SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2013

ICC proceedings: Who are Ruto's secret accusers?

In Summary

  • Because of increasing political apathy in all liberal — especially Western — systems, most parties find it increasingly difficult to win a majority constitutionally large enough to enable them to form governments single-handedly.
By Philip Ochieng
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The Germans have donated to mankind a few terms by which we can describe Kenya's present politics. How, for instance, are we to understand the charge that certain Jubilee potentates are the ones behind the Deputy President's unfolding political woes?

That Jubilee itself is not conceivable without William Ruto is part of the answer. It is a manifestation of Realpolitik, the German word for political realism.

Realpolitik is the practice of adopting only such programmes as can deploy the momentary realities to yield real political benefits.

The reality in all countries is that a single party cannot easily win the legislative majority required for it to rule alone. In Kenya, where the fight is not even ideological — but purely tribal — this is a painful reality.

To base all your political programmes on such reality is what is called Realpolitik. In short, Realpolitik is the policy of realism.

Realpolitik is consciousness of the increasing reality that, if you try to go it alone — you will always find it well-nigh impossible to win the parliamentary number required for you to form a government. As all observers know, such rigidity is the perennial bane of Kenya's never-say-die Martha Karua.

Because of increasing political apathy in all liberal — especially Western — systems, most parties find it increasingly difficult to win a majority constitutionally large enough to enable them to form governments single-handedly.

Thus even the party which emerges with the largest legislative presence must sue for a coalition with smaller parties.

The German labour movement had another word for it. Bundnispolitik was the policy by which a party left its door perpetually open for negotiations with other parties to form a pre-election front or a post-election administration. That is an important way of looking at Kenya's ruling Jubilee as well as opposition Cord.

In Western Europe — where class consciousness has long done most ethnic admixtures to death — ideological semblance is what governs party coalitions.

Thus the "Historic Compromise" which Julio Androetti once hoped for between Italy's Eurocommunists and market parties must be dismissed as a pipedream.

But in Africa, ideology-lessness and numerical ethnic strength are the "ideological" community of interests that can bring two parties together.

They were what enabled Mr Ruto's party to form a winning coalition with another party into Jubilee. But, as historians of German politics can remember, every such coalition secretes a rat.

The French call him an agent provocateur. He is the perennial reminder of a political controversy in 19th-century Germany occasioned by what critics dismissed as a "Lassallean monolith"— the claim that the entire German working class was a homogeneity without any specificities that might require specifically different policies.

There is absolutely no such homogeneity either in Jubilee or in Cord. The two anti-national magnets that pull individuals towards the one or the other coalition are the individual's own self-seeking and the hope that it is only through the tribe that the individual can achieve those self-interests.

That is why such coalitions are also full to overflowing with Rawson Macharias. Many Kenyans may never have heard of the person who, in the 1950s, pocketed 30 pieces of silver from the colonial regime to bear false witness against Jomo Kenyatta and other nationalists associated — rightly or wrongly — with Mau Mau.

But both the ruling Jubilee and the opposition Cord are full to the brim of agents provocateurs, either self-appointed or sent in by rival parties, whose only purpose is to swell their pockets by pretending to know a terrible thing or two about certain personalities and selling the "knowledge" to the other side.

Mr Raila Odinga already knows many such peddlers of political poison. I will be surprised if Mr Ruto does not know quite a few of them. But it wouldn't surprise me if it is discovered that Jubilee potentates – not Mr Odinga – are Mr Ruto's chief secret accusers in The Hague.

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