwaters in the next elections, planned for 2017.

They also added another question - about the 'forgotten' court proceedings at The Hague.

When our parties are not battling with intolerance and the big-man syndrome, they are, at best, tribal vehicles.

That is why it is almost certain that the most vocal defenders of Mr Odinga would invariably be traced to the proximity to the Lake and the Ocean.

Similarly, it is the reason most Kalenjins and Kikuyus sit upright when President Kenyatta and his deputy (the real owners of Jubilee) chance on the television screen.

It does not bother them that almost a year after Mr Kenyatta confessed that there were thieves in his office, he has not fired a single one. Just the other day, some guys vanished with Sh8 billion.

We are in fact told that one chap actually drove off with Sh450 million either in a GK-plated Land Rover or Toyota Land Cruiser!

What is important is the phrase tuko ndani ya serikali (we are in government). And this is supposed to excite even those in the firm grip of poverty.

In other words, what matters most is where our tribal tin-god is in the hierarchy of power and not the economic burden they keep piling on the taxpayers by way of unbridled or even official corruption, mismanagement of public affairs (manifest in the way we have for political reasons retained the Provincial Administration alongside the new county administrations), and extravagance that must have by now made God cry!

So, so long us we see nothing wrong in the way our country is managed because we think the pain of mis-governance is soothed or compensated ten times over by the fact that our tribes are in the saddle of power, we have no moral standing to complain about the economic doldrums, runway debt (especially to the stingy Chinese) and the insecurity fanned by 'greenness' and inexperience of those who are supposed to fight it.

We shouldn't even complain about broken promises such as the one on laptops and equal share for all communities in Government because we have rubber-stamped tribalism even by the way we join parties and forge alliances.

The Opposition is also too mired in the politics of tribe and patronage, so much that its voice of criticism is only loud when the hand caught in the till is that whose veins are laden with "Jubilee blood!"

Our parties also share one more umbilical cord; they are just vehicles for power and money, and mean nothing else, not even what their names purport to be.

This you can discern from their agenda; after elections they only meet to criticise the other, even when under a barrage of attack, and can't even hold meaningful elections, yet they are supposed to be conveyor belts of the fruits of democracy.

I am yet to hear of a political party that has called for 'the-Kenya-we-want' Convention, but may be you have. That is why between now and 2017, Mr Kenyatta will always pull us this way, and Mr Odinga that way! For that is who we Kenyans are day and night; political pawns being moved around the chessboard by our political masters.