The role of Kalonzo Musyoka in PNU’s election rigging strategy: Part 1
I wish to argue that the key to understanding the genesis of election rigging in Kenya after the December 2007 polls depends on whether one can appreciate the role Kalonzo Musyoka, Uhuru Kenyatta and former dictator Daniel arap Moi may have played in the whole process after the Referendum because their deft machinations appear to have been completely hidden. By advancing this view, my starting point is that the rigging that took place at KICC was a last minute and desperate option that was largely unplanned, abrupt and that may have been employed with very little prior coordination. The crudity of the tactics (that included some returning officers disappearing from polling stations without reporting the results) was a result of massive failure of PNU’s central rigging strategy, which was based on the manipulation of the voter’s register, especially in PNU strongholds, in addition to stuffing extra ballots in ballot boxes, especially in Central Province, to prop up Kibaki’s votes.
In the process of the December 2007 elections, incidences involving the stuffing of extra ballot papers were reported and, in Kamukunji Constituency in Nairobi, this rigging method led to nullification of the results because it was too obvious. If extra ballot papers were actually intercepted and reported in newspapers and TV news channels on their way to the polling stations, it means that they existed and, by extension, it also means that this method of rigging was part of the PNU rigging plan, which might have failed. Secondly, if extra-marked ballot papers could be stuffed in ballot boxes at Kamukunji and Starehe Constituencies in Nairobi, which were non-PNU strongholds and in favour of PNU candidates, what exactly happened in Central Province where PNU had total control and where many observers were kept at a safe distance in many polling stations?
My theory is that PNU stuffed ballot boxes in their strongholds but this could not hand Kibaki victory thus a quick decision was made by the rigging clique to intervene at KICC as a last resort to prevent Raila Odinga from seizing power in Kenya. This behaviour, according to my theory, should explain the unspeakable crudity with which the rigging was done. Partly, this crudity contributed to open discovery of the rigging through live TV broadcasts and this open theft of the vote is also what might have angered thousands of Kenyans who took to the streets in protest because they saw elections being stolen before their very eyes by the Kikuyu ruling class, which had been defeated at the ballot box by a mass movement. Political actions by Kalonzo, Moi and Uhuru prior to elections appeared as normal developments in Kenya’s daily political life but, in reality, these developments could have been part of a well-planned election-rigging scheme that needs a deeper and more exploratory examination.
Kalonzo’s links with Moi and Uhuru Kenyatta in the conspiracy
Before the Referendum, Kalonzo, Uhuru and Moi were firmly behind ODM, which also built both Kalonzo and Uhuru politically to a level where they could begin to present themselves as Presidential candidates who could in fact give Raila Odinga a run for his money when it came to the post of President of Kenya. After the defeat of the Uhuru Project in December 2002 and before talk about the Referendum, Kalonzo Musyoka (who was pulled into NARC from KANU by Raila Odinga through LDP) was still a non-entity when it came to national politics. My assertion is that without the Referendum, which created ODM, Kalonzo could not have found the courage to present himself as a Presidential candidate in the December 2007 elections because he had no national political clout or mass appeal.
Likewise, Uhuru Kenyatta’s politics had collapsed after the defeat of the “Uhuru Project” that was sponsored by Moi and that saw Raila quit KANU to make the Kibaki Tosha declaration. Before the Referendum and following the humiliation of KANU at the December 2002 election when the Party lost power for the first time since 1963, Uhuru Kenyatta was on his way to political oblivion because KANU was basically dead. It is Uhuru’s entry into ODM that rejuvenated his political career and once again elevated his profile to a level where he could rise to present himself as a Presidential candidate.
The determining factor in the rise of Kalonzo’s national image during and after the Referendum and Uhuru’s political rebirth after the attenuation of KANU was Raila Odinga who alone had the capacity in ODM-Kenya to mobilize support on a national scale and convincingly pose a threat (as a Presidential candidate) to Kibaki’s Presidency at the December 2007 polls.
My view is that it is against this background that the opportunistic political designs of both Kalonzo and Uhuru in ODM-Kenya needs to be viewed. These two politicians knew that they had no chance against Raila on the question of ODM-Kenya’s Presidential candidate and my thesis is that the two were recruited to back PNU’s election scheme, not just because they were vulnerable but because they were both politically weak and available to be used in a dirty political game. Both Kalonzo and Uhuru had big ambitions. But these ambitions could not be supported with realities on the ground, which dictated that they needed much more time to grow up politically before they could mature to begin eying State House.
When he rejoined politics from retirement to begin his anti-ODM-Kenya, anti-Raila crusade after the Referendum, Moi was in a slightly different situation. In the first three years of NARC rule, Moi was largely a quiet man in retirement but after corruption scandals and charges of tribalism started haunting the Kibaki government, Moi began to surface slowly by making several political comments in the media. My view is that the re-entry of Moi into Kenyan politics from retirement was connected to the Kalonzo-Uhuru segment of the conspiracy to prevent Raila from rising to power. Both Kalonzo and Uhuru could not conspire with Kibaki alone because they had no strong links with the Kibaki camp. Moi had hatched the failed Uhuru Project while he is responsible for bringing Kalonzo up politically during his days in power. He was in a much better position to link both Kalonzo and Uhuru to Kibaki because he also had Kibaki’s ear. As a former President who had dealt with the kind of crisis that bedeviled Kibaki’s administration, I wish to argue that Moi formed part of the “Axis of Rigging” that constituted itself to sabotage ODM-Kenya’s bid for power and Raila’s bid for Presidency.
Because of the role Raila had played in Kalonzo’s political rise to stardom and because of Raila’s larger-than-life persona, Kalonzo was, naturally, inclined to breathe freely in a future power structure that excluded Raila Odinga in the pecking order. The same case applied to Uhuru Kenyatta who could not be himself in the presence of Raila Odinga because of the big betrayal that was brought by the Uhuru Project and the failure of the Project as a result of Raila’s political strategies. Moi hated Raila because of both the role Raila played in the defeat of the Uhuru Project and the loss of power by KANU after more than forty-four years in control. This loss was devastating to Moi because it disorientated the former dictator’s ambitions of controlling power through the back door in his retirement via the Uhuru Project, which, he thought, he had meticulously crafted to the last detail. According to my analysis, the entry of Moi in the anti-ODM-Kenya crusade was thus a calculated act that was, most likely, going to work in the future political interest of Kalonzo, Uhuru, Moi and Kibaki’s team that was garnering for a second chance at controlling instruments of power.
Presidential candidacy within ODM-Kenya ahead of 2007 Elections
When Kalonzo announced that he was also in the race for Presidency after the Referendum, the general belief among ODM-Kenya members and supporters alike was that both his candidacy and that of Uhuru were propaganda ploys that would eventually give way to a Raila’s candidacy in a final unity move to remove Kibaki from power. Raila was widely credited for having been responsible for Kibaki’s victory in December 2002 while he was seen to have been the reference figure during the struggle against the mutilated draft of the Bomas Constitution. Over the years, Raila had cultivated a national image in Kenya and these profiles put him much further ahead of his competitors.
However, when Kalonzo began to show signs that he was determined to take Raila head-on and on a serious note, anxiety began to build in ODM-Kenya. When I met Mr. William Atinga (a long-standing contact of Raila who was in Sweden to observe elections on behalf of ODM-Kenya at the time I met him in Stockholm in September 2004), he did admit that Kalonzo was becoming a problem in the fragile movement.
The real tension and suspicions began to take root in ODM-Kenya when Steadman opinion pollsters began to elevate Kalonzo in their dubious polls at the expense of Raila and at a time when even the man in the streets knew that there was no way that Kalonzo could have suddenly become more popular than Raila unless something was seriously wrong with the Steadman polls. There was no dramatic political events or scenarios that could explain the sudden rise of Kalonzo’s popularity in the Steadman polls while at the same time, it was Raila who appeared to have been in control of events in the run up to the Referendum as the opinion polls rolled through the conduits of Kikuyu-controlled media to put Kalonzo ahead of Raila as per Steadman opinion ploys. Instead of Kalonzo playing down the poll results, which were largely criticized by leading Kenyan commentators like Miguna Miguna, Onyango Oloo, Martin Ngatia, Oduor Ong’wen and others as inaccurate, unreliable and dubious, Kalonzo used the poll results to assert himself even further and to introduce complications that were destined to complicate Raila Odinga’s Presidential candidacy, especially on the complicated question of ODM-Kenya’s nomination of Presidential candidate. Suddenly, the method of ODM-Kenya’s nominations, which was expected to be resolved amicably within the Party, became a big issue that even threatened to split the Party. Was Kalonzo part of a ploy by the Kibaki team to undermine Raila’s candidacy or even scuttle it altogether using Steadman, or was his political demeanor at this point in time a matter of political principle?
Before Kalonzo’s acceptance and use of Steadman’s polls to bolster his reputation, it was very difficult to draw any conclusions as to whether Kalonzo had a “hidden agenda” in ODM-Kenya. In a short span, however, Kalonzo’s ego had been so much inflated by the polls that he began to adopt a nonchalant attitude towards the need for internal ODM-Kenya unity that was the key to defeating Kibaki. This is not to posit that Kalonzo had no right to present himself as ODM-Kenya’s Presidential candidate. Other candidates such as William Ruto, Musalia Mudavadi and Najib Balala did so up to the eleventh hour but their political positions and public utterances were not construed by ODM-Kenya supporters to mean that they were threatening the Party’s internal unity or trying to entangle it in any way.
Kalonzo as an opposition figure within ODM-Kenya
On the contrary, their candidacy was viewed as normal within the context of ODM-Kenya’s democratic process, which, nevertheless, had to accord all aspiring Presidential candidates the opportunity to pass through the Party’s set down machinery before they could carry the Party’s flag in the Presidential race. The problem with Kalonzo was that he was the only Presidential candidate who was becoming very antagonistic using the question of the method ODM-Kenya intended to use in nominating its candidate — voting by delegates or voting by acclamation.
The methodology of electing the Party’s Presidential candidate was a simple issue that could have been settled within internal structures of the Party and when Kalonzo converted it into a big issue that the media began to feed on endlessly at the expense of the Party’s unity, eyebrows began to rise as to the real intentions of Kalonzo. The point is that Kalonzo’s demeanor after the Referendum was threatening the unity of ODM-Kenya in the eyes of the supporters instead of giving hope of a final ODM-Kenya unity that could eventually sweep Kibaki and his Mount Kenya Mafia cartel from power.
Although elected on a popular platform for change and transformation, Kibaki’s government had come to represent corruption, tribalism, nepotism, theft of public funds, unfulfilled election promises, deteriorating living conditions, mass starvation of poor Kenyans, mass poverty, political arrogance, opportunism, wealth grabbing, nepotism, political deception, land grabbing, rule by the Mafia, cronyism, dependency on imperialism and other vices, which, in the eyes of millions of Kenyan voters, underlined the need for Kibaki’s ousting from power in December 2007. Under strenuous circumstances that called for an emergency political unity to get rid of Kibaki, any politician in ODM-Kenya who was trying to undermine unity within the Party was openly going against the wishes of the majority of Kenyans who supported ODM-Kenya in order to remove Kibaki and his allies from power. Apparently, Kalonzo did not understand this situation as he slowly transformed himself into an opposition figure within ODM-Kenya. PART TWO…
Raila Odinga’s Stolen Presidency
Chapter Thirteen (excerpts): The Anatomy of the 2007 Election Rigging
RELATED (Excerpts from Stolen Presidency)
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- Who is John “Kimendeero” Michuki?
- Who is Kalonzo Musyoka
- Who is Francis Muthaura?
- Who is Stanley Murage?
- Kenya: The myth of Peace in a Conflict Zone
- A Kikuyu Presidency in the Near Future Will be Difficult: Part 1
- A Kikuyu Presidency in the Near Future will be Difficult: Part 2
- Why Did Us Imperialism Congratulate Kibaki After Raila’s Presidency was Stolen? Part 1
- Why Did Us Imperialism Congratulate Kibaki After Raila’s Presidency was Stolen? Part 2
About the Author
Sally Kosgei: No kind words for Kalonzo, Uhuru
Published on 08/03/2011
By Standard Reporter
When Sally Kosgey met top US envoys she badmouthed the President, Prime Minister, Vice-President, and other Cabinet colleagues in a scale hitherto unreported by Wikileaks about a Kenyan official. Kenya’s former High Commissioner to London, retired President Moi’s last Head of Civil Service and Secretary to Cabinet dismissed Kibaki as a President who did not read Intelligence briefs.
She said Prime Minister Raila Odinga was a strong candidate to succeed Kibaki, but was let down by poor management and organisational skills. To her Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka, with whom she is in New York lobbying the UN to defer Kenya’s cases at The Hague, fears the shadow of Justice Minister, Mutula Kilonzo, who he thinks is out to eclipse him. He dismissed Uhuru Kenyatta as ‘lazy’ and Mutula as a ‘windbag’.
The minister, seen as one with the best command of the working of Government, is also reported to have accused the Director-General of National Intelligence Service as one who had abdicated his responsibility and preoccupied himself with tracking the Orange Democratic Movement.
Snippets of Dr Kosgey’s conversation in 2009 with US Ambassador Michael Ranneberger and Assistant Secretary of State Johnnie Carson, while she was Higher Education minister, were leaked yesterday by the whistleblower.
The leakages of secret US diplomatic cables have shocked governments across the world. The Western Press would likely headline Kosgey’s leaked secrets as ‘Salacious Sally’ or ‘Caught with pants down’.
But in the Kenyan context, where ministers’ private thoughts on his or her bosses and colleagues are inaccessible, these phrases may, however, be treated as scandalous and disrespectful of her status.
But given the way she described them, as told in Ranneberger’s cables, one could also argue she, too, was ‘disrespectful’ to those she talked about to the envoy. However, there are those who may argue her opinions about her Cabinet colleagues may not be off the mark.
But one thing is clear though: once the lid was blown off what she told the Americans through their envoy, the other bigwigs who met Ranneberger and his field officers who work like intelligence chiefs, must be living in the fear what they said to them may be next on the WikiLeaks pipeline.
Mr Carson, too, is a former diplomat, who served the US in Kenya under President Moi, when Kosgei was a top State official. When the WikiLeaks saga broke it was he who called Kibaki and Raila to apologise over the unsavoury reports he said they were expected to get from US missions.
Kosgei’s fate follows that of Kalonzo who was reported by the envoy as claiming the President was literally sleeping on the job, with the exclamation this could have been because of the drugs “they were giving him”.
He also, the cables reported, sought former US President George Bush’s hand in asking Kibaki to step aside for him on health grounds. The exit would have allowed Kalonzo to ‘inherit’ the Kikuyu vote, which Kibaki commands. The official position of the Government on the cables is that they are hearsay, unreliable, and unbelievable. Kalonzo dismissed the cables on his meeting with Ranneberger as driven by
“Wild imagination”.
National security
Intelligence briefs are built on issues NSIS believes the President ought to know because of their bearing on national security. The Director-General, who advises the Head of State on national security, usually hands the briefs to the President, daily.
They also contain secretly intercepted information that may be useful to the President in the running of Government. She described NSIS as led by a man (Gichangi) with no energy, and who was busy picking up reports of emerging popular discontent and plans to disrupt public rallies with violent protests.
“Gichangi is more interested in collecting information on ODM leaders than issues of national importance,” the cables quote her, as saying. She says Kibaki agreed to reforms in principal, but was held back because he was beholden to the corrupt interests of his inner circle.
Even though she starts by saying she believed Raila truly wanted to achieve the reform agenda, she adds the PM does not have the “discipline” to achieve his desired results.
“Raila has no office structure, no discipline in his life or schedule,” commented the minister, who when she later fell out with PM described the ministerial flag as a rag that clears the way for one in a traffic jam.
The cable says Kosgei quoted PM’s advisor Salim Lone as observing Raila, “has made it this far in politics by the force of his personality.”
She said though Odinga’s advisors were well intentioned, most of them do not have Government experience.
She added Raila was unwilling to sack corrupt deputies, and was then overly focused on protocol issues and ODM inclusion in appointment decisions. Kosgei said Raila often agreed to meet with ministers late at night, when he was tired and unfocused, and named ODM Chief Whip Jakoyo Midiwo, Eldoret North MP, William Ruto and his wife Ida as advisors.
“Kosgei stated that Odinga, despite his flaws, remains the strongest candidate in a crowded field thanks to strong opposition credentials and an accessible personality,” cabled the envoy. On Kalonzo, Kosgei is said to have described him as “a diminishing asset” who continually frets that he could be overshadowed by Mutula. She also referred to Mutula as a ‘windbag’ who does not have the stamina to take on the vested interests of the current regime.
The only politician Kosgei described positively is Gichugu MP Martha Karua, who she says is an ally in reform “who fell into the trap of believing that Kibaki actually sought to reform the Judiciary”.
Kosgei said the alliance blossoming then between Uhuru and Ruto was an “artifact” of Waki Commission. “Ruto, in Kosgei’s view, is working with Uhuru to block key reforms and scuttle the Waki Commission’s call for a local tribunal to investigate post-election violence.
But she expects Ruto will abandon Uhuru if he stumbled or is no longer useful,” reads the cable. She expressed doubt that Kikuyu voters in Central and Kalenjin voters in Rift Valley would be willing to set aside the violence suffered at each others’ hands to form a coalition for the 2012 General Election.
Lacking skills
Kosgei noted that laziness and “a very hands-off approach” to running the Ministry of Finance hinder Uhuru. The minister also describes Internal Security Minister George Saitoti as a politician who lacks skills to run for president.
She also assesses as Deputy Prime Minister Musalia Mudavadi as lacking energy and money to challenge Ruto. Returning to the working relationship of Kibaki and Raila, Kosgei said the two principals have no challenge in reaching agreements on issues, but are incapable of advancing reforms.
She agreed the Head of the Civil Service Francis Muthaura had accumulated inordinate control over Government functions.
Speaking in 2009 while the acrimony over the 2007 disputed presidential election was still fresh, the minister said former Police Commissioner Hussein Ali did them a favour during the violence by cordoning off ODM strongholds. She said Ali never used to take calls from ODM ministers.
Minister Charity Kaluki Ngilu made an interesting political statement (Star, February 20, 2012): “I already have a political party – NARC – and I am not looking for any other political home. Why would anybody approach me? I am not a turn-coat, I am not weak, hollow and a problematic leader who lacks following. I am not an ‘empty’ leader who hopes to reap from the misfortunes of others!”
No good for Kalonzo