After his ouster as the Senate deputy minority leader, Cleophas Malala, the ever unpredictable Kakamega senator, was stranded within the precincts of Parliament with no car take him home.
It happens that the legislator owns no car, and with the State having repossessed the official cars allocated to his office, the legislator had to find alternative means of transport home.
The spectre of the senator at Parliament that Wednesday evening struggling to hitch a lift from colleagues sums up the shackles of controversy that are tightly welded to the lawmaker’s rather brief but interesting political career.
The lawmaker, who has projected himself as the lord of the downtrodden and the vanguard in the march to the land of equity, was propelled to the national stage by the controversial play Shackles of Doom. That he never found it necessary to buy his own car is intriguing. Even though he has a Sh7 million car grant at his disposal, he was shackled to his official GK-issue car — perhaps because it freed him from the chains of buying fuel, the cost of maintenance and, of course, the chauffeur services?
Survived expulsion
The story of Malala’s ouster is just one little detail in a career that is defined by unmitigated controversies, but he has so far eluded doom. The man is indeed a great actor.
Consider this: He survived expulsion from the Musalia Mudavadi-led ANC party through political drama, and once wept in the chambers after details of his choreographed arrest were laid bare to the nation. He said his life was in danger, only for the police to declare the claim a ruse and recommend that he be charged for perjury.
The kind of shenanigans the senator has engaged in, in the past three years could have ended his political career, save for the smoothness of his tongue and his ability to get out of sticky situations.
On the floor of the House, the senator is always described as a thespian, but the description is hardly a compliment. It has been used pejoratively as an attack on his knack for interrupting serious debates on frivolous reasons, or often veering off the substance of a debate when he takes the floor to contribute to a motion.
Elected senator on an ANC ticket in 2017, Malala soon called the party a village outfit as he loudly laughed off Mudavadi’s bid for the presidency.
Political contest
An excitable politician, he has never seen a political contest he wanted to avoid. Thus, he is the only politician in his league to have had a brush with political heavyweights Mudavadi, Raila Odinga and William Ruto, and, even though he has lost some of the battles, he has never changed tack.
The senator is facing criminal charges related to the violence witnessed during the Matungu parliamentary by-election, where scores of people — mostly ODM supporters — were injured by rowdy youths. ODM later engineered his removal from the Senate position.
Before this, using its massive influence in the Senate, ODM had disregarded his inexperience and elected him to a position that would ordinarily be reserved for senior lawmakers. But Malala was the ideal candidate because the position offered ODM an opportunity to spite Moses Wetang’ula, the Bungoma Senator whose falling-out with Odinga will make interesting reading in future.
Mr Odinga has publicly accused Malala of being compromised over his position on the revenue sharing formula after he opposed the position adopted by ODM. With this and the Matungu chaos, his day was coming, and ODM had the last laugh. BY DAILY NATION