AJUOK: Why Ol Kalou has changed the 2027 political equation

There was an interesting story in this newspaper earlier in the week. It alluded to the former bases of departed ODM leader, Raila Odinga, feeling the pain of neglect, as the new party “owners” focus more on their Luo Nyanza homeland.

It has become obvious that no one in the current ODM has the gravitas, the personality and the capacity to sustain the party’s support beyond its Luo Nyanza region.

Well, except the one man they desperately wanted out of the party. After the departure of Edwin Sifuna as party secretary general, it was only predictable that ODM would shrink back into a Nyanza political outfit, while its leaders from other regions keenly check out political events in their neighbourhoods, before deciding their own next moves.

I am indeed persuaded that the shell that ODM has become is exactly what President Ruto wanted out of it: a dependent organisation beholden to him and dancing to his tune.

But nothing tells the story of regional politics like the by-election in Ol Kalou constituency, Nyandarua county, which took place last week.

Any neutral person watching the contest, just as the Fifa World Cup was also drawing to an end, must have enjoyed the mixture of fine tactics, intrigues, intimidation and bravado deployed by all sides of the contest, especially the two frontrunners, Ruto’s UDA and impeached former DP Rigathi Gachagua’s.

The grandstanding by both sides of the divide ahead of the by-election was a joy to watch. With each side threatening to “teach the other politics”, the stage had been set for potent tribal emotions and a competitive environment in which violence and intimidation often found a stage.

By the time the official campaign period closed on Monday, July 13, the tension had reached fever pitch. It was clear it was no longer just a constituency contest, but practically a national contest between Ruto and Gachagua.

Kenyan politics can be very strange. The way elected leaders and presidential surrogates supporting the ruling party candidate in Ol Kalou spoke and acted ahead of the vote, it seemed like they were either too sure about the impending result, or knew something the rest of us didn’t.

Nevertheless, the result provided a harsh lesson to them, particularly proving that the Democracy for Citizens Party had done quite well in the previous by-election in Ruto’s backyard in Emurua Dikirr, Narok county than Ruto and UDA did in Ol Kalou. The result in Ol Kalou wasn’t close.

More importantly, the vote-protection exercise was on another level. Any aspirant looking for take-aways from the by-election had many to pick from.

In an environment of mistrust, DCP went out of its way to enforce a magnificent vote-watching scheme, in which vigilance remained on a very high level. If there were ever any plans to interfere with the voting or tallying process, that window was firmly shut.

Soon after the result, and almost predictably, Gachagua read out a list of names, made up of sitting MPs whom he asked the people to reject in 2027.

The consensus from Ol Kalou was that elected leaders seeking reelection but choosing to stick with the President or his UDA party would have an uphill task in next year’s polls.

In every sense, the former DP is stamping his authority and setting the stage to ensure that only politicians allied to him will have any chance in Central.

While at it, Gachagua doesn’t seem much interested in what goes on anywhere else in the country, preferring to consolidate his local support base before moving on to his pet occupation: the removal of Ruto in the next general election.

Just days after the UDA whitewash in Ol Kalou, the next instalment of the season of regional alignments happened when on Wednesday this week, a surprise meeting happened between former Interior CS Fred Matiang’i and presumed Linda Mwananchi presidential candidate, Nairobi Senator Edwin Sifuna.

Ahead of the encounter, the media had been awash with reports of Matiangi’s discomfort over elected leaders from his Kisii base hobnobbing with Sifuna and helping entrench the latter’s position as the runaway favourite to be picked as the joint opposition candidate to face in Ruto in the general election.

Details of the Matiang’i-Sifuna meeting were not immediately available, but the obvious inference was that Matiang’i was setting the boundaries and letting the Nairobi senator know that whereas the public plan was that the opposition would end up running together, each luminary would zone off their territory and draw a red line on it.

It isn’t going to be long before murmurs are heard from the direction of Wiper, in Ukambani, where local supremo, Kalonzo Musyoka, nurses long-held presidential dreams.

There is only one problem for regional kingpins in the coming months. Whereas nearly every presidential hopeful currently has to consolidate their regional base in order to negotiate positions in an upcoming alliance, the start of Sifuna seems to rise in a manner where the people who prefer him as their next president do not necessarily answer to these gate-keeping tribal lords.

In other words, of all presidential hopefuls, he currently possesses the national support to go with any alliance, or perhaps even alone, without the encumbrances brought about by the regional considerations.

Of all the regions of the country, we can, at this juncture, say that the two that united to form the UDA government in 2022 have fallen out beyond repair and will most certainly vote two separate ways.

And whereas Gachagua sits at the apex of the political pyramid in Central, his impeachment brings to question whether he is ever going to make it onto the presidential ballot next year.

He strikes me as one now firmly focused on the quest to have as many MPs elected on DCP as possible, while also propping up a potentially winning presidential candidate, from whom he will extract maximum concessions  after election.

My instinct is that most of the opposition luminaries seeking to dethrone Ruto are aware that their only credible chance is in fielding a joint candidate. There seems to be near-consensus that the flagbearer is now a contest between Sifuna and Kalonzo, with the other set to be slotted in neatly as the running mate.

The question is on whether Kalonzo, if he isn’t the top of the ticket, would agree to deputise the much younger Sifuna. The reverse doesn’t seem to worry their strategists much.

But to retain relevance, and extract maximum benefits from any joint electoral successes, regional kingpins will enter the bargaining mode from now, while gate-keeping their zones in order to also ensure their parties control a huge stake in these regions.

This model disappoints me a lot. Having been a voter and alive to watch the exciting Narc-Rainbow revolution in 2002, I’ve always hoped that the opposition would end up coalescing into a powerful coalition akin to Narc, where even party nominations were a joint affair.

The net effect, at least temporarily, was that Narc made regional political parties irrelevant and created a national movement which, save for the greed and foolishness of its leaders, would have delivered the famed second liberation effortlessly.

But it’s been a lifetime since Narc, and a lot has changed. The political mistrust, caused in no small part by the betrayal in Narc itself, fraudulent elections and a decline in democratic values, have caused the rise of small regional parties, many targeting merely to win the support of tribes.

After Ol Kalou, the political destiny of every region is now becoming clearer, portending exciting times ahead.

In a country where tribal alignments supersede all, we can now start seeing how each region will vote, if all factors remain largely constant.