2007 General Elections: The Mother Of All Kenyan Elections Through The Crystal Ball

It is amazing how all those who profess to be servants of the almighty seem to agree about what sort of year 2007 will be.

It will be generally peaceful, all of them say. The Kenyan electorate after the "disaster" of 2002 will be much harder to fool, cash handouts not withstanding and will be able to quickly tell a genuine candidate out to bring genuine change and a "wolf in sheeps' clothing" which is what the typical Kenyan politician precisely is. Some have been bold enough to declare that this is the general election that will usher in genuine victory for the common man.

Predictions aside, there is one fact that has never been in doubt. And that is, never have Kenyans yearned and desired genuine change as much as they do now, and it is clear that this is something that will definitely come out very clearly in the way that they will vote in the general elections 2007, scheduled for the end of this year.

The polls (whose accuracy I will not comment on now) have been spewing out lots of confusion, however admittedly, it is also clear that the public have not yet "found" the right candidates. So what do you do in such a scenario when an earnest pollster suddenly shows up at your door? You give any answer that comes to your mind, mostly based on previous poll results that you have seen in the newspapers and elsewhere. However the popularity of the incumbent (President Kibaki) and candidate Kalonzo Musyoka is still a deep mystery to this writer as it contradicts all the facts and statistics on the ground. As to why somebody would want to aggressively publish poll results two years before a general election, and how they would consistently find the money to do so is still a nagging mystery to those in the know. The truth will probably come out one day, but this writer can smell nothing but lots of dead rats in the whole thing.

I have a habit of keeping my ears very close to the ground, where the votes really are and the vibes I am getting contradict all the polls I have seen so far. So today I publish my own poll based on my own findings;

President Kibaki: 29%
Uhuru Kenyatta: 17%
Raila Odinga: 16%
Kalonzo Musyoka 10%
Others (Incl. the undecided) 26%

Notice that although President Kibaki still leads, the combined votes of just 3 leading ODM candidates are already more than his at 43%. Also these results do not contradict the tribal arithmetic that cannot be ignored in Kenyan politics. The Kikuyu are the biggest tribe numerically and their votes are split between their two candidates with the incumbent enjoying the lion's share. The DhoLuo and Kamba follow in that order. All polls released by Steadmann so far do not make sense when you hold them up next to tribal numbers and past voting patterns, including the most recent November referendum.

Secondly the "undecided vote" is huge (and you can be sure that most of these people will not vote Kibaki and Narc Kenya). The logical strategy for the president's handlers in such a situation is to do everything under the sun to divide and splinter ODM Kenya. When you consider that "the professor of dividing the people", Daniel Arap Moi himself is firmly entrenched on President Kibaki's corner, then you know what to expect. Only that unknown to the two, the Kenyan electorate are in a very bad mood and will not fall into line or be divided so easily this time.

I take this opportunity to welcome all regular and not-so-regular Kumekucha readers to the year 2007. I wish you all a happy and prosperous new year that will end in victory for the Kenyan people. I will be announcing major (and very positive) changes in this blog later in the week.