How opposition disunity handed Kanu 10 more years of rule

Kirinyaga Woman Rep Purity Ngirichi has come up with a political party called Citizens Convention Party (CCP) and appointed her husband, Mr Andrew Ngirichi, the party leader.

That is a brilliant idea indeed because Health Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe has advised that we try as much as possible to stay and work from home. In that case, the Ngirichis can convert their guest house to party headquarters.

For a Raphael Tuju or Edwin Sifuna – I mean party Secretary General — they can give the job to their house-help. That would limit social contact as well as cut down on costs,though Ngirichis are not financially down to the wire like most of us.

Not far away from Kirinyaga, in Laikipia, sacked Cabinet Secretary Mwangi Kiunjuri has found something else to keep him busy in forming a political party he calls “The Service Party”. He hasn’t specifically stated which “services” his outfit intends to offer but, I guess, it includes fighting desert locusts which have made another invasion to our dear land.

As Agriculture CS he was so overwhelmed by the damn creatures that he pleaded that wherever we spotted them we take a picture and send it to him. Not long after, he lost his job. Speculation was that it is locusts that “chewed” his pay-slip. His boss, though, had been heard bitterly complaining about fishy payments at the National Cereals and Produce Board (NCPB). To be precise, the President – a big landowner in this country – wondered where in Kenya one “farmer” had grown maize worth Sh200 million, which is what NCPB paid some faceless “supplier”. Kenya ni nchi ya maajabu!

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Sorry, we were talking about political parties, not ghost suppliers. Not to be left behind, the Gatundu South MP Moses Kuria, also has a political party in his trouser pocket. It is called Peoples Empowerment Party (PEP).

The party is really a PEP talk because it is so liquid – in cash – just like the MP is most of the time liquid.

 Also curious is how Mr Kuria is able to spend so much on expensive billboards advertising his party, and lavishly campaign for a little-known woman to become MCA somewhere in Murang’a, yet the Mheshimiwa has some issues with his landlord.

Still on political parties, four chaps – Kalonzo Musyoka, Musalia Mudavadi, Moses Wetangula and Gideon Moi – have come up with some concoction of a political alliance they are calling “The Sacred Alliance”. Some inspired choice of name indeed, though I am afraid out there it might be mistaken for some new church.

Legally banned

And of course there is the newly registered “hustlers” party called United Democratic Alliance (UDA). Its symbol is a wheelbarrow, though I guess the party driver, the Deputy President William Ruto, would have preferred a chicken as party symbol. Lest you forget, he made his mountain from money selling chicken. But chicken, rather cockerel, as party symbol was long taken by KANU, the party once called the baba na mama.

Talking of KANU reminds one of the days gone in 1991, when formation of other parties other than the cockerel one was legally banned.

The first party to be formed was called FORD. The name was coined by Senator James Orengo. Founders of the new party had been holed up at the private office of the doyen of opposition politics, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, when Mr Orengo got a brainwave and suggested: “Why don’t we call the party the “Forum for Restoration of Democracy”. And there was born FORD.

You can imagine how much goodwill the new party had after many years of one party rule. The country was on cloud nine. Everybody was talking about big, great, change just around the corner – though without pin-pointing exactly which corner.

Then on the “Boxing” day – December 26, 1991 – Mr Mwai Kibaki, then a cabinet minister in KANU government announced he had resigned to join the opposition. Everybody expected he was headed to FORD. But, alas, he came up with his own outfit called the Democratic Party (DP).  

Lawyer Paul Muite once told me of night long conversation he had with Mr Kibaki, medic Dr Frank Njenga, and the late politician Njenga Karume, where the lawyer and the medic foamed in the mouth persuading Kibaki and Karume not to form another political party but join FORD to avoid fragmentation of opposition votes.

Mr Muite told me that after a long back-and-forth arguments, Mr Kibaki emptied a glass of beer and gently shook it as he said in vernacular: “Muthuuri niendaga gukorwo na kinya giake!” (A man has to have his own gourd of beer).

And there began the split in the opposition – and a big smile for then ruling party KANU.

FORD held a mammoth rally at the symbolic Kamukunji grounds. Kibaki’s DP quickly followed with theirs at Uhuru Park. I remember being at the DP rally with colleague John Kamau. It was the most organised political rally I ever attended. Much later I would gather there was a “Deep State” hand in it, which even Team Kibaki did not know about at the time.

Deep State

KANU was determined that the opposition split its vote as much as possible. Kibaki forming a separate opposition party from FORD was godsend to the ruling party.

That is why “Deep State” secretly made sure Kibaki inaugural rally at Uhuru Park was as orderly, well attended and colourful.  I can report that even Kibaki people were surprised where the huge crowd at Uhuru Park came from.

Then Kenneth Matiba who had been recuperating at a hospital in London returned to the country and declined to join either FORD or DP, but came up with his own called FORD Asili.

More parties wound come up that the 1992 presidential ballot paper had seven candidates. KANU smiled all the way back to State House.

 President Moi ridiculed the opposition by saying: Wame jikaanga na mafuta yao kama nguruwe! (They have fried in their own fat like a pig does), and advised that the opposition should have considered “family planning before giving birth to political party after another”.

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