The pundits have settled on Deputy President William Ruto and former Prime Minister Raila Odinga as presently the clear front-runners for the 2022 presidential election.
However, the operative word is ‘presently’.
The front-runner status is as of the moment. The fluidity and uncertainty of Kenyan politics must leave room for a great big number of ‘what ifs’. Unlike the United States, India, Britain, or other great democracies, there are no known established party rivalries, policy platforms or historical schisms that make DP Ruto and Mr Odinga the only contest worth watching.
In Kenya, we have no GOP versus Democrat, BJP versus Congress or Tory versus Labour to define electoral politics. We don’t even have right versus left, capitalist versus socialists or other such ideological cleavages. What we have is dominant, charismatic personalities and their momentary political outfits.
The DP was elected on the Jubilee Party ticket as President Kenyatta’s running-mate, but has broken ranks with his erstwhile partner and is looking to contest the presidency on the ticket of a brand new United Democratic Alliance, a party he has catapulted to the top ranks despite it having no history other then being just the latest in a long line of special purpose electoral vehicles that spring up with every poll.
Regional political outfits
Mr Odinga remains with his established Orange Democratic Movement—of which DP Ruto was one of the founders—but his electoral prospects are dependent on the newly formed Azimio la Umoja movement, an umbrella body for the projected coalition with what remains of Jubilee after the Ruto exit, as well as the numerous ethnic and regional political outfits wanting in.
Both UDA and Azimio are not so much political parties or coalitions, but temporary deal-making machines fixated on the 2022 elections, not beyond.
With no clear party platforms beyond sloganeering, and no clear loyalties at the top-tier, the ‘forgotten’ candidates should be well-placed, if they are more ambitious and strategic, to look beyond playing second fiddle.
They have opportunity to powerfully project themselves as viable alternates to the top two.
Mr Musalia Mudavadi of Amani National Congress and Mr Kalonzo Musyoka of Wiper Party, bristle at being relegated to also-rans.
They often accuse the media of ignoring their campaigns and being used to perpetuate the two-horse race narrative around Ruto and Raila.
Their complaints could well be justified, but they also have to look inward at opportunities they are failing to exploit.
All indications are that Kenyan voters are fed up with politics as usual. They are tired of electoral contests, which offer nothing but dominant personalities duelling over access to public resources.
They want something more than the same old movements built around ethnic mobilisation, us versus them, and our turn to eat politics.
Chances are that come 2022, a record electorate will vote by not voting.
If indeed there is a large disenchanted voting bloc likely to stay away from the polls, then Mr Mudavadi, Mr Musyoka and their colleagues in the One Kenya Alliance, Moses Wetang’ula of Ford Kenya and Gideon Moi of Kanu (I have recently seen former Youth for Kanu ‘92 chairman Cyrus Jirongo listed as part of the Alliance, but I must have missed the news items when he was admitted as the fifth principal.
Sleeping on their ears
I also have no idea what he brings to the table other than being a Gideon Moi surrogate, whose main purpose in life over the past two decades has been to checkmate Mr Mudavadi in western Kenya politics) are, to borrow local parlance, sleeping on their ears.
The four already has the disadvantage of OKA not having settled on any of them, all declared aspirants, while Dr Ruto and Mr Odinga are disappearing into the horizon.
There is clearly a vacuum waiting to be filled as an option for the large group of voters not excited by the top two. If that option will come from OKA, then it will be either Mr Mudavadi or Mr Musyoka, the other two being just jokers.
That both of them are being simultaneously courted and attacked by the Odinga and Ruto campaigns means they do indeed matter and cannot be ignored.
Outside OKA, there is a large number of declared aspirants. Some of them, like multi-party campaign Young Turk Mukhisa Kituyi and constitutional change campaign legend and Makueni Governor Kivutha Kibwana, are pretty appealing. But their campaigns were stillborn.
So who will provide the Third Force?
That is the challenge for Mr Mudavadi and any of the OKA partners who stand firm to the cause. BY DAILY NATION