Wetang'ula's unmaking and the system that consumes its own

The Speaker of the National Assembly, Moses Wetangula. [Antony Gitonga, Standard]

The Speaker of the National Assembly is never an ordinary mortal anywhere in a democracy. He is not a regular politician. He is the emblem of legality, presiding as he does over the making of laws in the land. He borders on the regal and the monarchical, both in style and substance.

Beyond that, he symbolises stability. Parliament, where he oversees everything, is the cradle of order in the nation. National stability begins with the order established in the Assembly. He is, therefore, the ceremonial custodian of the rule of law in the country. For without parliamentary legislation, oversight and representation, chaos would prevail. In short, this State officer is a powerful third pillar in the nation’s sovereignty and authority, together with the President and the Chief Justice.

Accordingly, what should we say when this hallowed pillar of our world is invited into the corridors of criminal investigation, to be interrogated, or even to record a statement? It gets worse if it pertains to the death of a politician who was seen with him a few hours before he died.

That has been Moses Masika Wetang’ula’s lot.

Last week, the Speaker of Kenya’s National Assembly was interrogated by the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI). He was questioned in relation to the death of politician Cyrus Jirongo. Jirongo passed on in a road accident last December. Wetang’ula’s interview was a bad optics. Whether intended or not, it has undermined his standing as Speaker and also as an influential political operative. The symbolism, the architecture and the timing are all bad optics. Put simply, they are not merely career-limiting; they are potentially career-damaging.

Wetang’ula is a system politician. He has always been defined by this space, while people like the late Raila Odinga have been crowd politicians.

Influence trading 

Crowd politicians survive by popular waves. System politicos survive by elite negotiation and proximity to power. They are products of influence trading and legal machinations. Their clout is a factor of institutional placement. These people are immune to ideological complications because they have no fixed ideas, except the idea of being in power. Their business is being part of the government of the day; any government that is.

In this regard, Wetang’ula got into this pool from the deep end. He arrived as a nominated MP in 1992. Kanu power barons headhunted him as a brilliant legal mind. He brought a sense of balance to a chamber dominated by a galaxy of scholars and lawyers in the opposition benches, following the general election of that year. He rose quickly to become a brilliant deputy speaker. He helped Kanu through the zigzags of often inimical legislation. The Kenyan Government operated in the dire straits of a hostile opposition at home and an overbearing international donor aid community. 

From the outset, Wetang’ula was immune to scandals and the wastage of electoral losses. Losing the 1997 election, in which he ran for the Sirisia Parliamentary seat, was only a temporary setback. He bounced back in 2002. He has since remained in consequential political spaces and positions. He has been MP for Sirisia, Minister for Foreign Affairs, Senator for Bungoma County, and today Speaker of the National Assembly.

He was unscathed by unproven allegations of involvement in financial malfeasance in land deals in Nigeria and Japan, for the construction of Kenya Government offices. Nor did his humiliating removal as the Leader of the Minority in the Senate (by ODM MPs) diminish his fortunes. Such mishaps may wound crowd politicians, but they do not kill system politicos.

The question is then not so much whether Wetang’ula is declining politically, or whether the system that he has been a part of is rejecting and ejecting him. Is his debacle with the DCI a part of rejection and start of ejection from the systemic soft centre of power?

The police described their encounter with the Speaker as “routine housekeeping.” In strict legalistic terms, this may be true. In political symbolism, however, it is a catastrophe. In that single move,  Wetang’ula’s “untouchability” as the third pillar of State authority begins to evaporate. His institutional sanctity has been muddied. His neutrality is psychologically broken.

It matters little that he has not been charged or that he will not be charged. The challenge is not a legal matter. It is, rather, a reputational earthquake. In the grammar of the politically savvy, Wetang’ula is wounded. Political wounds for high-fliers are often more damaging than guilt. That is why, although he is not a “finished man,” the Speaker may need to hold a keen conversation with himself. Separately, he needs to consult the gods who rule time, and the angels of fortune and mischief.

Eaten by the system

Kenya is in the season when systems eat up their own men and women. And there is cause to believe that the system is eating both Wetang’ula and his brother from Western Kenya, Musalia Mudavadi. Wetang’ula survived Moi, Kibaki, Uhuru, Odinga, and is now with Ruto. While he played a significant role in getting Ruto into State House in 2022, Ruto and his system appear determined to eat him up. Mudavadi seems to be already in the mouth of the system, slowly being munched away.

The two individuals who have been the foremost political figureheads in Western Kenya have arrived at an unsafe crossroads in the career of any politician. There are good reasons. Wetang’ula is withering away because of refusing to surrender fully to the system. Mudavadi is sizzling in the frying pan because of being too soft. Would it seem that when the system wants to eat up one of its men, it will eat him, regardless of whether he is hard or soft?

Both Wetang’ula and Mudavadi are no longer useful to President William Ruto and his system. Mudavadi stopped being useful when he dissolved his party, ANC, to join Ruto’s UDA. He instantly lost his political oxygen. The courts may have recently resurrected ANC from the grave, yet this only confirms the fatal mistake that Mudavadi made. He killed his only instrument of power. He dissolved himself into a comfortable political venom in Ruto’s space.

Systems do not take such leaders seriously, who are keen to be swallowed. They may be given temporary comfort. But sooner, the rug under their  feet goes. Mudavadi is no longer Ruto’s partner. He is a resource, just like any other appointee in the system. He may sit in a comfortable office at Kenya Railways Headquarters. He enjoys the privileges of high office; diplomatic travel, elite accommodation, and ceremonial respect. Yet, with no independent constituency machinery for leverage, he is becoming sawdust in Ruto’s political sawmills.

Now that he is only a passenger in the machine, Mudavadi must mark his time until the system eventually dispenses with his utility.  He has no bargaining leverage, no voice, and no exit option. The system, however, eats people like Mudavadi with a measure of dignity. People like Wetang’ula are eaten in a noisy manner. Mudavadi will be given an ornate office, a big title, diplomatic gin-and-tonic assignments, a motorcade, security sentinels, and polite respect. However, he remains completely emptied of leverage. His growth is completely frozen. He could be in the comfortable final stages of being neutralised politically.

Yet, either way, you cannot win. Niccolo Machiavelli advised owners of political systems that they should never preserve individuals, both the loyal and disloyal. Political systems exist primarily to preserve their continuity and the interests that sustain them. This is where Wetang’ula’s nightmare gets complicated. He refused to surrender fully to the system and the master. He began slowing the efficiency of the system by allowing himself bargaining space with the boss. He refused to relinquish the position of Party Leader of Ford Kenya, even when the courts ruled that he could not be concurrently Speaker and Party Leader. To crown it all, he spurned system orders to fold his party.

Unlike Mudavadi, who is being eaten because he is weak, Wetang’ula is being eaten because he is headstrong. While he remains loyal, he refuses to submit fully. He considers himself a co-principal with the boss. To teach him a lesson, Ruto details his deputy party leader in Ford Kenya, Governor Kenneth Lusaka of Bungoma, to coordinate UDA activities in Western Kenya. That is a perfect slap in the face. Lusaka is deputised by Kakamega Deputy Governor Ayub Savula.

Savula belongs to Eugene Wamalwa’s Democratic Alliance Party (DAP). DAP is itself a member of the United Opposition. Ruto has complicated matters for everyone, in the government and opposition alike. To Wetang’ula, the message is, “You cannot be in my Government while also preserving for yourself bargaining power. You are not allowed to have options around me. I am the only option!”

Systems are hostile to optionality in their allies. If Wetang’ula will not accept total surrender and absorption, if he wants to be a semi-insider-semi-outsider, then he must be eaten in a humiliating manner. 

In any event, this would appear to be the wider social and political relevance of Wetang’ula’s interrogation by the police.  But it is also a season in which Wetang’ula is dogged by other political challenges that leave little doubt that someone is after his political blood. The process has the character of a hidden human hand, as well as the hand of Hermes, the god of mischief. Then there is Kairos, the god of time. Wetang’ula’s concert with these three forces has not been healthy at all.

Loss

His current circumstances speak to the fickleness of fortune, and the fragility of power. They also speak to the volatility of trust and the brevity of political comradeship. Things that no politician wants to happen are increasingly his portion. Hardly two months ago, his Ford Kenya candidate lost the by-election for the Chwele-Kabuchai Ward in Bungoma County to a little-known independent candidate.

This was despite his suffocating show of might. Chwele-Kabuchai witnessed massive inflows of voter-treatment funds. Ironically, the Ford Kenya candidate also enjoyed support from President Ruto’s UDA party, mostly through the President’s emissary,  Farouk Kibet. There was also support from ODM. The Speaker also mobilised a retinue of Members of Parliament from Western Kenya and beyond, to campaign for his man, but to nought. Not even an atmosphere marred with violence, threats and intimidation altered the outcome. Even in his own village, where he voted at Namakhele Primary School, his man got fewer votes than the independent candidate.

Wetang’ula can only ignore the goings-on at his own political risk and peril. Friend and foe alike appear keen to pull him down. Ruto wants him to be a junior partner in one party. His own village has rejected him and chosen “a nobody.” The village no longer fears him. Nor does it hope in him. Are his political comebacks coming to an end, or will he perform a few more political somersaults to reinvent himself as the ultimate cat with nine lives?

But as he ponders all these, there is the big question of Trans Nzoia County Governor, George Natembeya and the new generations. Natembeya is easily the most lethal thorn in Wetang’ula’s ribs, going forward. He is everything that Wetang’ula is not. Where Wetang’ula is an elite negotiator and a system man, Natembeya is a self-made crowd mobilizer. Where Natembeya’s biggest weapon is emotional appeal, Wetang’ula thrives on legalisms and political niceties. A former insider in Provincial Administration, Natembeya has the capacity for populist raw politics that have made him the popular champion of the Tawe (No) Movement in Western.

The pendulum of hope is swinging steadily and unambiguously towards Natembeya. Wetang’ula and Mudavadi –  elite politicians that they are –  left a yawning gap in the leadership arena in the region. Natembeya walked in with charisma, pomp and circumstance. He is rapidly becoming the most emotionally commanding political figure in the region, from the slopes of Mt. Elgon in the North, to the most southerly regions of Kakamega and Vihiga. If he should close ranks with the dissenting voices of ODM Secretary General Edwin Sifuna, Caleb Amisi, Godfrey Osotsi, and others, then Wetang’ula’s goose is cooked.

Wetang’ula can, however, take solace in the knowledge that it is never done until it is done. Never mind that his own brother, MP Tim Wanyonyi of ODM, has also scoffed at his humiliation in Chwele-Kabuchai. He must hold dialogue with himself and with the gods of time to ask himself a few honest questions. Above all, does he have what it takes to resist a slide into the political slough of despond, or is it about time he packed up and left Kenya’s theatre of treachery and deceit?

He can also take further solace in the knowledge that he is not alone. Mudavadi loves echoing the motto of a European football club, which says, “You’ll never walk alone.” Is this the time this motto becomes most potent? That he will walk with Wetang’ula?

When new generations arrive, old champions become liabilities. The emotional gravity of the electorate shifts towards the new leaders. Mudavadi and Wetang’ula are, in the end, not discarded because they are bad people. It is just that times are changing. Yesterday’s conduits of influence are no longer relevant.

The system may not kill these two lions. But does it appear set to retire them? Could Wetang’ula be a lion being starved into retirement? And could Mudavadi be another lion, being domesticated?

Whatever the case, they end in the same place. They no longer define the hunt.  Or maybe, just maybe, the sun is slowly setting on the Kenya that they once mastered? Their danger is not scandal. It is not any form of criminal conduct. They are only yesterday’s systems’ good people who have drifted into irrelevance, one through stubbornness, the other through softness.