Raila wins more than money from Mt Kenya tycoons

Big election campaign financiers are never driven by raw political emotions like the rest of us. With their business interests often at stake in elections, they will hardly ever put their money on a candidate with no chance of winning.

They approach political decisions with the rigour of a corporate boardroom; studying the poll map and commissioning surveys on popularity ratings, for example.

Even in instances where they cast their net wider and fund rival campaigns, the question of electability is always at the heart of the decision-making.

That is why Raila Odinga’s campaign must be buzzing after last week’s endorsement from the Mount Kenya Foundation. The club of business tycoons, which supported presidents Uhuru Kenyatta’s and Mwai Kibaki’s successful bids, brings more than money.

In addition to helping the Raila campaign confront the myth of its candidate’s ‘unelectability’ in the Mt Kenya region, it significantly disarms his opponents.

It has been interesting listening to county governors like Francis Kimemia and Lee Kinyanjui narrating how ogre stories were created about Mr Odinga to make voters fear and hate him there.

Local politicians in Deputy President William Ruto’s camp have over the past four years deployed the same scare-mongering tactics to ward off the ODM party leader’s quest for a foothold in the region.

The more extremist elements in Dr Ruto’s UDA party regularly swear on national television that selling Mr Odinga in Mt Kenya is like selling pork in Saudi Arabia.

Sense of invincibility 

To their credit, their populist messaging depicting the DP as the heroic outsider coming to liberate the region’s underprivileged class from the economic yoke of the wealthy class appears to have gained traction.

Riding on a then gathering Ruto wave, the breakaway UDA easily swatted away its ruling party parent, Jubilee, in local by-elections.

The sense of invincibility created by the Ruto campaign might have even tempted some members of the Mt Kenya business elite to consider putting bets on him.

I heard it on the grapevine that a certain bank CEO is among those who have been scouted for the position of running mate.

Not that Dr Ruto has made it any easier for the business community to get over their suspicions of him.

He has retained an economic think tank to try to turn his populist so-called 'wheelbarrownomics' sloganeering into a serious campaign platform. But his campaign continues to be defined by some reckless footsoldiers, who are often only one public utterance away from bringing down the stock exchange.

In the heat of the public debate over last month’s disclosure of Dr Ruto’s massive personal wealth by Interior Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i in Parliament, two MPs loyal to him let rip: threatening to reignite the old grievances in the region over the post-independence sharing of land between the so-called children of the Mau Mau and the homeguards. Those statements are sure to be revisited in the election campaigns.

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