What will Nasa do now that it has not already done to change the status quo?

Opposition leader Raila Odinga, joined by his Nasa co-leaders, addresses a media briefing at Okoa Kenya offices in Nairobi on February 1, 2018. PHOTO | SALATON NJAU | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • Nasa sat out the presidential poll claiming that because the Independent the IEBC remained intact, the fix was in.
  • Nasa subsequently rejected the election of President Uhuru Kenyatta and the government as illegitimate and shunned business of parliamentary committees.

Last October, as National Super Alliance (Nasa) announced its disastrous boycott of the court-ordered repeat presidential poll, it declared: “We won the battle for multi-party democracy. We won the battle for a new Constitution. We shall win the battle for a free election.”

Last week came an identical war cry from the National Assembly’s Majority Leader Aden Duale: “We vetted the nominees (for Cabinet Secretaries) without them; we will present the report without them; debate the report without them; and pass or reject the nominees without them.” These are the two visions of Kenya in 2018. The latter belongs to Jubilee Party and boasts “we call the shots here because we are an elected government. Take it or leave it.” The former belongs to the opposition and it says the presidential election was not won fairly and so aluta continua.

Nasa sat out the presidential poll claiming that because the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) remained intact, the fix was in. It subsequently rejected the election of President Uhuru Kenyatta and the government as illegitimate and shunned business of parliamentary committees. Mr Duale’s remarks reinforced the Jubilee’s position that Nasa’s boycott of parliamentary committees shall not hamper the work of government. It was, of course, preceded by Nasa’s threat of mass action, demands for dialogue with government and a new presidential election in August.

NEW ELECTION

Some background information is in order here. When Nasa boycotted the October 26 repeat poll, it followed up with a demand for a new election within 90 days before calling for an interim government to run the country for six months in preparation for a new election. None happened. This demand for a fresh poll next August is significant because the month will mark a year since last year’s General Election in which Nasa was comprehensively beaten, but whose presidential poll result Mr Raila Odinga challenged in the Supreme Court and hence the re-run.

Now, rewind to Saturday, May 31, 2014. Mr Odinga has just returned from a three-month visit to the US and, at a well-attended reception at Uhuru Park, he says: “All that has gone wrong cannot be rectified until both the government and opposition hold a national dialogue on July 7.” His running mate in their failed 2013 presidential bid, Mr Kalonzo Musyoka, chimed in: “It is impossible for 60 per cent of the population to be left out of government. We are talking about an all-inclusive government. The countries that have developed are those that practise true democracy.”

Mr Moses Wetang’ula was a co-principal in the then Coalition for Reforms and Democracy (CORD) which, in 2017, mutated into Nasa. He minced no words: “Kenyans are tired and they are ready to climb every hill to make sure freedom is not an abstract read in books, but is lived and practised.”

DIALOGUE

CORD’s push for dialogue and an inclusive government came to naught as July 7 (Saba Saba), an anniversary for the crusade for political pluralism, came and went uneventfully. That forced CORD to embark on the impactful two-year-long campaign of exposing grand corruption in government.

Pushed to a corner in 2015, government moved to quieten the anti-graft campaign by sacking five cabinet ministers. But it remained and remains in place. So, what will Nasa do that it has not already done or that CORD did not do to change the status quo?

The future of Nasa and of Kenya’s democracy at the moment is predicated on civil disobedience or mass action, dialogue and a presidential election. The only one of the three that is sure to happen is mass action. But will it bring about dialogue and a presidential poll?

The answer is that because the government has ruled out dialogue on elections with Nasa and refused to listen to any calls for talks no matter how well-intentioned, Nasa is emboldened to go for mass action to force government’s hand.

MASS ACTION

Mass action could assume its own life and lead to loss of lives and livelihoods and serious disruption of household, regional and national economies. There is absolutely no reason why Kenyans should burn their house because they have a quarrel with a pesky residential rat.

Because protagonists cannot agree on anything a third party, preferably local, should be invited to arbitrate and prepare the way forward for Kenya. However, its point of departure must be to ascertain who won the August presidential poll without invalidating the October repeat. August 8 produced one winner, not two.

Opanga is a commentator with a bias for politics [email protected]