Why Raila should continue campaigns at the Coast despite impressive performance on August 8

Jubilee Coast region Presidential campaign team leader, Najib Balala [centre] explains a point during the party's press conference at their office in Mombasa. Balala and Mombasa County campaign team leader, Suleiman Shahbal [2nd left] declared they will work together. A section of Jubilee officials have alleged there is a war of worlds between the two. With them are Jubilee activists,Abdi Daib [2nd right], Ashraf Bayusuf [right] and Amina Abdalla [left]. 19th September 2017. [Photo Omondi Onyango/Standard]

Raila Odinga risks losing more votes to Uhuru Kenyatta in his Coast strongholds.

So far, there seems to be a wide contrast between the level of energy exhibited by the ODM campaign on the Coast before the August 8 General Election and after. Whether this is as a result of Raila’s confidence in unwavering support or that ODM politicians, after security almost all seats, now lack the incentive to hit the ground for yet another round of campaigns, it may cost NASA. It is important to consider the meaning of statements such as those recently issued by Kilifi Governor Amason Kingi that the campaigns done before August 8 were enough to ensure that Raila wins on October 26.

Apart from a roadside declaration made to reporters by Mvita MP Abdulswamad Nassir that elected ODM politicians will serve as electoral agents in the repeat poll, nothing much in terms of ODM campaigns is currently visible at the Coast. Governor Hassan Joho, ODM’s deputy leader and Raila’s chief campaigner in the region before August 8, has focused his attention on national ODM campaigns outside the Coast.

In fact, it is the newly-elected Wiper MP for Kisauni, Ali Mbogo (one out of seven other Wiper MPs at the Coast) that is known to have organised a number of rallies in Kisauni to drum up support for Raila in the up-coming election.

Granted, Raila is still the candidate to beat. In 2013, Uhuru received 19 per cent of coastal votes, lower than the 33 per cent Kibaki garnered in 2007. During the 2017 campaigns, just as it was in 2013, Uhuru and his deputy William Ruto visited the Coast more times than Raila did. And while Raila maintained his share of the votes in 2017, going by the annulled vote, Uhuru increased his in four out of six counties — Mombasa, Kwale, Taita-Taveta, and Lamu.

Personal stake

The level of confidence expressed by Coast ODM luminaries regarding the campaigns they conducted before August 8 should therefore be taken by Raila with caution. This is significant since the presidential vote on the Coast was largely secondary to most voters. Instead, most attention was placed on the local, and more proximate contests, most notably the MCA and MP races.

At this level, the campaigns exploited intimate and proximate social networks, of neighbours, former classmates, church followers, market women, college friends, ethnic kin. As a result, most voters came to the end of the campaign period with some personal stake in the elections: a relative running, or a candidate who had promised to help their family with a job or a long-running legal dispute, or simply someone who had given them a sack of flour or a few hundred shillings.

Leading topics of concern were immediate and local in nature—casual jobs at the county and the port, access to bursaries, sinking of boreholes, promises to deal with errant county inspectorate police, timely collection of garbage and so on.

Specific demands

Wider and more historical concerns, or those that have driven coastal support for Raila in the past, such as the addressing of the coastal land problem, youth radicalisation (or extra-judicial killings), local control of minerals and ports did not feature in much of the political campaigning and in the specific demands that were placed on politicians by voters.

Conflicts over resources that, in the minds of many, might take a long time to address, such as cases involving squatters and landowners, for instance, did not feature much in the campaigns, neither were they politicised. Where they were found, these conflicts were usually the preserve not of politicians, but of the local offices of the national administration.

Therefore, apart from the hostility in which President Kenyatta’s administration exercised towards coastal governors such as Kingi and Joho, and the resultant defiant posture that these two adopted, much of the political campaigning on the coast was driven by more local issues.

With the local elections done with, the voter turn-out might reduce during the repeat presidential poll, especially if NASA maintains its low-profile campaigns in the region. This will, of course, negatively affect Raila’s performance in the October 26 poll.

 

- Chome is a PhD candidate at the Durham University, UK