Azimio la Umoja movement is a contextualized veiled threat that whoever who doesn’t partner or agree with ODM leader Raila Odinga, then they will be forced into it through force or violence. A deep contrast to democracy.
The movement is nationalization of a flawed character of war mongering, threats, intimidation, betrayal and deception to capture government and power veiled as progressive democracy.
Through the fail of the Building Bridges Initiative, Azimio la Umoja has been fashioned as a soft coup d’etat that has captured power from the central government, disabled the 47 counties and made Raila a quasi head of state.
As the quasi head of state, Raila is attempting to impose himself as a ruler of the nation having failed through an alleged attempted coup, mock swearing-in, BBI and violent protests.
He knows very well the ballot will crucify him once again, and so the alternative will be the way to presidency. He has been very jittery of getting to the elections. He launched his bid late, departed from the standard ways of presidential campaigns and adopted a gunboat diplomacy style with the governors.
Kenya’s fragile and delicate democracy is moments away from breaking, if we don’t carefully and quickly correct that flaw and the inherent errors committed in the last four years through soft coups and self coups.
A soft coup is a coup d'état without the use of violence, but based on a conspiracy or plot that has as its objective on the capture of state power to effect an exchange of political leadership and in some cases also of the current institutional order.
A conspiracy by weakened political actors who seek centralised power illegally and effect the same under the guise of improving democracy.
On the other hand, a self-coup is a form of coup d'état in which the government, having come to power through constitutional means, dishonors the doctrine of the separation of powers, renders powerless the national legislature, the judiciary, the civil rights movements, other political parties, independent commissions and exalts itself above legal power that is constitutionally granted to it.
It also attempts to annual or reduce the constitution to a vacated thought.
The conspiracy here is that the leaders have an inherent flawed belief that they are the care takers of the general will of the people by the virtue of having been elected to office.
They feel that their personal will equals the general will, and that any limits on their will also amounts to the limit of the general will and they carry themselves as the only key thermal indicator to democracy based on their emotions, feelings or desires.
In short if you oppose them, it shall be treated as an act against democracy, which would be used to justify persecution, forced political support and a strong muzzle to the freedom of the press.
True democracy considers instead that rulers must have limits to their power, and democracy is a inherent right of the people exercised directly as a symbol of their sovereignty.
A deeper glance at soft coup, you’ll get to see the handshake doctrine has been used as a guised tool of democracy and peace but it’s a soft militant tool that has captured the ruling party to its destruction.
We see a party that had a super majority in Parliament reduced to a shell in less than three years. The Jubilee Party National Delegates Convention that conducts the affairs of the opposition leader rather than the governing leader and a government that has abandoned its mandate to now focus on his flawed presidential bid through BBI and the capture of the electoral system.
A cabinet that conducts the affairs of Raila rather than the technocracy specified in the Constitution, and a devolved system that has been collapsed into fear and intimidation that today the Intergovernmental Budget and Economic Council has become a weakened show of what devolution has become.
All these can be attributed to Raila’s soft coup, where the key focus on the institutional order and service delivery in the last four years has been collapsed to focusing on him alone.
Never before in the history of Kenya has there been such a capture of the state by the opposition. Jubilee Party will finish its administration as a captured collapsed ruling party that willingly surrendered to the devices of the opposition leader that it had an overwhelming victory against. A shocking conundrum where a weakened foe became the ruler of the victor.
Going forward we must ask ourselves: How we protect the institutional order and framework that delivers fair, open and credible elections? How do we strengthen governance and immunize it from any form of capture or insurrection?
If we are not careful Kenya could go the way many African nations have gone, ending up with weak governance and destroyed economies, and where civil freedoms are a far-fetched dream.
Meanwhile Kenya is going through a soft coup and a self-coup. Think about that for a while and analyse the political landscape.
The solution will not be apathy as that will aggravate the situation. The solution is mass political participation to correct the alignment and reinstate sovereignty.
Pastor Dennis Nthumbi is a governance and security expert