challenges I faced in the ODM campaign because of my ethnicity

A few weeks ago I shared some of the challenges I faced in the ODM campaign because of my ethnicity. I talked about walking out of meetings because one MP felt I was in the wrong party and should be in a rival party with "my brothers". I shared how yet another MP challenged my resistance to calls for mass demonstrations against the IEBC on the basis that I was only saying that because of my ethnicity.

I also had the interesting experience of being told that some of our security people were uncomfortable with my presence around the ODM presidential candidate because they were not sure I could be trusted based on my tribe. What takes the cake for me will always be the former presidential campaign manager publicly saying he will not engage me on issues I had raised about the advice the party leader was getting, because as far as he was concerned I was a "mole" of a rival party – again associating me with it based on my ethnicity.

This has never stopped me from supporting ODM, or the Cord leadership. In fact it pushes me to prove that ethnic intolerance, whether it is belittling comments by some in our party against one tribe, or by one tribe against another community, are driven by the ignorance of people who have not realised that the world is a global village. They are still stick stuck in their ethnic villages, mentally. I have therefore never believed that it is an ODM party position to fight certain tribes.

However, I am starting to wonder whether I am just politically naïve.

I started asking myself this question when against all odds Cord started spreading a narrative that our 2013 election victory was stolen. As far as I am concerned this narrative is a political gimmick to present the certain community or group of communities, as having "stolen" the 2013 election. This will then rekindle something similar to the "41 versus 1" narrative of the 2007 general election...and we know how that ends. If this is not about splitting Kenya into ethnic conclaves in preparation for the 2017 elections, the Cord leadership must rescind their decision to accept the Supreme Court decision and provide evidence of their claims. Otherwise Kenyans must condemn them for trying to take us back to another tribal conflict.

Then this same leadership decides to call for a referendum against the "tyranny of numbers"!

First, if Cord can pull off such a referendum, why can’t we win a general election? But more importantly, how does a party that genuinely believes in one Kenya and want to unite our country initiate a campaign against "some" tribes? Incidentally do we realise that ODM draws its core support from three of the five largest tribes of Kenya? So, is this really about equalising Kenya’s political space, or fighting some of Kenya’s largest tribes? How does that help Kenya?

Even Uhuru Kenyatta suggested that I do not understand what drives ODM politics!

Last year, during a cross-fire interview I had on Kameme FM I was aggressively trying to articulate to Kameme’s primary Kikuyu listenership how ODM had nothing but good ideas to help Kenya, including the Mt Kenya region. Half way into the show Uhuru, then Deputy Prime Minister, called in. He challenged me on several of the positions I had articulated, and then went on to imply that I seemed not to understand the intricacies of the party I belonged to; and its opposition to our community.

Uhuru concluded with an interesting observation. He asked me whether I realised that he had once been a firm supporter of ODM, and part of its leadership. He then wondered whether I had ever asked myself why he left; before stating that one day I would understand why he had left, and that I maybe even find myself also leaving, without having to be to do so by anyone.

I have not left ODM and it is not my intention to do so. However I am concerned by what seems like an obvious strategy by Kenya’s largest and most formidable political party to deliberately isolate Kenya’s largest and most powerful ethnic community. I do not understand how we ever expect to win a national election and govern Kenya with such a strategy.

Is it possible to have an ODM that sees Kenya as one country and avoid issues that divide Kenyans on an ethnic basis? Can ODM stop conceding the support of certain ethnic communities to its rivals? Can ODM’s leaders stop waging propaganda wars on tribes that do not support us, and instead create strategies to convert them?

This is the ODM Kenya needs.

If the current leadership for some reason cannot deliver such a party then maybe it is time they stepped aside, and let others who can, do so.

Ngunjiri Wambugu is former Prime Minister Raila Odinga’s political advisor.