NASA fast forgetting who their opponent is

Winston Churchill once famously described watching Soviet politics from abroad as watching two dogs fighting under a carpet.

In his words, “An outsider only hears the growling, and when he sees the bones fly out from beneath, it is obvious who won.”

Watching opposition politics in the past few months has exactly the same undertone. The clear picture here is that the Opposition has no idea who their opponent is any more.

Initially, the ambiguous arrangement in NASA of four leaders where only 2 positions matter, seemed to soothe tensions and raise hope in the opposition allowing everyone, from technocrats to hawkish hard-liners, to believe they were ready for an election against Jubilee. However lately, the tandem has begun to hiccup and backfire.

It is impossible to say whether trust has broken down among the four men, two of whom should be on the ticket in August’s presidential election.

But a universe of officials, and political hangers-on — uncertain whether to show loyalty to one man, the other or both — have spent the whole of last month on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

It started with Francis Nyenze’s claims that grew into demands by Wiper, to a spirited fight back by ODM stalwarts and now, Mudavadi’s Amani National Congress looks to have joined the circus.

History repeating

The saddest bit of their battle is that it has happened before, and that nobody seems to have learnt. Pick a page from the books of all the elections since 1992, and a good reader would have said to himself “Deja Vu all over again”.

It is this infighting that has lost elections for previous opposition outfits, and will most likely lose it for this one.

In a report by three Norwegians Bård-Anders Andreassen, Gisela Geisler and Arne Tostensen about Kenya’s General Election in 1992, they described the opposition then as individualistic outfits.

The 1993 report, which was named ‘A Hobbled Democracy’, pointed at a time when the late Prof Wangari Maathai urged the leaders of the then split FORD opposition parties not to “pursue their objectives and ambitions as if nothing else mattered”.

Maathai was addressing the very nature of Kenyan politics in the pre-election stage: FORD in 1992 was split not over fundamentally different political platforms, which were of little apparent relevance in the election campaign, but rather over their leaders’ personal ambitions to reach high political office.

They lost an election that only needed any form of coalition to win.

The situation in the Opposition currently mirrors an exact image of 1992. The battle in the Opposition has changed from taking Jubilee out of power by any means possible, to who feels he has the clout to mount any challenge to Jubilee.

Within that almost indiscriminate toing and froing amongst the parties, the Opposition despite their colourful merger earlier in the year do not seem to remember who their opponent is any more.

For a group of Amani National Congress (ANC) members to print banners and t-shirts demanding Mudavadi be given the ticket, you only wonder if they remember whom they are up against: An opponent so confident of another five years that he launches a public information portal where the tiniest details of the Jubilee administration investments of the last four years can be traced.

Jubilee are so unchallenged and unbothered by the Opposition that they still have time to prove to Kenyans what they have done, and they can be forgiven for feeling so.

Presidential candidate

While NASA has not named their presidential candidate three months after signing a pact, the time ahead of them is even shorter. There are only the months of May, June and July left to campaign, seeing as NASA are far from settling on who will fly their flag.

This is even a shorter time than ODM had in 2007 and CORD in 2013.

In this infighting, it is difficult to say what is real and what is artificial, but it is easier to see there is no time for it whichever way, and that by the time they have their chaff together it may be too late.

While NASA is on a run to expose the rifts within their own turf, Jubilee is already organised, employing campaign foot soldiers at their headquarters.

The Opposition is displaying remarkable ineptitude in winning an election. Kalonzo Musyoka, Raila Odinga, Musalia Mudavadi and Moses Wetang’ula are all but aiming guns at themselves while claiming to be challenging the Government.

Amongst NASA circles, the talk has not yet turned to how they will drub the Jubilee Government in the election.

Instead, they are still at who amongst them is best placed, raising the spectre of the 1992 and 2013 Opposition that had failed to provide the forward-looking leadership the nation craved in a challenger.

In their current state, they are favourites for another five years in the political winter.

 Mr Mureu is a Teacher. murepack@gmail.com