The handshake and its unintended consequences

For the entire period of independent Kenya’s elective politics, Henry Cate VII’s dirge; ‘the problem with political jokes is that they get elected’ has been kept alive. Mournfully, the political jokes have held this country captive and plan to propagate that servitude beyond 2022.

It would have been done effortlessly, but for the March 9, 2018 handshake between President Uhuru Kenyatta and Opposition leader Raila Odinga. The tectonic plates that prop our fragile politics appear to have shifted, but ever so slightly.

After the 2017 shambolic elections, President Kenyatta might have appreciated that given the circumstances, he had a fight on his hands he couldn’t win without widespread bloodshed. And after the January 30, 2018 swearing in at Uhuru Park, Raila was left with egg all over his face.

Both needed something to salvage the situation, and the handshake came in handy; giving Kenyatta and Odinga the escape they desperately needed. In large measure, the handshake was for their convenience. From it, they emerged heroes, but what that heroism portends for Kenya is yet to be seen.

The handshake gave Uhuru the quietude he needed to lead this country. It got Raila out of the embarrassing corner he had boxed himself into with that half clever ploy to swear himself in as a ‘peoples president’.

It slammed the brakes on Ruto’s unbridled ambition to become president and sent his feckless camp into paroxysm. It disarmed the unthinking masses on both sides of the political divide and allowed their fuzzy minds to clear.

Slow fire

Hitherto seen as a solid block; a people who stick together like a bunch of bananas, the handshake has split Central Kenya down the middle and caused some to suffer hallucinations. Thanks to the handshake, police stocks of teargas are intact; not a single one fired within Nairobi for a year and counting.

The handshake suddenly blunted the sharp tongues of foreign envoys who used to give us an earful about democracy, even as US President Donald Trump trampled on human rights and sought to build a wall along the Mexican border to keep out ‘undesirable’ races. It managed to start a nice slow fire going inside Jubilee. Above all, it appears to have neutered ODM, knocked off a couple of its incisors and made it ugly.What better proof of the latter than two losses in by elections it should have won in Ugenya and Embakasi South, even without spirited campaigns?

Within NASA, that loss cast ODM out on a limb. But ODM says all is fine, really? Despite the false bravado displayed by ODM following the humiliating defeats, it is hurting and even belatedly withdrew from the Wajir West by election. The philosophical attitude that party honchos have taken; trying to rationalise their loses is the betrayer of internal turmoil. Not surprisingly, that accrues from complacency.

From my perspective, ODM’s resounding loss is not a win for forces that symbolise evil and seek to milk this country dry. It never was a win for the self-acclaimed hustlers, because it was not a contest between dynasties and hustlers. Anybody laying claim to that victory beside Julius Mawathe and David Ochieng is a fraudster.

Emphatic statement

It was not even a win by the Wiper or MDG parties; it was an emphatic statement by voters wearied of being taken for a ride. Parties did not overly concern voters. They are simply beginning to appreciate the power of their vote and are out to exercise their democratic right to elect leaders they believe in, not fawning princelings with nothing to offer.

Evidentially, the days when people merely voted for political parties are being overhauled. Voters now realise there is more accountability in electing a person they believe in than one whose allegiance is to a party that foisted him on them.

This is testimony that the robotic voter is coming out of slumber, no longer held in bondage by the whimsical desires of a few who have continually had the chance to make life better for Kenyans but fumbled. This comes as proof that finally, the common man can sift wheat from chaff; that the commoners are beginning to think for themselves and look at situations critically; no more ‘ndio baba! or obeisance to ‘muthamaki’  ’

Maybe it is a manifestation of our very own passive version of the 1759 French Revolution that was triggered by both political (autocratic rule), Social (class divisions of clergy, nobility and the commoners) and economic (a treasury wiped clean by unnecessary wars).

Politically, ours is being triggered by a leadership out of touch with reality. Socially, it is triggered by the class division of the haves and have-nots and economically, by the massive looting and corruption that have crippled service delivery. Through excessive taxation, the Government robs millions of the poor, then a handful steal it from a comatose government.

Mr Chagema is a correspondent at The Standard.achagema@standardmedia.co.ke