BBI a stain on Azimio’s pretensions to reforms

When Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga’s Handshake spawned the Building Bridges Initiative, all the talk was about national unity, inclusivity, national ethos based on national values as the antidote to zero-sum, volatile political competition that exacerbated divisions and left many feeling alienated.

A task force was mandated to collect views from diverse persons and groups all over the country, and thereafter recommend administrative, legislative and constitutional changes necessary to actualise them. And just like the political illusionists they are, Kenyatta and Odinga plucked a constitutional referendum out of a hat, and the BBI revealed itself to have been a cynical ruse, or, as Senior Counsel Martha Karua would memorably recount, a special purpose vehicle to claw away civil liberties and democratic gains.

This makes the Azimio presidential ticket most fascinating. The general reception of Senior Counsel Karua’s nomination has been positively delirious, as abundantly attested by extravagant encomiums lavished on her and hopeful expectations of her effect on the campaign. The self-conscious descriptor favoured by a feverishly immoderate Azimio is ‘historic’.

Outrageous allowances

Yet in order to merit this immodest tribute, Azimio’s patriarchs have had to take flagrant cognitive shortcuts and make outrageous allowances with facts, with the outrageous result that women in presidential campaigns, including Karua herself, have had to be deleted or revised.

In order to qualify as historic, Azimio’s patriarchy found it expedient to position Karua in terms of the first woman to play near the zenith of the major presidential leagues in Kenya’s democratic history. This insistent claim is obviously at odds with the fact that as early as 1997, Charity Ngilu set the national imagination afire with an energised presidential campaign that shook things up a little, in an election the late Prof Wangari Maathai also contested.

Prof Julia Ojiambo was the running mate of the now woebegone Kalonzo Musyoka in 2007.

Karua herself had a go at the presidency in 2013, before retreating to wage the gubernatorial contest in Kirinyaga in 2017. Whilst it may be the first time that Karua has been nominated running mate, that fact hardly qualifies for designation as historic on any account.

The Azimio patriarchy’s jarring persistence in this problematic stipulation, however, reveals their attitude to women in leadership and the glass ceiling. Karua’s nomination is remarkable in the sense that it is the first time in five elections that Odinga has chosen a woman to be his running mate.

The only other time a woman came this close in Odinga’s political universe was 2007, when Ngilu was on the ODM’s Pentagon.

The choice of Odinga’s first female running mate has occasioned such exuberant licence with historical facts that legitimately historic achievements of women have had to be forcefully redacted to confer the dubious distinction to Odinga.

This unwittingly discloses the state of the Azimio patriarchy’s mindset, suggesting that the visibility of women generally, and of female leadership in particular, remains highly problematic in Azimio.

It offensively suggests that female leadership is only viable and visible as annextures to patriarchal figures, and that, therefore, for women, historicity is a function of male consideration. By extension, it explains why comparatively, after the 2007 election, ODM has not fared illustriously in terms promoting female leadership.

The other boastful claim proudly advertised by Azimio is that Karua and Odinga form a reformist ticket.

At this time, only the deluded would still tout Odinga’s reformist credentials without due regard to the comprehensive damage that his flagrant abetment of tyranny, misrule, relentless assaults on the Constitution and constitutionalism have wrought upon his carefully curated political profile.

Since the Handshake, Odinga was co-opted as Kenyatta’s principal enabler, and he proved far handier in this task than Kenyatta’s constitutional deputy, William Ruto.

The BBI, as the signature undertaking of the Kenyatta-Odinga dynastic confraternity, was successfully held at bay by spirited litigation led by, inter alia, Karua. In her submissions before the Supreme Court, the senior counsel observed, “Constitutions exist to limit the exercise of authority and this does not appear to be understood or taken into consideration by the Executive in Kenya and indeed by many state entities and state officers. And it is clear to me that modern dictators, especially in Africa, are using the Constitution or constitutional amendments as special purpose vehicles to claw away at civil liberties and democratic gains.”

Executive structure

It is well understood that the executive structure proposed in the BBI has been translated into Azimio’s coalitional architecture.

Karua has firmly stated her commitment to ensure that only lawfully effected constitutional amendments will be permitted. As the latest iteration of the confraternity’s special purpose vehicle, it is doubtful that Karua is at home in Azimio, especially given its notorious gender blindspot and penchant for deleting women’s achievements.

 All told, Azimio’s pretentious protestation of reformist credentials signals either blatant hypocrisy, or dreadful deficiency of self-awareness.

Mr Ng’eno  is an advocate of the High Court and a supporter of William Ruto’s  presidential candidacy. @EricNgeno