By DAISY MARITIM MAINA
Raila’s wooing of Kenya is an epic love story. Unfortunately, it is of a tragic kind. As suitors go, Raila is head and shoulders above most. He has endured torture and untold misery over his Beloved. This state of wretchedness is further compounded by the fact that for 5 years, between 2008 and 2013, he had a fleeting taste of this heady love. Now, over two decades after he first fell in love, what began as a delicate seduction morphed into urgent wooing that descended into a violent chase, which almost always ends with a crime of passion. This is how the story goes.
It begins with a problem. Raila, Kenya’s most persistent suitor has two major impediments in his current pursuit for love. Firstly, in 2017, he will be up against a first term incumbent. That’s a double blow. One-term presidents in Africa are few and far between, and incumbents in Africa, owing to amongst other factors, ‘poll magic’, are generally difficult to depose. Secondly, he is operating on an unfavorable timeline. He will be 72 by election year, and only 3 years shy of 80 by the 2022 elections. In matters of love one is never too old to yearn, and presidential age limits are non-existent anyway. However, although he is not constitutionally time-bound, his advanced age triggers a sense of urgency; it is ‘do or die’, ‘now or never’. Thus begins the dangerous love chase. They say that desperation is a powerful inspirer, and smitten Raila is an inspired man. So he hatches a three step wooing strategy.
The first course of action is to ‘reveal’ the government’s intention to rig in 2017, and declare unspecified consequences if the results are unfavorable to ODM. To the same end, he has enlisted his foot soldiers, the likes of George Aladwa to do the same, but expressed in more graphic terms. It is akin to telling the one you love; “when the time comes to pick a suitor, and I am not your choice, I will know that your relatives influenced you negatively, so I will deal with them harshly because, you see, I love you so dearly”.
The second strategic step is to continually highlight the lack of credibility of election-relevant institutions. To be fair, any smart person in his position would do the same, given that the history of African elections where ‘ballot magic’ is rampant, and that its replication in Kenya is highly possible and extremely probable. So for The Independent Electorate and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), he announces the intention to put up a parallel tallying system, and commission a German outfit for that job. This in addition to sending CORD agents, armed with cameras for good measure, to record and transmit election results. Then there are the recent supremacy and corruption wrangles within the Supreme Court, which is a fortuitous case that perfectly fits into the Grand Plan. And he has nothing to do with it, or does he?
In the end, who can blame Raila when our electoral system is a zero-sum game where the winner takes it all? The loser is relegated to the outside looking in, back to hatching plots and dreaming up schemes for his ascension to power. And Raila definitely does not want to be back out in the cold, come 2017. This, by the way, is where the love story gets dark. The man who has been love-struck for almost half his life thinks; “If I cannot have her to myself, I’ll have her with someone else.” Not having her is not an option. He will then engineer a crisis in order to achieve this objective.
The intention is to necessitate a Power Sharing Agreement, what Koigi Wa Wamwere called a ‘dangerous concept’ in 2013. The problem with these kinds of agreements is that they can only happen as a result of extremely compelling circumstances. And these are the horrors of the incessant quest for unrequited love. This time however, only Raila knows how he has imagined the mechanisms of the ‘New Deal’ to look like.
Mr. Raila, I support your strategizing and scheming, that is part of what makes politics. But, in the name of love, employ another strategy from your repository of stratagem. Let your sophisticated political mind hatch up alternative plots. Kenya, the one you so desire, does not have an infinite capacity for pain. Like most lovers, she has a breaking point, and 2007/8 was it. Also, that will be too heartbreaking an ending for a love story as long as yours.
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