A Kikuyu Presidency in the Near Future will be Difficult: Part 1
After Kenyatta and Kibaki, electing another Kikuyu president will be a tall order
The stealing of Raila’s Odinga’s Presidency had nothing to do with the Kikuyu worker, peasant, student or millions of Kikuyu youths suffering the ravages of unemployment, poverty, disease and deprivation like millions of other Kenyans. Poor Kikuyus in Mathare, Kibera, Korogocho and other slums across the country suffer alongside other ethnic groups. The Luo, the Luhya, the Kalenjin, the Masaai, the Mji Kenda, Pokomo, Kisii, Giriama, Turgen and members of other ethnic groups are also found in Mathare, Kibera, Kariobangi and other slums where life is basically hell on earth. Both Luos and Kikuyus in Mathare did not move to better houses because Raila and Kibaki had become buddies. For this reason, it is in the interest of all Kenyans that a government that can deliver and transform our country comes to power.
The stealing of Raila’s Presidency had everything to do with the tiny members of the thieving Kikuyu ruling class that surrounded Kibaki and that appears to have masterminded election rigging through ECK so that Kibaki, a member of their rich club, could cling onto power to enable this class to continue looting and plundering the resources of Kenya in collaboration with Western Imperialism that has been supporting every corrupt ruling class in Kenya since the Colonial Revolution in 1963. It has to be emphasized that the ordinary Kikuyu who paid the ultimate human price for the stealing of Raila Odinga’s Presidency had nothing to do with election rigging.
It is an accepted fact in Kenya that the ethnic group whose member holds the Presidency is of significance to both that ethnic group and other ethnic groups. Given a choice, every ethnic group in Kenya would like “one of their own” to reign at State House because of the illusion that such a power takeover would enable the “winning tribe” to have more access to State resources, which could be translated into development projects in specific areas, employment on ethnic grounds and an assortment of other “benefits”. Since flag independence in 1963, Kenya has been ruled by members of two ethnic groups: the Kikuyu and the Kalenjin. The first President, Jomo Kenyatta, was a Kikuyu; the second President, Daniel arap Moi, was a Kalenjin; the third President, Mwai Kibaki, was a Kikuyu; and after Kibaki stole Raila’s Presidency, the Kikuyu have produced a new President.
The situation when it comes to the Kikuyu in relation to Kenya’s Presidency is unique because a Kikuyu has been in power on two separate occasions prior to December 2007. After Moi, a Kalenjin, left the scene in December 2002, Moi had been in power for a total of twenty-four years. Kenyatta, a Kikuyu, held office for fifteen years while by the time the December 2007 elections came around, Kibaki, another Kikuyu, had held power for five years.
If Kibaki finishes his term after stealing Raila’s Presidency, he shall have been in power for ten years and this will bring the total number of years a Kikuyu has held power to twenty-five years in the forty-nine years of independent Kenya. This will mean that in these forty-nine years, the country’s Presidency shall have been held by two ethnic groups out of forty-two. Kenya is driven by ethnic politics and when Raila Odinga won elections in December 2007, the ethnic element played a big role. In as much as Kenyans voted for Raila as President, the political statement that Kenyan voters were making was that they did not want another Kikuyu at State House after Kibaki ran down the country with a clique of selected Kikuyu sycophants calling themselves Mount Kenya Mafia.
Kikuyu ruling class stole election because of fear of losing stolen wealth
According to my analysis, the stealing of Raila’s Presidency by the Kikuyu ruling class through ECK has postponed the possibility of another Kikuyu rising to the Presidency for an indefinite period of time. The difficulty of another Kikuyu coming to power if Raila could have been sworn in as President of Kenya may have been a powerful motive behind the rigging of elections because the Kikuyu ruling class understood that they were bound to lose everything they had stolen together with all that comes with their man sitting at State House. Why will it be difficult for another Kikuyu to come to power in the near future, assuming that future elections will be free and fair?
There is no debate that the Kikuyu are the largest ethnic group in Kenya. However, the Kikuyu vote alone is not enough to get a Kikuyu elected President and this fact has been demonstrated on four separate occasions in Kenya. The first time was in the December 1997 election when Kibaki presented himself as a candidate in the Presidential election alongside Raila Odinga and the late Kijana Wamalwa. This election was probably the most ethnic-based in terms of voting blocks because Kikuyus voted for Kibaki, Luos voted for Raila and Luhyas voted for Wamalwa. These are the three major ethnic groups in Kenya followed by the Kalenjin who voted for Moi. The impossibility of a Kikuyu rising to the Presidency in the next two to three elections (or even more) also applies to future Presidential candidates from any ethnic group as long as these candidates fail to form an inter-ethnic alliance encompassing the major ethnic groups in Kenya.
Raila was not elected in 1997 because the Luo vote alone was not enough and the same case applied to Wamalwa who could not ride to State House because the Luhya vote was short of the majority. After all major ethnic groups voted for their son, Moi had to rig elections to emerge as the winner because there is no way he could have commanded the majority of votes after the three major ethnic groups failed to vote for him. However, Moi had an easy time rigging elections because the votes were not only split into different blocks but he also had firm control of the State machine and this gave him a big advantage.
There was no post-election violence after Moi rigged the vote because none of the Presidential candidates commanded the support of the majority of ethnic groups while the votes were manipulated in a way that a clear winner who could claim to have defeated Moi did not emerge. Although the Kikuyu voted for Kibaki, the old man failed to make it to State House. Raila joined Moi after the 1997 elections because he was hoping to combine the Luo and Kalenjin vote in December 2002 and probably woo the Luhya vote in order to become President of Kenya; however, Moi derailed this strategy with the Uhuru project, which has been tackled elsewhere in this book.
The second time when proof emerged that the Kikuyu vote alone could not catapult a Kikuyu to State House was in December 2002 when Kibaki won the election leading to his installation as President. While he got almost all the Kikuyu votes, almost every major ethnic group in Kenya supported Kibaki because there was a huge and powerful anti-Moi wave across Kenya that swept Kibaki to power. Once he was betrayed by Moi through the Uhuru project, Raila mobilized the Luo to vote for Kibaki and Luos responded because they hoped that Raila would be rewarded with the post of Prime Minister. Wamalwa brought in the Luhya vote and this was easy because Wamalwa was destined to become Vice president. Then, Najib Balala roped in the coastal vote. A combination of Luo-Kikuyu-Luhya vote is almost impossible to beat unless the election is rigged. In 2002, millions of Kikuyus did not believe that Uhuru Kenyatta, a Kikuyu, would win under Moi and they dumped him to vote for Kibaki who was in a much better position of winning the election because he had a wider backing encompassing the big tribes in Kenya. If the Luos and the Luhyas refused to vote for Kibaki, he could not have become President of Kenya after the December 2002 election. This is an accepted fact in Kenya.
Chapter Twenty Four: Raila Odinga’s Stolen Presidency and the Future of Kenya (pgs 401-407)
A Kikuyu Presidency in the Near Future will be Difficult: Part 2
“National bitterness” against Kikuyu ruling class has not evaporated
Ideological politics could change ethnic equations
The third time it became clear that the Kikuyu vote alone could not steer a Kikuyu to State House was during the November 2005 Referendum on a new Constitution. The arrogant Kikuyu ruling class that had formed itself into a Mafia cartel and barricaded Kibaki, had mutilated the Bomas Draft of the Constitution, which was designed to reduce Presidential powers and also sought to create the post of Prime Minister as part of checking excessive powers of the President. For the Kikuyus who surrounded Kibaki, it was the powers of Kibaki that were under threat and all resistance to the Bomas draft of the Constitution was inspired by the urgency of ensuring that the powers of the Presidency was not tampered with because in their tiny brains, only a Kikuyu was fit to occupy State House.
It is this mutilated Constitution that was brought before Kenyans to either approve or reject. This infamous draft of the Constitution was probably the most overt project of the Kikuyu ruling class which was planning to help Kibaki retain the Presidency in December 2007. Although millions of Kikuyus were mobilized by the Mount Kenya Mafia to vote in favour of the “Mongrel Constitution,” it was defeated because almost all other ethnic groups understood the Kikuyu agenda with the mutilated draft. When the votes were counted after the Referendum, the agenda of the Kikuyu ruling class was rejected, thereby proving that the Kikuyu alone cannot vote and win any national contest despite their numerical advantage as the largest ethnic group in Kenya.
Despite these clear signals that Kenya does not belong to the Kikuyu, members of the House of Mumbi still proceeded to believe that Kibaki could win the December 2007 election using the Kikuyu vote alone. The final evidence that Kenya belongs to Kenyans came on December 27, 2007, when Kibaki failed to make it once again. In the eyes of ODM supporters, the fact that Raila won the Presidential election is almost “beyond challenge.” The reason why Kenya has a coalition government today is because the main thief has been incorporated into government together with his corrupt allies because Imperialism wants peace in Kenya. Peace is good for the Kenyan people as well but the price is injustice and a wrong candidate sitting as President. This is not good for democracy in Kenya and the world.
Another Kikuyu President will be difficult to produce in the near future because the “national bitterness” against the Kikuyu ruling class has not yet evaporated and will not evaporate easily in Kenya unless another generation of conscious Kikuyus or a new breed of Kikuyu leaders rise to integrate the Kikuyu community. The ordinary Kikuyu is paying for stupid mistakes of the Kikuyu ruling class because of mass psychology that was inculcated into the Kikuyu masses that Kenya belongs to them. Sheer ignorance and apathy of Kikuyu peasants together with low political consciousness of a huge segment of the Kikuyu worker is responsible for cementing into Kikuyu minds that Kenya can only be led by a Kikuyu. In the end, it was the same Kikuyu peasant who had settled with children in the Rift Valley who paid the price of election rigging with life and blood. In almost all urban areas in Kenya, the Kikuyu petit bourgeoisie who were driven out of economic bases they had operated on for decades paid the economic price because of the stupidity of the Kikuyu ruling class that masterminded the election rigging.
If I might give a perspective, what will happen in the next election is that if he is still alive, Raila Odinga will, most likely, stand for President with one of the highest possibilities of being elected. If he is not alive, the President will not come from Kikuyu land because the ethnic voting pattern in Kenya shall not have changed dramatically to return a Kikuyu to State House. My thesis is that a Kikuyu will only become President after three or more ethnic groups have had their kin at State House.
Fear of Kikuyu power brokers never handing over power after losing it
To paraphrase the statement, the key provinces especially Nyanza, Western and Coast, will have to produce a President if another Kikuyu is to occupy State House and this is on the lighter scale of provinces. That is, Kenyans may have to prepare for a non-Kikuyu President for the next fifteen to twenty years (or even more) unless drastic changes take place at the political level. Such a change may be in the form of introduction of ideological politics in the country that might kill the ethnic orientation of Kenyan politics to enable Kenyans to view themselves as Kenyans and not different ethnic groups, especially at the political level. Kenyans have been voting for individuals and not ideas because local politicians have been ideologically bankrupt. Within the framework of the democratic process, Kenya has been going through ethnic politics but as more and more ethnic groups seize power with no fundamental transformation of people’s lives, the focus on ethnic politics will also begin to change, especially if ideological parties begin to emerge to demonstrate and convince Kenyans that there is an alternative to ethnic politics. This is not likely to happen in the next five years.
If Kibaki had accepted defeat and handed over power peacefully, the situation could have been different and Kenya could have been in a better position to move forward in the fight against tribalism. The rigging of the election by ECK on behalf of Kibaki and his PNU gang has inflicted, in the consciousness of millions of Kenyans, the fear that handing over the Presidency to another Kikuyu may be a dangerous bet because the image left behind after the stealing of Raila’s Presidency is that a Kikuyu will never hand over power so why should a Kikuyu be voted in as President when the nation has witnessed what happened after Kibaki stole Raila’s Presidency through ECK?
My perspective is that it will take another Kikuyu generation (or many generations) to repair the psychological damage that Kibaki inflicted on Kenyans by rigging elections. Kenyans still remember how the Kenyatta government killed Tom Mboya, Argwings Kodhek, JM Kariuki and other veterans of the Colonial Revolution or how Moi’s government assassinated Dr. Robert Ouko and others who lost their lives in Moi’s torture chambers. It will never pass that as a result of rigging an election for the benefit of Kibaki’, a Kikuyu, an estimated 1,500 Kenyans lost their lives while 350,000 others became internal refugees. Under the circumstances, which Kenyan from another ethnic group will vote for a Kikuyu President in the near future, especially if the ethnic arithmetic in politics persist?
The situation is worsened by the fact that after they were caught red-handed stealing Raila’s Presidency, the Kikuyu ruling class still refused to accept that they had stolen the Presidency. Instead, they continued to display the kind of arrogance that put millions of Kenyans to sleep, so which Kenyan in his or her right state of mind will vote for another Kikuyu to take over power when a corrupt ruling class from this ethnic group has shown the country and the world what a Kikuyu ruling class is made of, arrogance, arrogance and more arrogance after stealing someone else’s property?
The myth that “Kenya belongs to the Kikuyu” must be wiped out
This is not a blanket condemnation of the Kikuyu community. Rather, it is an observation of the behaviour of the tiny Kikuyu ruling class that sent police to execute Kenyans who were protesting the stealing of Raila’s Presidency. How dirty and bloody could it have gotten? Kenyans watched with shock and awe as suspected Kikuyu police opened fire on innocent civilians exercising their freedom of association in the streets of Kisumu, Nairobi, Mombasa, Eldoret, Kakamega and other parts of the country in the name of defending a stolen Presidency that was quickly followed by a secret swearing in of a septuagenarian Kikuyu President who was ripe for retirement. Instead of calling it a day at his Othaya home in Nyeri as millions of Kenyans had expected, Kibaki shamelessly crept back to State House after Kenyans had dispatched him to Othaya.
Who will vote for another Kikuyu President in the next election after innocent women and children were massacred and their bodies dumped at the mortuaries across the country in the name of defending a stolen Presidency?
A better way forward is for conscious leaders from the Kikuyu ethnic group to utilize the stealing of Raila Odinga’s Presidency by the Kikuyu ruling class that surrounded Kibaki to heal the ethnic wounds that were created, not with the message of reconciliation alone but with a strong message of “one Kenya, one people, one destiny, one black Africa.” As Mr. Martin Ngatia, a former Kenyan exile, said, the myth that Kenya belongs to Kikuyus must be wiped out while the myth that the country’s leadership has to come from the “House of Mumbi” must also be vanquished because Kenyans are one people and the country’s leadership should go to the best candidate elected by the Kenyan people regardless of his or her ethnic origin.
The Kikuyu community needs to be re-integrated into the Kenyan society following stupid blunders that were made by a tiny clique of Kikuyu wealth grabbers who were in control of government. A blanket condemnation of millions of Kikuyus who suffered alongside other Kenyans is naive because Kikuyus are among those who paid the price following the stealing of Raila’s Presidency by thieves working for Kibaki and PNU. Kikuyus were crippled, maimed, killed and chased out of their homes because ECK had stolen the vote on behalf of a Kikuyu whom Kenyans had sent packing. That having been said, any Kikuyu campaigning for the 2012 Presidency is out of tune with local politics.
Chapter Twenty Four: Raila Odinga’s Stolen Presidency and the Future of Kenya (pgs 401-407)
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