Nairobi Governor Dr. Evans Odhiambo Kidero may be harder to beat than most people imagine.
Senator Mike Sonko clinching the Jubilee ticket against the moderate Peter Kenneth has already been translated as a win for Jubilee in Nairobi.
However, Peter Kenneth may have just been a pawn in a game of chess where Kidero was the real King.
Usually, we understand party primaries on a one-dimensional ideological scale. But in reality, there’s (at least) a second dimension: the establishment-acceptable wildcard.
Through the primaries, pundits and operatives clung fervently to the theory of “lanes.”The “establishment” lane, assumed to be the more powerful of the two, was ideally painted as not being in support of Sonko.
Personal appeal
In a one hour live TV rant, Sonko attacked certain individuals without much naming. Sonko is a candidate testing the proposition that you can turn the personality dial to 100 and the policy dial to zero and still win.
His candidature isn’t easily pigeonholed ideologically. It relies on more casual, less-educated voters attracted to his personality rather than to any specific brand of Party loyalty. Policy, of course, matters a good deal less than we think in elections.
There should never have been a debate about Sonko in the first place, but there was.
In 2013, being the dramatic showboating upstart he was as Makadara MP, Mike Sonko still had 808,705 people vote for him as Nairobi Senator.
By numbers, Sonko was the most voted for senator in the country. In Nairobi, he got more votes than any Presidential Candidate garnered in Nairobi.
Wrong predictions
Essentially, Sonko was voted in by a constituency that cut across the political divide. Four years later, the more mature Sonko was topping all the opinion polls for Nairobi Governor.
If sense spoke, Kenneth would never have been a subject of discussion, but he was plucked from Murang’a to vie against Sonko in Nairobi’s Jubilee primaries.
Where the pundits failed, however, was identifying who the actual establishment candidate was.
It was not Peter Kenneth. Kenneth was too weak and too much of a loser to be handed such a baggage as Kidero.
Kenneth, in my opinion, was a scapegoat to keep Sonko busy while Kidero made higher ground. For all the ills that may have crippled his time in office, Kidero has never had a terrible relationship with Jubilee.
Within City hall for example, you can count the number of attempts at his impeachment that have failed for lack of quorum: which means, just as many Jubilee MCA refrained from the house as the opposition MCA’s did.
Secondly, the relationship between the President and Kidero has always been cordial.
For a governor who had slapped a Women Representative from your side of the divide, the President has been interestingly close to Kidero.
So close to an extent that Uhuru has paid Kidero a courtesy visit in his office which was plastered across the media in photos and stories.
Warm relationships
How many Jubilee governors, if you may, have had such a privilege? Kidero on his hand has hardly criticized Uhuru’s government.
He throws a word here, and a word there, but most times just a general statement unlike his ODM counterparts who are direct.
Lest you forget, at some point Kidero was a black sheep in ODM, and faced just as much opposition in his own party for being too warm to Jubilee.
Third, movers and shakers in City business are staunch proponents of order. Kidero stole the show in 2013 against the ruffian Waititu because he was just that, a ruffian.
He was too brash to be governor. To these people, Kidero is still the safer bet as compared to the tattooed, fancy haired and neck chained Sonko.
Kidero will be a hard one for Sonko not because jubilee will not campaign for Sonko, but because the stage was always being prepared for Kidero’s re-election.
Sonko will be fighting a two thronged battle: against the status quo and against the political divide that is NASA and Jubilee.
Let us not imagine that the people who Sonko thought were against him have vanished. No, they’re alive somewhere, frolicking with the idea of blocking Sonko by whatever means necessary.
Interests
The problem to them is not Kidero; the matter to them has nothing to do with the party. Hardly.
This to them is about the City, their interest, and the status quo which they believe will be disrupted by Sonko.
And when it comes to making that gamble, they would rather the devil they know than the Sonko they imagine. Kidero has a foot ahead, it was his race, and may still be the man to beat.
Mr. Mureu is a Teacher.
