June 25, 2024, is not that long ago. It is in fact just seven months ago, this week.
And yet the events of that day seem to have largely faded in the memory of most Kenyans, even though it was the day when Kenya grabbed international headlines.
What made the world pause and take notice is that it was on this day that supposed ‘Gen Z’ demonstrators overpowered the policemen guarding parliament, broke into the chambers therein and set parts of the building on fire.
Whatever our failings as a nation, we are a functioning democracy, and as such, when a large group of demonstrators invades our parliamentary buildings and sets part of it on fire, the world will pause to wonder what on earth is really going on.
This dramatic incursion though, was only one of the many memorable events which took place at that time, and which collectively seemed to suggest that a younger generation of Kenyans had decided to take the future of the country into their own hands and to enforce transparent and accountable government in Kenya “by any means necessary”.
And it seemed then that all campaign planning for the next general election, which is scheduled for 2027, would mostly circulate around the demands and expectations of the Gen Z electoral cohort.
Two events which took place over the weekend though, suggest that some of the leading politicians of our day are not really being guided by this perception.
And that they are planning for politics as usual when it comes to the 2027 presidential election.
First, there was President William Ruto, who spent much time over the previous week in Western Kenya, mostly in the region referred to as the ‘sugar belt’.
It has been an open secret for some time that the President is well aware that he cannot rely on the Mt Kenya votes, which proved so crucial to his victory in 2022.
And Western Kenya is one of the few regions in which he can hope to collect a huge vote basket to replace the votes he is likely to lose in Central Kenya.
The growing of sugarcane has in past decades been one of the few lucrative economic activities in Western Kenya, and any leader who manages to restore that prosperity to the farmers of that region is more or less assured of their electoral support.
So the President’s re-election strategy is clearly predicated on replacing whatever votes he is likely to lose from within his previous support in ‘the Mountain’ with voters in Western Kenya who did not vote for him in 2022.
But leaders from ‘the Mountain’ are not exactly taking this lying down. In the other major political development of the last week or so, opposition leader Martha Karua and former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua announced that they would work together to chart the way forward for the people of Central Kenya – that very same ‘mountain’ that has reportedly soured on President Ruto.
Their idea is that after uniting Central Kenya, they would then seek to form alliances with other political leaders who share their determination to make Dr Ruto a one-term president.
It is all a tribute to the flexibility – which ultimately is a key pillar of the stability – of Kenyan politics.
Leaders who had poured scorn and contempt on each other for months during the previous general election, suddenly find that they are only too willing to play on the same team.
But the bigger point here is that leaders from both sides of the political aisle are clearly in pursuit of what has been called the ‘two and a half tribes formula’.
This basically means that given Kenyan presidential elections revolve around the ‘five big tribes’ (Kikuyu, Kalenjin, Luhyia, Luo and Akamba) to win, a presidential candidate needs to start off with the collective support of at least two big tribes, and one smaller tribe (Ameru, Kisii, etc).
Then see where else they can pick up additional support.
The Gen Z demonstrators claimed to have taken Kenya beyond this kind of politics.
And yet we now
find top political leaders basing their plans on the old
formula.
