{UAH} Surprise! Surprise! Kenya's political parties are becoming less polygamous - Opinion - nation.co.ke

http://www.nation.co.ke/oped/Opinion/-/440808/2200512/-/6014kjz/-/index.html

‎

Surprise! Surprise! Kenya's political parties are becoming less polygamous - Opinion

By Charles Onyango-Obbo
More by this Author

In the past two weeks we were drowned in stories from the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) leadership meeting: "Luo MPs" had broken ranks with ODM chief, former Prime Minister Raila Odinga, we were told.

There was lack of democracy in the party, we read. Key politicians were dropping out of the race for top positions like flies, and so, and so on.

But one got a feeling there was something different that had happened to ODM, other parties, and the political party scene in Kenya in general.

One could sense that there has been a significant development, if one flashed back to the era of the struggle for multiparty democracy in Kenya from the mid-1980s to the return of free party politics in 1991 through to the elections of December 2007.

Since former VP Kalonzo Musyoka broke off from the ODM in 2007 to form ODM-Kenya, leaders like Deputy President William Ruto have "ditched", "jumped ship", or "abandoned" (to use the popular words) ODM to join other parties, but the party itself has not split into say ODM-2013, ODM-New, and some such creatures.

However, ODM is not alone. In fact, for the March 2013 election, there was no significant splinter party that broke off from the major political parties. ODM and ODM-K and others came together and formed the Cord grouping, but they did not individually fracture.

President Kenyatta formally left Kanu, which did not split, but he did not create a new party. He joined the then little-known but existing The National Alliance (TNA). Ruto did not build a new party from scratch. He went into the URP house and took it into the Jubilee coalition with TNA.

Compare that to Ford, the star party of the struggle for the democracy era, which splintered into more parties than you can count on your fingers.

Yes, Nandi MP Alfred Keter and others are complaining that the spoils are not being divided fairly among the parties in the Jubilee government, but so far that has not resulted in the kind of rupture that emerged in then President Mwai Kibaki's Rainbow coalition in its very first year.

Both Jubilee and Cord could still be shaken by splits, for sure, but the point is that we seem to have entered a phase where these happen much later in the day.

So, while 10 years ago people spoke of the "crisis of the party system in Kenya", today there has been some stabilisation.

What has changed? First, unlike other countries in Africa that we shall not shame here, the penalty for being in the opposition in Kenya is very low today, unlike in the days when Kanu ruled.

When the practice of dispossessing opposition leaders and election rivals effectively ended in Kenya in 1997, it meant that someone who seems to have deep pockets like Raila could continue to live a good life. An opposition politician's business in Kenya, if it is well run, can continue to thrive while he is out of power. And perhaps no one illustrates that truth more than former Kanu Total Man Nicholas Biwott.

The need to cross over to the government of the day to secure your business or to be able to make a living and put food on the table in Kenya has dwindled. In fact, my sense is that you might be better off staying outside as the government of the day might call you up to lend it national stature by appearing in a photo with the president or commissioning a project on the 50th anniversary of independence (ask Raila, Kibaki, and Moi).

Secondly, thank — or blame — the 2010 Constitution. The framers of that document succeeded wildly here. The fact that the Cabinet is now a technocratic one, the fact that the President cannot wake up on the wrong side of the bed, fire his deputy, and give the job to an opposition politician he is wooing, and the fact that there is now that meddlesome process of public vetting by Parliament for high office means that even if President Kenyatta threw you a bone, there is no guarantee you will get to chew on it.

The uncertainties of getting the job when you are nominated to it are gone. The possibility of humiliation during public vetting has become too high. There is something seductive about that muddle. It is how nations in Africa stumble towards systems that work.

cobbo@ke.nationmedia.com & Twitter: @cobbo3

Surprise! Surprise! Kenya's political parties are becoming less polygamous - Opinion - nation.co.ke
http://www.nation.co.ke/oped/Opinion/-/440808/2200512/-/6014kjz/-/index.html