CORD’s fixation on polls risks fueling disillusionment on their political ideals

By Barrack Muluka

The duty of a mature political Opposition anywhere in the world is to look good. This is what the CORD leaders who are now calling for a referendum to radically change the nature of Government and the election of Kenya’s Chief Executive must never forget.

The role of the Opposition is not to generate permanent anxiety among citizens. It is not to feed permanent confusion and to keep investors and everybody in permanent doubt about the country. A sober Opposition keeps a clinical eye on every detail of what the Government is doing. It monitors what the Government intends to do. It looks for the loopholes. It makes convincing reasoned arguments against the Government. It demonstrates – without screaming – that it has better alternatives and better leaders.

This is not the same thing as keeping the country in permanent anxiety and in a perennial election campaign mood. Yet, this is where CORD seems keen to keep Kenya – permanently fixed on elections, embraced in anxiety and afraid. Having been injured in the March General Election, the CORD top brass would obviously want to make itself relevant. Which is good. What is not good is that it has elected the path of galvanising the country this early into the election mode and to create fear.

The expectation about ongoing agitation for a referendum on the Constitution, it would seem, is to generate momentum that should pave an easy path to power. It seeks to make voters adequately unhappy with the Government as to vote for CORD when the time comes.  This, however, is likely to backlash. CORD leader, Mr Raila Odinga, seems to forget that people will get election fatigued. They will want to focus on things that are of more immediate concern and relevance. They have children to bring up. There is food to look for, families to make, the sick to tend after and dozens of concerns. You could of course quite correctly argue that the political environment and governance framework are key to all this. Yet this hardly justifies keeping the nation in a permanent cataclysmic mode. You risk fomenting broad disillusionment in your leadership and sense of judgement. Raila may want to try a different strategy that endears the public to the things he stands for. Eventually, it is not the individual that matters but, rather, the agenda he has stood for.

Today Raila is beginning to take on a grumpy and disruptive image. It was the late George Saitoti who said, “There come(s) a time when the nation is bigger than the individual. Raila has done exceptionally well in this respect, in the past. He did so with his “Kibaki tosha” call in 2002. He did so again in 2008, when some believe that his election in 2007 was stolen. He repeated this in March this year.

Feeling aggrieved as he is about this year’s presidential election, has Raila elected the Samson option? Politicians who feel aggrieved have often elected to sink with their countries. Yet, do both the Government and the Opposition have a responsibility to maintain a minimal level of stability, regardless that they do not agree on everything? The Opposition may, for example, not agree that public affairs are well managed. And it is true that the Uhuru Kenyatta regime, this far, confounds you. They behave as if they are presiding over an oligarchy of two tribes. That they won the election and that everybody else can jump into the sea, for all they care. This is not how to bring about the national unity that President Kenyatta kept talking about during the election campaign. This is unless he always meant uniting two tribes against everybody else.

Yet disruptive agitation is hardly the best way to address this. The Opposition cannot afford to behave like wounded buffalos. They need to soberly expose the failures in this Government and in the process endear the citizens to them. They can do this without being fixated with elections. This election fixity and mindset is certainly beginning to make CORD look worse than the oligarchy they are opposed to. The rallies that began in Homa Bay a few days ago can only erode support for the CORD leadership among men and women of goodwill. Intelligent citizens are averse to leadership that imagines that the people are little tools of power acquisition. How are they different from the Uhuruto Oligarchy? This is what Kenyans want to hear.

The best thing for Raila to do, today, is to elevate himself to a revered and focused leader. He would do well to leave rubble rousing to his charges and assignees. There is already Mr Okoiti Omutata and Mr Eliud Owalo with their M4M. They are our version of Hyde Park mass protesters. It is good enough for them to scream ultimatums at President Kenyatta and Jubilee. This task is not for the Head of State in waiting.

Yet should Raila be Kenya’s President in waiting? He has been for quite sometime. Last year, we were saying that the then impending election was his to lose. And it was lost – yet again. When you have lost several times, there is wisdom in allowing someone else to have a go at it. You do not keep all other potential leaders permanently in your shadow. Again, this makes you look bad.

 If you have to look good, you move back a little so that others in your camp can emerge and take charge. This is what the youthful voices in the Orange Democratic Movement are saying. When they say they want fresh blood, they are obliquely sending a message to their leader. They are telling him that he should step back and allow someone else to emerge and lead. When, instead, the leader throws the country into a campaign mode and mood only five months after the last election, he only swells the numbers of those who believe he is the wrong person for leadership. Think again, Raila. 

The writer is a publishing editor, special consultant and advisor on public relations and media relations