The wrangles in ODM and why you should care

Raila Odinga and Ababu Namwamba

A group of ODM members led by the chairperson of the party’s disputes resolution tribunal, Edwin Sifuna on Friday stormed the party headquarters in Nairobi and staged what appeared to be a bloodless coup. In that incident, the city advocate announced that he had taken over as the party’s secretary general.

Sifuna’s argument was that the party’s Secretary General Ababu Namwamba had absconded his duties and therefore needed to be replaced immediately. This coincidentally or otherwise, happened just a day after the Budalang’i MP had complained about being allegedly sidelined in party matters.

Historically, the affairs of political parties have been misconstrued to be the sole business of the parties themselves. So deeply entrenched is this mindset, that political parties don’t even see the need to conduct meaningful elections, let along nominations. Yet, political parties are in fact public institutions in which all Kenyans have a stake no matter their political affiliations or belief.

The Political Parties Act of 2011 recognised this fact so much so that it provided for a political parties fund to ensure these important building blocks of democracy are not stifled. In fact, in the last financial year, ODM for instance was allocated nearly 90 million shillings of taxpayer money to run its affairs. TNA and URP also got their share of the cash from the exchequer. This is one reason why the Friday events at Orange House must alarm any Kenyan who values political order and a democratic culture.

It cannot be that any time anyone is unhappy with the performance of a party official; they can just storm the party offices and take over. Every political party must have the structures and the culture that discourage anyone from even thinking about such acts.

Granted, some ODM officials have come out to disown the purported coup, but the condemnation is not universal and it is not coming from the highest organs of the party. Obviously, we are in no position to decide who becomes an official in any political party – that must be the decision of the party and the party alone. But what is too important to be left to the whims of party barons is the very high standard of democracy that the 2010 constitution embodies. That should be a concern to all - and one would expect that to be the very DNA of a political party which has the word ‘democracy’ as part of its name. That’s my take.

@YvonneOkwara