{UAH} THE LATEST KENYAN NEWS: RAILA'S RETURN HAS REUNITED JUBILEE

http://www.kenyauptodate.blogspot.com/2014/06/railas-return-has-reunited-jubilee.html?m=1

RAILA'S RETURN HAS REUNITED JUBILEE

Older Kenyans on both sides of the political divide who can recall the original version are dreading the prospect of a remake of an epic Kenyatta-at-State-House versus Odinga-in-the-political-street clash

While Raila Odinga was away, the ruling Jubilee coalition of President Uhuru Kenyatta's TNA and Deputy President William Ruto's URP gave every indication of being a marriage of convenience headed straight south.

The Jubilee divorce rumbles included attempts to impeach two governors and the most powerful Cabinet minister. Things got so bad that hate leaflets were distributed in a part of the Rift Valley, purporting to be from Kalenjins and addressed to Kikuyus, giving the latter community an ultimatum to leave the region, or else.

This mad development was remarkable for two reasons – it was the first time in six years that such pamphleteering was being witnessed and the post-election violence Kenyan cases at the International Criminal Court are still on, increasingly legless as the prosecution appears to be at this stage.

However, beginning on the late afternoon of May 31, when Raila jetted back into the country from Dubai after a two-and-a-half-month sojourn in the US, spent mostly at the African Presidential Centre of Boston University, Jubilee hit the brakes on its slide southwards as a ruling coalition.

That Raila was back in full force was not in doubt – at once the polariser of Kenya politics, the superglue of the opposition and the Teflon man of the political class.

Impeccable sources indicate that the Presidency and its handlers, particularly inside State House, was so alarmed by the return and the content of the messages of a Raila who had clearly been rebooted by experts in the US, that President Uhuru was advised to make as many appearances as possible outside his political comfort zones of the Mt Kenya region.

The "Tyranny of Numbers" factor that Uhuru and Ruto rode on in the 2013 Presidential campaign suddenly seemed like a liability in the face of the message that Raila had unleashed at his "Baba While You Were Away" homecoming rally at Uhuru Park, Nairobi.

The core message that Raila came back with was that 60 per cent of the country would no longer accept being shut out of the feast of the fruits of power for a complete Presidential election cycle.

Raila demanded an extraordinary national dialogue on a number of burning national issues that happen to be of concern to Kenyans just now. Raila's invitation to national dialogue was delivered with a snarl, not a smile, with a demand for Jubilee's automatic acquiescence, on pain of being "sent packing". Talk of mass action suddenly filled the political air, for the first time since such talk prefaced the PEV at the end of 2007.

The Uhuru Administration put two-and-two together and got remarkable results. Raila is now seriously viewed at the top inside Jubilee as being a man on a mission: nothing less than mass action calibrated to culminate in regime change, with the complete connivance of the West.

Some of the company Raila has kept since his return has only served to alarm the national security edifice and the people around the President. He has visited former Mungiki leader Maina Njenga, at the latter's home in Karen, accompanied by Prof Peter Anyang' Nyong'o.

Raila also went to Eastleigh, Nairobi, urbanite epicenter of the Somali community in Kenya, hosting both Kenyan Somalis and Somali Somalis. On Tuesday afternoon, Raila flew to the Coast to attend the same-day burial of Sheikh Mohammed Idris, chair of the Council of Imams and Preachers of Kenya, murdered by drive-by assassins early that morning, an attack that added to the climate of fear nationwide.

The news that Raila will hold the second in a series of 13 planned mammoth rallies to drive the demand for dialogue home in Mombasa's Tononoka Grounds was met with news that the President had cancelled a trip to a regional leaders' summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where he was to wear his twin hats of East African Community and Inter-Governmental Authority on Development chairman.

Two measures of the seriousness with which the regime views the Tononoka rally are to be found in the fact that Njenga, at Raila's express request, has postponed the funerals of his widow and nephew, who were murdered in the attack on his two-car convoy in late May, so that he and his supporters can attend the meeting.

In the corridors of power and security strategy boardrooms, this is read as "Mungiki will be at Tononoka in force – at Raila's invite". The Mombasa rally and another one planned for Garissa are also read as part-Islamic radicalisation jamborees where the system will take major flak for the way it has handled its counter-terrorism strategy, with accusations of unfairly, undemocratically and corruptly profiling the Somali community.

The Cord national dialogue rallies are giving the widest berth to Uhuru's Mt Kenya region, but targeting Ruto's Eldoret backyard, in a move quickly interpreted as a revival of Raila's 41-against-1 strategy of 2004-2007, which the Kikuyu regard as the recipe for the PEV.

Raila's rubbing shoulders with both the Mungiki and radical Islamic factors is being viewed very dimly indeed in top circles, and there is talk deep inside the Presidency to the effect that another Kenyatta is simply not going to allow another Odinga "to endanger national unity and peace generally".

Older Kenyans on both sides of the political divide who can recall the original version are dreading the prospect of a remake of an epic Kenyatta-at-State-House versus Odinga-in-the-political-street clash.

Mistakes and bad ideas are being made on both sides of the unfolding confrontation: as the Star editorialised at midweek, there was no call for the President to cancel his IGAD Summit invitation apparently on the miscalculation that the situation in Kenya is too delicate for him to leave the country at this time.

By the same token, there are those in Kikuyuland who feel that Raila's renewed flirtation with Njenga, particularly dragging Prof Nyong'o along with him, is in extremely bad taste. Why?

Kenyan movie superstar Lupita Nyong'o's Dad has no business sharing a sofa, or any other proximity, with a man whose cultic following elevates FGM to the status of a sacrament.

Many more miscalculations and misunderstandings lie ahead for Kenya in the latest edition of a Kenyatta versus Odinga political slugfest. And more's the pity.

THE LATEST KENYAN NEWS: RAILA'S RETURN HAS REUNITED JUBILEE

http://www.kenyauptodate.blogspot.com/2014/06/railas-return-has-reunited-jubilee.html?m=1

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