CORD AGENDA SHOULD BE A VIBRANT OPPOSITION NOT "AN ODINGA POLITICAL ENTERPRISE" By Riziki Dunstan Makokha “One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors”. Plato Wisdom in above classical quote guided Kenyans to participate in the March 4th elections. Alive to the political misnomer in the developing democracies that “elections are not won on the first round”, Raila went to the Supreme Court to contest the validity of Uhuru’s presidency the court upheld it the IEBC verdict on the same and the rest is history. Politics in this country is rapidly metramorphosizing from personality based to issue based, the March 4th Election was a watershed, we crossed the Rubicon of the politics of personalities now we are in an era of the politics of issues , world over the winner in a parliamentary system of government forms the government and the loser leads the opposition and that was the case in the March 4th Elections, Raila the gallant fighter for democracy reluctantly took over the leadership of the opposition; little did Kenyans know the interest of Kenyans was no longer his cup of tea! All of us thought that the doyen vanguard of opposition politics would reinvigorate formidable opposition to check the government , little did we know that he was a wounded lion that wanted to mortgage the conscience of the unsuspecting lionesses in the bid to reinvent the “Odinga Political enterprise”. The major ideals of the “Odinga enterprise,” is coded with state privileges, poor treatment by the government, retirement package, access to VIP lounge, redeployment of brothers and sisters serving as diplomats, foreign trips by CORD governors to foreign nation, the “Odinga political enterprise” has much to write home about but in summary carries no aspiration of the people of Kenya but self-aggrandizement and further balkanization of the country along CORD and Jubilee lines. One would wonder a “statesman” of the caliber of Raila should push for a national agenda but not a coalition agenda, even not opposition agenda that he seems overwhelmed with. Why sideline the poor and innocent jigger victims in Nyeri, Kiambu and Muranga in his agenda for Kenya, why sideline the squatter in Kiambu and Bomet in his agenda as a stateman .Why divide this country along coalition line! Statemen do “civil and stately acts,” not “politically ladened acts”. Why would a “stateman” as he fondly refers to serve Kenyans political with the” jubilee- Cord prism.” After the salt and preservatives of good governance had washed away in some sudden unforseeable monsoon, our democracy turned sour and tortured us with the misama of melancholy. In another episode came a Raila Odinga and His Cord Compatriots has scored a direct hit on the sympathy of Kenyans, majority saw him as the “Noah” that will sail our ark to the promise land, despite the chronicles of his atrocities and the history of his party’s ineptitude, Majority of Kenyans still wanted him in, oh why not? He made a pseudo-promise of a breath of fresh air coupled with other attractive packages and for him to have lived through life at a point with no shoes, then he must really understand what hardship and suffering really means. The leader of CORD is a worried man that the “Odinga Political enterprise”, is up in flame and he must work round the clock to carbonate rather than oxygenate the flames by pushing the Kenyan agenda. Alive to the truism that CORD is still the only party that understands Kenyans and has mastered even the underground patterns on how to stall us, they will never succumb to being effete and that their grip is effacing. No one wants to taste power and leave it. While opposition parties have merged in the past to contest elections, conflicting political interests and individual bids for the presidency have hindered their success. This merger brings together several groups that can overcome the country’s geographic, economic, ethnic, and religious divisions – a factor that could prove crucial given the country’s current challenges. Over Four months after the formation of the Jubilee government , the Opposition is still uncoordinated, clueless and rudderless of its role to the people of Kenya, the leadership of the opposition is still hallucinating and ranting about their lose in the elections a matter that was settled upon by the supreme court. The opposition is in toto coordination crisis at all fronts; lack of coordinated CORD secretariat, lack of viable leadership in parliament; looming by elections (the need to work round the clock to retin their political glory) ; retirement packages for Raila and Kalonzo; Youthful coup by ODM mps led by Ken Obura amongst other reasons, as their supreme leader continue perambulating and gallivanting across the country soloing the choir of referendum . The voices of reason within CORD have been branded “rebels”, the coalition’s political adviser one Ngunjiri Wambugu his stinging criticism against the CORD leadership of their agenda has ironically reminded CORD leaders that Ngunjiri is a kikuyu and not one of their own and not a CORD sycophant. Discord are coding the CORD agenda, a section of their mps are against their push for the referendum both on devolution and presidency thus leaving the CORD agenda deflated and suffocated of the requisite political clout to do any meaningful political activity apart from Cinderella political rallies in their political stronghold to sooth the thirst of the former political supremo. At the coast the governor Mombasa and his senator without micning their words have stated clearly that the referendum is ill fated. In western the charismatic Ababu Namwamba has distanced himself from the songs of referendum. On Tuesday the ODM vide their mockery parliament group meeting imposed on the youthful members of parliament their “pro-raila agenda,” that are meant to promote the “ODINGA POLITICAL ENTERPRISE” Two key issues that the parliament group meeting settled on was the push for a referendum and skewed appointment in the parastatals, you could easily imagine that this two agendas are pro-people, if you give the two a casual faculty attention you will discover are meant to protect and promote “Odinga Political enterprise, “ingeniously they have been couched and coated as people’s agenda but with the cloak of power and protection of cronies appointed by the former government, the purge in the parastatals is unstoppable; “it’s time that this country depoliticized service delivery, de-ethnicised government appointment and de-tribalised government parastals and declanise the office operation is parastatals”, the Abdikadir Mohamed Led Task Force will deliver on this if the recent political convulsions within CORD is anything to go by. The push for a referendum by the governors at first sounded like the “angelic trumpets,” with an objective of strengthening the county governments. Good indeed! The CORD brigade guided by their opportunistic tendencies and greed for power saw this as the golden opportunity to exploit the political underbellies of unsuspecting Kenyan to push for their own agenda and destabilize the government. This was aimed at strengthening the senate and anchoring the allocation of more resources to the county government in the constitution so that resource allocation to the county government does not remain preserve of the national government, the calls by the high priests of devolution was hijacked by power-thirsty, rapacious CORD politicians and now the good cause has been politicized. To them this was a “CORTEC Chance in Mrima Hills” to collapse the objects of devolution and the agenda of the governors. On the other hand M4M an appendage of CORD has made live their threat to amend article 138 of the constitution, their proposal is shrouded political jargons that might require political microscope and binocular that work in great sync to understand their meaning as they are far-fetched from the real democratic meaning , they propose “ an inclusionary presidential system,” with an object of having the minorities in Kenya take over power, you might think that the Okiek , the Ndorobos, the Ilchamus, the Bajuni are in the mind of the proponent of this political joke yet the person in mind of the proponent of the movement is Raila Amolo Odinga an individual from the 3rd most popular tribe, in this age and era to M4M is not about issues for Kenya but rather have one of their own as the president riding on the back of unsuspecting minorities.This is surely fooling some Kenyans and grievously assaulting the intelligence of the Minorities in this country. The push for M4M is an afterthought of having Raila as a president at all cost, whether your kids get quality education or not, whether the transport infrastructure is improved or not, whether pregnant women have access to quality health services or not ; the rationale of the political jobbers acting in the interest of their gladiators is suspect their political history tells it all, without belaboring an attempt to historicize system of government in the Kenyan context will lead to unpleasant unraveling of both The Wako and The Naivasha Draft where the political master of M4M pushed for a presidential system this was philosophized by the greed to absolute power by the proposers bearing in mind that all factor then did not favour an alternative presidency than the proponent’s then. An intelligent guess of M4M objective will be as good as mine; destabilize the government at all cost!. It would be important for Kenyans to ask themselves when the government becomes unmanageable as a result of the political convulsions by the CORD and its surrogates who will bear the brunt of un-performing government. The Citizenry! To make the Jubilee government perform we will require a lot more than a strong opposition party and mere banal routines of patriotism, it is going to require on the onset and more importantly a form of re-orientation that should involve the demolition of the fences that fragments us as Kenyans and for us to unite and fight together as one single, impregnable entity. The Writer comment on policy and Political issues
Posted on: Sat, 24 Aug 2013 01:23:10 +0000
Trending Topics
© 2015