Suicidal to underestimate one based on past election

When death beckons for a Malava Forest resident colobus monkey, all trees suddenly become too slippery for the residents. Martha Karua’s nomination as the Azimio la Umoja One Kenya coalition presidential running mate has put the rival Kenya Kwanza Alliance online brigade in an acute struggle to seal the hitherto unexpected haemorrhage of support.

“Martha is unsuitable!” they shout. When asked to explain her “unsuitability”, they retreat into silence. A few gather the audacity to cook up some response, which they deliver with a blabber of a cocaine addict. They say Karua is too weak a politician to be the country’s second-in-command and her appointment won’t add value to Raila Odinga’s vote basket.

This sensationalist argument is premised on her supposed dismal performance when she contested the presidency in 2013 and emerged sixth with a ‘paltry’ 43,000 votes. But is this the sole gauge? No. There are other parameters. She had won the Gichugu parliamentary seat a record four times.

Failed bids

Let us now examine her failed bids—preferably in comparison to current President Uhuru Kenyatta’s maiden participation in political contests. President Kenyatta debuted in elective politics in 1997, when he vied for the Gatundu South MP seat on a Kanu ticket, managing slightly over 10,000 votes. The winner, Moses Muhia, of SDP, garnered 22,000 votes.

Given the anti-Karua theorem peddled as above, based on that election, Uhuru would be adjudged as too weak to win anything political. But this thinking falls flat on the face. One election later, in 2002, Uhuru had transformed himself into a behemoth capable of winning anything. He actually garnered 31 per cent of the presidential vote, 1.8 million votes, more than half of eventual victor Mwai Kibaki’s three million—against a strong anti-Kanu wave.

Three elections after Uhuru’s dismal performance, that’s when the 2013 elections came, Uhuru won a presidential election with more than six million votes. In the 2017 elections, he retained the seat by over eight million votes. From the 10 thousand votes of 1997, Uhuru had shot up to eight million.

The fluidity of Kenyan politics mesmerises. The plate tectonics align swiftly to alter the political terrain. The political reality doesn’t remain the same for long. But hear them: “Having lost both her maiden presidential bid and her debut attempt at the governorship, she is evidently too weak.” Is she?

Abdoulaye Wade, a Senegalese law professor, lost successive presidential elections only to win on his sixth attempt! Muturi Kigano, a city lawyer, missed the Kangema parliamentary seat a record eight times—since 1994—before finally clinching it in 2017. He first contested the seat in 1994.

Martha has only lost two elections.

Lastly, a good number of the top generals sitting opposite Martha, an established incorruptible individual, have a plethora of corruption cases haunting them. She could be the closest to Pompeo, Julius Caesar’s wife, in the hierarchy of Kenyan politics.

Mr Thuranira is a political analyst. [email protected].