The big lie of DP’s non-tribal poll platform

You know it’s the silly season in Kenya again when you start seeing articles written by scholars or political think tanks about the local politics that make you wonder whether you are still living in the same country.

In the past week alone, I have come across at least two such articles on donor-funded news websites or quasi-academic journals.

They, for instance, hype up the national popularity of the so-called Hustler Nation movement associated with Deputy President William Ruto and how it is supposedly changing the narrative around the next elections from ethnic mobilisation to some unprecedented economic policy debate.

Granted, the Hustler movement has created quite some excitement in Dr Ruto’s support base with its populist messaging, which depicts him as the heroic Robin Hood of Kenyan politics who will take from the rich and give to the poor.

A streetwise politician with the gift of the gab to burn, the DP has also excelled in selling the Hustler Nation slogan and lies to his target audiences.

But if you fashion yourself as part of a think tank out there, you can’t echo his sloganeering on the podium and present it as some radical shift on the 2022 election campaign platform in an article.

The so-called Hustler Nation, I dare say, is an opportunistic ethnic-based coalition all but in name. By and large, it is playing by the same rules as  the other ethnic coalitions. And it has a core ethnic base from which it is negotiating with some and excluding others.

Ethnic exclusionist sentiment

As the results of the recent by-elections have demonstrated, the Hustler Nation and its political party clone, the United Democratic Alliance (UDA), is targeting a stronghold in parts of Rift Valley and Mt Kenya regions.

The two regions have voted for the Jubilee Party in the last two elections, and the breakaway UDA is working to dethrone the ruling party in the run-up to 2022.

Notably, UDA's mobilisation in the by-elections had little to do with any superior economic transformation idea. In the recent Kiambaa by-election, for instance, its campaign mostly targeted the ruling party’s dalliance with Raila Odinga – the region’s ethnic bogeyman in the last three elections.

Dr Ruto, doing a victory lap in the region shortly after the results were declared, reminded folks that they didn’t vote for Jubilee to work with Mr Odinga’s ODM.

Indeed it is the same ethnic exclusionist sentiment that Dr Ruto’s Hustler Nation has opportunistically exploited to foment discontent with President Uhuru Kenyatta’s administration over his cooperation with Mr Odinga, popularly known as the Handshake.

Like the Israeli right wingers who in 1995 took out the country’s war hero Yitzak Rabin over his support for the Oslo Peace Agreement, there’s a generation of folks in President Kenyatta’s ethnic community who still can’t stand seeing him hold the old foe’s hand.

Dr Ruto and his Hustler Nation understand this very well and know what to do.

[email protected]. @otienootieno