[UAH] Standard Digital News - Kenya : Why Musalia Mudavadi led Amani Coalition failed in last polls
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By Oscar Obonyo
NAIROBI, KENYA: If the goal was to aid Jubilee candidate Uhuru Kenyatta win the presidency, the Musalia Mudavadi camp scored big in designing a deceptive plot. But if it had a close eye on State House, the plot flopped from the word go.
Mudavadi's dramatic exit from the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) to little known United Democratic Forum (UDF) in May last year, was received with excitement and grandeur. But the crowd, which included MPs allied to President Kenyatta and Deputy President William Ruto, soon deserted the former Deputy Prime Minister
One of the party's key backers, Mukurwe-ini MPKabando wa Kabando unleashed the first salvo: "UDF has no grassroots support, it is limping, staggering, stammering and has become an ethnic trumpet!"
It does not matter after "welcoming" Mudavadi to the party, Kabando himself retreated to what many consider his own "tribal party". And this is where the rains began beating Mudavadi– the stark reality that the elections were going to be fought and won on the tribal platform.
Wrong choice
UDF officials, Mudavadi's political allies and supporters, point to the wrong choice of party, largely regarded as owned by Central Kenya or State House operatives. The choice of a running mate, Mr Jeremiah Kioni, from the same region only perpetuated the propaganda that Mudavadi was in political bed with Uhuru and State House.
"A running mate is supposed to help boost the presidential campaign through numbers. But how was my brother (Kioni) going to deliver anything when a senior member of his community (Uhuru) was gunning for the presidency as well? We honestly lost this election before it even started," says former Housing minister Soita Shitanda.
Another Mudavadi ally, former Shinyalu MP Justus Kizito concedes the Mudavadi campaign collapsed because of propaganda. "The association with Uhuru through the disowned MoU handed our ODM rivals in Western a propaganda weapon to the effect that 'a vote for Mudavadi is a vote to Uhuru'. And we never recovered from this," he says.
But even before hitting the campaign trail, the Mudavadi team had myriad internal boardroom wars. Initially invited to the party with open arms as presidential candidate, once in, the ball game drastically changed. The so-called party owners made it difficult for Mudavadi to operate.
"The party's old officials resisted us completely including proposed structural changes in the party's leadership. Remember when the DPM left ODM, he did so with many MPs and party officials. And so they waited for long to be accommodated within UDF until they gave up and went back out of frustration," recounts Kibisu Kabatesi, spokesman of the former DPM.
The campaign secretariat is also said to have acted more like a diplomatic mission than a campaign nerve centre. Instead of being pro-active as the fulcrum of strategy, the secretariat was reportedly reduced to booking appointments for the presidential candidate and drawing a programme of his engagements. This led to the replacement of Head of Presidential Campaign secretariat, former Ambassador Boaz Mbaya.
Overall, Shitanda claims the secretariat was weak and full of selfish individuals only interested in benefiting themselves.
This, he adds, is demonstrated by the fact all the UDF top national officials listed themselves for nomination to the Senate and National Assembly. But for the poor performance, the party only managed one slot in the latter House, which went to party Chairman, Hassan Osman.
Separately, as the elections drew near the contest narrowed down to a two-horse race between the Coalition for Reform and Democracy's (CORD) candidate, Raila Odinga and Jubilee's Uhuru Kenyatta. Khalid Njiraini, one of Mudavadi's chief campaigners, says the development negatively affected their candidate, particularly in his Western backyard.
Logistical nightmare
With dwindling opportunity, Mudavadi's backers and sponsors equally thinned. This posed a major financial and logistical nightmare.
"Ordinarily, individuals and firms that fund political parties across the world want to put their money where there is realistic hope. And when you are deprived of cash, it becomes very challenging to run a campaign. But Mudavadi stretched on by funding the campaigns single-handedly," concedes Kabatesi.
"I never saw any campaign money myself. And if there was indeed any sponsor, then he must have been very mean," reacts Shitanda, who unsuccessfully vied for Governor of Kakamega County on New Ford-Kenya party, after failing to secure the UDF ticket.
But noting no presidential campaign was hitch-free, one of the UDF architects, former assistant minister Ndiritu Muriithi, maintains the Mudavadi campaign was fairly successful.
"Viewing it from the perspective of whether or not our candidate made it to State House is being narrow minded. One must look at the bigger picture, which is the total democratic benefits of Mudavadi's candidature," says Muriithi.
He says the UDF candidate injected soberness in the campaigns including a host of party policies the Government will now implement, courtesy of a post-poll pact with Jubilee. Kenyans, observes Muriithi, have a lot to learn and benefit from the Mudavadi campaign.
In his backyard, though, supporters are still fuming at how Mudavadi allegedly bungled his own campaign. They accuse him of brushing off the challenge from ODM and failing to offer substantial financial support to UDF candidates.
The problem with Mudavadi, argues Khalid who vied for the Luanda parliamentary seat, is that he is too embarrassed of being labelled a Luhya leader and instead wants to be recognised as a national leader.
"He absolutely took his political backyard for granted by ignoring his strongest support base, instead choosing to run a national campaign," says Khalid.
Separately, Shitanda and Kizito accuse Kakamega County Senator Bonny Khalwale of "misleading Mudavadi" and selfishly approaching the campaign as a lone-ranger. Dr Khalwale, they claim, was merely interested on riding on Mudavadi's back to get to the Senate.
"I should be given credit, and not condemned, for giving him the highest number of votes, because it is in my County of Kakamega that Mudavadi registered the highest number of voters," reacts Khalwale.
The Senator instead attributes UDF's poor showing to the assumption that the Luhya would vote for him, failing to directly bond with voters by talking at them through rallies instead and mismanaging the UDF primaries.
When he first joined elective politics in 1988, following the death of his father Moses Budamba Mudavadi, then an influential Cabinet minister in retired President Moi Government, the junior Mudavadi easily romped to Parliament.
Then the running call among locals during the Sabatia Constituency by-election was "indovo ituli, yindi imelaho (where a weed has been plucked from, another grows at the same spot)".
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