What exactly happened at State House when President Uhuru Kenyatta hosted visiting Korean President Park Geun-hye and invited Opposition leaders Raila Odinga and Moses Wetang'ula to join him for a luncheon on Tuesday?

Put in another way, for the time Uhuru, Ruto, Raila and Wetang'ula met, what ‘agreement’ was reached on how, not if or when, to overhaul the national polls body? I say ‘how’ because both sides appear set to act on the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission, but the stalemate seems to be three-fold: If all or a few of the commissioners should go home; whether to adopt something like the 1997 Inter-Party Parliamentary Group strategy, and who will eventually take credit for dismantling IEBC.

To arrive at what may have happened, let us walk back to the Monday protests, whose highlight was tear-gassing of Raila, Wetang'ula and Wiper Democratic Movement leader Kalonzo Musyoka, as police brutalised their supporters. One thing is clear here; the orders to beat, tear-gas and spray them with water cannons came from President Uhuru and Ruto.

Yes, with his military discipline of acting on orders, Internal Coordination Cabinet Secretary Joseph ole Nkaissery was just parroting what he had been told he must do, albeit with too much enthusiasm, sarcasm and sadism. Forget the Inspector General of Police Joseph Boinett; he too is a pawn in a bigger game; that is why the stage-managed arrival in Nairobi West Hospital of police officers ‘injured’ by Cord supporters in Nyanza was coordinated by a propaganda hireling based at State House!

Now, the reason why it is easy to tell who was behind the orders is to look keenly at their statements and the confidence and impunity with which the police acted. Both Uhuru and Ruto maintained that the protests were unlawful and Raila and his team should follow legal means of having IEBC replaced. The hands of these two leaders are also discernible from the fact that this week, after Raila and Wetang'ula accepted the offer to visit State House, the game changed and the police were suddenly begging Raila’s team to call off the parallel Madaraka Day rally.

This came after Nkaissery and the new motor-mouth of the Uhuru government, Mr Eric Kiraithe, had vowed that the place was out of bounds both for the Raila group and the little-known ‘evangelist’ who also claimed she had paid for that space. But it seems the State House invitation did not go along the script that Jubilee mandarins had drawn. First, Raila honoured the invitation, leaving a burial somewhere in Maasailand.

According to Raila, four issues were discussed, and they responded to each. When asked to call off the Uhuru Park rally, he answered it had been on schedule for a long time and the courts had upheld their freedom of assembly. Secondly, on the call to put off the rally as it would interfere with the main celebrations, he says he told them (Uhuru and Ruto) that theirs would only start after the one in Nakuru ended.

On the invitation to move from tear-gas clouds and join the President in the VIP pavilion in Nakuru, it is not clear but they may have been non-committal. Other unverifiable claims hold that a Kenya Air Force chopper was in Karen waiting for the signal to take Raila and Wetang'ula to Nakuru.

Why all this enthusiasm to be seen with Raila and the sudden change of tune? It is simple, having committed to take the national holiday to Nakuru, Uhuru-Ruto allies realised too late they had made a tactical error Raila would exploit for the political expediency of showcasing his political ‘crowds’ and getting live coverage on television to reach his supporters.

Secondly, Uhuru may have tried to lure Raila out of Nairobi and in the process agreed to the 10-member inter-party team that he disowned on Wednesday night. Also, it is likely that Uhuru embraced the issue of dealing with Raila directly and getting him off the streets, for as his derogatory friends claim, that is where he excels and to neutralise him, lure him to a different battle-ground where he would be like fish out of water.

However it seems the hard-liners around Uhuru finally prevailed! So how does Raila react? Despite criticism by some of his backers that he should not have rushed to the point of almost breaking his leg to meet with Uhuru and Ruto just because the President beckoned him, he decided to arrogate himself the task of communicating what transpired, knowing well that even if State House contradicted him, it would be his word against theirs. And because he couldn’t have gate-crashed to ‘greet’ Mr Aden Duale and Nkaissery, the burden of proving the liar would be tricky for both sides.

So here is Raila whose demos were losing steam but nonetheless were worrying the religious, civil society, international community, and the Kenyan business community, finally at State House. The invite came from a group that was unsure whether to continue tear-gassing his crowd at the risk of being seen as another batch of African buffoonish leaders, or to appease and ‘neutralise’ him!

Buoyed by the visit, Raila has decided to push the boundaries farther, demanding, not pleading for dialogue. He isn’t for the parliamentary process because of the ‘tyranny of numbers’ and to achieve his goal he needs the business and civil society community as well as international diplomacy.

So once again a goal has been scored but in whose goal-mouth it depends so much on your political standpoint. But nonetheless...goaaaaaaaaaal!