Memo to Azimio coalition: A few truthful men are urgently needed

Raila Odinga announced a week ago that he was embarking on an extremely busy vacation in the United Kingdom, which affords him his best chance of getting some rest.

Shortly afterwards, it was revealed that Kalonzo Musyoka was also in that vicinity on undisclosed business.

All of a sudden, Uhuru Kenyatta’s strategic retreat to the United Kingdom has morphed into a corporate leadership retreat of the Azimio La Umoja Coalition.

A coalition like Azimio requires dedicated sequestration of its leadership from time to time for a plethora of excellent reasons.

First is that they entered the coalition as strange bedfellows, and emerged from their shambolic performance in the election and its aftermath as even stranger bedfellows.

Normal experience has conditioned us to expect total strangers and even toxic enemies to be transformed by close interaction over the course of such dramatically intense times, into cordial associates or, more frequently, close allies and tight friends.

The dividends of ordinary propinquity totally escaped Azimio leadership, and they remain suspended in a domain of inexplicable affective turbulence, always obviously ill at ease, when not downright at odds.

Beyond elementary bonding, however, the UK's retreat in the UK may also provide an opportunity for the politicians to confront certain stark, if unacknowledged truths that have festered unattended as they performed the weird pantomime of radical denial.

For instance, what does Odinga presently feel, given all the irresistible evidence that have, and continues to pour in, that BBI, and then Azimio, were, at their core cynical rackets contrived to secure Kenyatta’s short-term interests at everyone else’s expense?

What about the gnawing misgiving that Kenyatta was in fact utterly indifferent to the outcomes of the election, whereas Odinga had staked everything on its outcome, meaning that they don’t similarly appreciate the outcome of the debacle at the ballot? Does Odinga feel deceived, betrayed or just let down? Do Azimio finally realise that Kenyatta wasn’t going to do much to help Odinga, and now has absolutely nothing to offer whatsoever? What about that?

The outcome of the last election separates two categories of victims of Kenyatta’s transgressive politics: those who saw its malevolent manifestations early enough and moved on, against those who were too intoxicated by fraudulent delusion to see that they were being led up the garden path.

Like it as not, Odinga’s campaign was primarily premised on the diabolical machinations of the fabled ‘deep state’, in conjunction with Kenyatta’s assurance that he could forestall the constitutional transition by refusing to hand over power to anyone except Odinga.

Deep state

The ‘deep state’ dimension of the campaign essentially involved gross abuses of power, egregious violations of the constitution, together with repression of all democratic inclinations, and entailed a carte blanche to loot state coffers under the pretext of facilitating Odinga.

Kenyatta’s assurances emanated from abysmal misapprehension of constitutional possibilities and in any event would have entailed such flagrant infringement of foundational norms that it is fair to say that Kenyatta did actively contemplate the reckless endangerment of the Republic.

This, therefore, is the wellspring of the mortal disquiet which overhung the Azimio campaign like a most deleterious miasma.

Here was Odinga, a self-styled liberation champion and an erstwhile vocal defender of democracy, constitutionalism and human rights, not only in intimate cohabitation with his nemesis, but actively condoning, and resolutely endeavouring to benefit from Kenyatta’s audacious and diabolical stratagems.

Kenya’s progressive movement had not only been derailed, it was hurtling fatefully down a monstrous precipice.

There exists no constitutionally feasible way for a president to affect the transition at the expiry of their term.

This really is the unforgettable and unforgivable portion of Kenyatta’s irresponsibility: inciting and threatening extreme and totally evil measures as components of a deranged political strategy. This also was ultimately his sole contribution to the Azimio campaign, which Odinga accepted with fierce ardour.

That is how Azimio handed over the mantle of liberal constitutionalism to Kenya Kwanza. It also the reason why Odinga’s subsequent claims and protestations in the name of democracy, constitutionalism and the rule of law not only rang hollow, they also suffered from the direst legitimacy deficit and proved fatally damaged.

A certain level of courage required for people to confront uncomfortable facts and scrupulously establish and apportion responsibility for negative outcomes that have traumatised millions. More courage is required when these people have towering egos, are accustomed to unquestioning obedience and are smarting from painful, self-inflicted and catastrophic failure.

UK’s Retreat in the UK should serve as a formidable test for Azimio’s leadership and their relationship with the truth as a basis for a healthier apical dynamic in the star-crossed coalition.

If they pass the test, they will recognise one ineluctable truth of our contemporary politics: truthful men are indispensable for successful coalitions and campaigns.

- Mr Ng’eno is an advocate of the High Court