Opposition leaders divisions, 'I'm the best' chest-thumping their greatest gift to a beatable Ruto

Voters elect a candidate and not a mood. Kenya’s Opposition chiefs could spend a whole year demonstrating that the mood in the country is awesomely against  President William Ruto’s re-election, but still go on to lose next year’s election to him.

Recent TIFA and Infotrak polls present a grim picture for Ruto. He consistently stays in a popularity zone that should worry him. The polls signal political doom for the incumbent. Clearly, Opposition kingpins can see the arithmetic. In May, for instance, TIFA placed Ruto ahead, at 24 per cent; Kalonzo Musyoka at 19 per cent; Fred Matiang’i at 14 per cent; Edwin Sifuna at 10 per cent; and Rigathi Gachagua nine per cent. There was 15 per cent going to undecided voters.

Ruto was nowhere near the mandatory constitutional victory majority of 50 per cent plus one vote. But neither was anybody else.

In July, Infotrak put Ruto at 32 per cent, Kalonzo at 13 per cent, and Sifuna at 12 per cent, with the rest in tow. If the Opposition rolls its act together, the self-acclaimed political fundi from Sugoi will bite the dust. Yet, Opposition kingpins, in their perpetual second-guessing of one another, remain his most promising hope for re-election.

Aware of his precarity, Ruto steadily betrays political anxiety that borders on panic. His diary is persistently rooted in dishing out money to sundry mass delegations in State House, Nairobi. When it is not this, he is engaged in post-to-pillar itineration across the country. Defining both sets of activities are choleric outbursts against the Opposition. His temperament can only be aptly characterised as petulant panic. His emotional self-management is at the nadir of its fortunes.

Yet, even with the recent release of the election calendar by IEBC, and a cantankerous, panicky President, the Opposition is still equivocating and prevaricating on the basics of finding a common candidate to send Ruto home.

Opposition leaders are steeped in mutual mistrust. They seem to be afraid and suspicious of each other. Each casts himself as the best. Are they likely to rue their individual self-focus someday; a day too late in August next year? Or could some of them, in fact, be in cahoots with the President to derail the call for one term for Ruto? It is otherwise a paradox of big egos, intersecting with an absence of a clear strategic thrust.

The principals appear to believe, each, that the arithmetic will eventually prove that he, or she, should be the one whom everybody else rallies around. The prevarication hands to Ruto the space to run around the country, portraying them as “a bunch of ignoramus self-seekers”, and creating both doubt and anxiety in the voter’s mind.

What holds Opposition leaders back is hardly the thought that, if not them, any other person will lose to Ruto. It is rather anxiety around the knowledge that Ruto can be beaten. This, in turn, feeds the stubbornness of the thought that “in that case let me blackmail everyone, so that they will surrender this thing to me.”

Kalonzo wakes up in the morning to the thought, “Why should I step aside again? I have waited for too long, and I am not getting any younger. I have paid my political debts to the Opposition. I have a national footprint. I am also the oldest, both in age and in electoral politics. They must leave it for me, this time.”

Beyond this, he goes to bed worried that the Akamba population could desert him, if he is not the flag bearer this time. They have stayed in the Opposition for 13 years. “If Ruto wins, and I am still in the Opposition, having backed someone else, I am done. Let me dig in, for better or worse. I cannot lose both the election and my supporters.”

For his part, Matiang’i thinks, “I am a breath of fresh air in this space. At the minimum, I am gaining traction in Kisii. I am the community kingpin. I cannot risk losing grip of my followers in this constituency. Besides, I bring a different generational image and energy. The Gen-Zs said they wanted me to run.  I must run, and I will go all the way to the wire, for better or worse.”

But perhaps the most blatant is Gachagua. He boasts openly, “I am the captain of the Mount Kenya vote. That, nobody can ignore. We are the majority. How can the majority support the minority? Go and fix your tribe. Let us place the tribal chips on the weighing scales of ethnic competition. Besides, I have been betrayed before. Ruto betrayed me. Never again. I will go to the wire. If I lose, I will have enough numbers in Parliament, anyway. I will use them to negotiate power with the winner, even if it will be Ruto.”

Sifuna, newly arrived in this space, will be reflecting, “I am young. I am what the youth want. We are combative, we are urban and fluent in digital politics. And the country is proving that it is falling deeply in love with me. I will go all the way. Besides, I am the new kid on the political Mulembe block. I am not stopping at anything.”

And the reasoning goes on. It is difficult to fault the natural human energy behind each of these arguments, and others more. Everyone has a rational argument for himself. Put together, however, these urgings produce an irrational outcome. They could tragically work in Ruto’s interest. This is a tragic paradox. In rhetoric, Opposition leaders agree that unity is necessary. Yet, in practice, there is no unity on who should carry the union flag.  

This absurdity is their greatest gift to Ruto; an inane inability to convert a countrywide anti-Ruto sentiment into a single political silver bullet. They could go on for several months, demonstrating the obvious. That 70% of the voters do not want Ruto. Yet, the voters will not vote for a mood. The electorate wants a tangible credible candidate.

Besides, internal fallout after a candidate has been settled upon is inevitable. This requires time for healing, both within the political kingpin fraternity, and among followers and supporters of individual kingpins. Kenya is a country of tribes. It thinks, speaks and votes tribally. The tribal surrogates require time to come to terms with the fact that their man has accepted the second fiddle, or that he has none. The wounded tribal ego wants time to recover from the shock. To accept that it will vote for a leader from another tribe again.  The Opposition is making that interval too short; there might never be time to heal.

One of the bigger losses, however, is simple loss of political energy. While all the political kilojoules should be directed at dismantling Ruto, the Opposition is wasting a lot of calories, newtons, watts and all that, in internal attrition. Intra-group defections are already taking place. Politicians are migrating from Matiang’i’s Jubilee to Kalonzo’s Wiper Democratic Front (WDF) and to Gachagua’s Democracy for the People (DCP) parties. They demonstrate bad faith within the group and the looseness of the unity, despite loud unitarian avowals. Eugene Wamalwa’s Democratic Alliance Party (DAP) has also lost significantly to Sifuna’s Linda Mwananchi Movement. So much for unity in the Opposition!

 Yet, the mutual suspicions and internal backstabbing are not without foundation. Kenya’s coalitions are graveyards of alliance goodwill and promises. After surrender of their machinery, political kingpins have usually woken up to the rude realization that the promises on which the surrender hinged have evaporated. Ruto discovers that Uhuru Kenyatta does not want to talk to him anymore. And Gachagua discovers that Ruto wants to impeach him.

Kalonzo is shocked that Kibaki will not support his presidential bid, and Raila finds that Kibaki will not make him Prime Minister. Kibaki does not give Raila half of the government, or even the Ministries that he promised. People have been stabbed not just in the back, but straight in the chest, like Julius Caesar. They are afraid to blink. The would-be presidential candidate does not want to spend five years as someone’s number two, being mistreated by the boss; with a supporting cast of under-schooled tribal surrogates in State House, and more in Harambee House.

A historic mistake is accordingly maturing in the Opposition workshop. People who should know better are behaving as if the election will use its own energy to force unity upon them. Even then, the thinking in each individual seems to be, “When the time comes, everyone will see that I am the best.”

The bad news for Opposition chiefs is that they have entered the homestretch. Here, the cost of division is greater than the cost of unity. Put differently, they have entered the danger zone. They probably will not become less ambitious, each; indeed they probably need not become less ambitious. For politics is about ambition.

But, even if ambition is the oxygen of politics, can they find a formula that makes ambition and surrender compatible? Can they place their hand on something other than another “gentleman’s” agreement, that will be betrayed, yet again? Last year, Matiang’i proposed “a scientific, transparent, inclusive and objective method.”

He did not elaborate. But does this seem to make sense, even by a broad brush approach? Instead of each shouting about being the best, the oldest, the most tribal, or the richest, they probably need to agree on national polling. In this, they may want to consider proper national geographical spread; youth appeal; organisational capacity; fundraising capacity; integrity and credibility; ability to build a national coalition; and second choice acceptability.

Second choice acceptability is particularly important. It pertains to the voter’s second option, in the event that their person does not become the flag bearer. Who, next, would they vote for? Most of the time that becomes the best person to carry the flag.

It has been all well to hear Opposition leaders saying that they are fighting for Kenya. The test of this pudding is in their preparedness to surrender the presidency, in order to send Ruto home. What matters may ultimately not be political popularity, but political maturity. It is possible to imagine, in the absence of this maturity, each one of the kingpins being rueful in August next year, chastising themselves with the thought, “We should have united!”

Another one may be found mulling over the thought, “If only we had settled this thing eight months earlier!” And yet someone else will be turning in bed at night, thinking, “I told them so, but they would never agree.” The big irony is that if this comes to pass, they will each be seeing very clearly what they can see about others, but not about themselves.

Yes, these people are probably each right about others. But they are collectively wrong about themselves. That is how their opportunity to beat Ruto is likely to disappear. If they do not beat him squarely in the first round, he will have a better chance to buy some of them in a run-off, or even to manipulate the repeat poll in his favour. With each day that passes, the Opposition hardens yesterday’s possibility into tomorrow’s impossibility.

Perhaps it is too soon to write them off. In 2002, Kenya produced a winning united Opposition candidate in injury time. It took Raila Odinga’s courage to go against the grain, by asking the question in Uhuru Park, “But this Mwai Kibaki, does he not fit the bill? Si anatosha?”

In the balance, Raila Odinga was a Kenyan nationalist and patriot. If the critical question for the Opposition shifts from whom among them deserves to be the President, to “Do we really want to win?” then it will only take one patriot to proclaim, “Anatosha!”

Meanwhile, if they cannot subordinate personal ambition for one election, Kenyans will be wondering why they should be trusted to subordinate ambition to country, once in office. That is perhaps the most devastating question that should be put to the Opposition kings now. And perhaps, just perhaps, the Kenyan Media should arrange a presidential debate for Opposition chiefs.

It is probably time they were put on a common carpet, to tell the country what they really are about, and whether they can demonstrate that the country comes first. One question they must each answer is this, “Name the one person you would step down for.” Vague answers like “anyone else” should be rejected, for there is nobody called “anyone else.”