The UDA party, leader William Ruto, is set to merge with the ANC party, leader Musalia Mudavadi. Mudavadi estimates that ANC has four million members while UDA has eight million so a giant party is being formed.
Is this a good thing or a bad thing for Kenya?
It is obviously not good to have a multitude of small parties, often representing one region only and often formed as briefcase parties just before an election. This allows divide-and-rule where a dominant group can continue ruling the country and influence trading predominates over ideology.
The advantage of big parties (like Labour and Conservative in the UK or Republicans and Democrats in the USA) is that voters pick parties on the basis of ideology, left and right etc. Having big parties could break the cycle of ethnic voting in Kenya.
But it would not be a good thing to have a single large party like Kanu which in the past dominated politics even in a period of pluralism.
So we should welcome the merger of UDA and ANC while remembering that this grouping will need a countervailing force, perhaps a union of Jubilee and ODM.
Quote of the day: "If you are lonely when you're alone, you are in bad company."
Jean-Paul Sartre
The French philosopher was born on June 21, 1905
