Time For Clean Break With Ruto and Company

Let the man go!

The Mau has never been the issue. For Ruto, who would have rather lined up behind Kalonzo Musyoka in the 2007 elections, it has all along been about bringing Raila down. To his credit, he has done a masterful job in using the Mau issue to rally the Rift Valley MPs and their electorate against the Prime Minister.

It will not last.

For starters, the Mau can only be a short-term political winner for Ruto and his brand of politics. The Mau has and will continue to be a divisive issue, which Ruto judges correctly will polarize debate in this country and embitter his Kalenjin tribe against Mr. Odinga. Such tactics always work very well. Indeed, they are now being applied against President Barack Obama in the States by xenophobic groups hell bent on denying him a second term by making it untenable for the whites to vote for him in the next elections.

The trouble with this kind of politics is that it inevitably leads to bitterness, fights, and in our case, bloodshed. When Isaac Ruto repeatedly warns us about bloodshed, it is this kind of scenario that plays in his mind. He understands that the Ruto game plan is about using hate as a weapon and has been made its prophet. What sober Kenyans must ask the two Rutos and their supporters is...after the Mau, then what? Will they come up with another wedge issue to divide us? And could it be that the dance they played around the Hague issue was just an effort to be on the other side of Raila for the sake of playing this game they are playing now?

Here is what I would tell the Prime Minister if he sought my advice. Let this dead weight go now. For a man who was elected to lead the nation, leading is what you must do.

Of course Mr. Odinga can't walk away from the fact that he got where he is through the support of our brothers and sisters from the Rift Valley, but that support never meant he was obligated to support everything the folks from that province threw his way. For example, why would he allow himself to look so indecisive by being like Ruto who now supports the Hague, now not? Or the Ruto who now wants people out of the Mau, now not? Is this a man who can lead his people, leave alone Kenya?

As Ruto enters his alliances in the future, we can only wish him well. I hope such an alliance will draw in the likes of Kenyatta...another man wanted by the Hague, and Kalonzo Musyoka...that traitor who sold Kenya for thirty pieces of silver when the nation was reeling. If that trio is the new leaders we must face in 2012, then let's walk with our heads held high. Maybe they'll be at the Hague, save for Kalonzo, answering for their crimes in funding and providing inspiration to tribal militias that killed over a thousand Kenyans.

And one other thing. Ruto will find out, just like Raila did, that the Kenyan voter is just one element in the leadership equation of Kenya. There is that other constituency called the international community. When that constituency stands against you, it is difficult to win Kenya. Indeed, at times I think that is why Raila has played safe with that entity. It is a lot easier to fix the thinking of the Kenyan electorate than fix the worldview of the world community about Candidate X.

So if I were Raila and those who mean well for Kenya, this is the time to seek and form alliances that draw in men and women who won't whip up tribal animosity and hate against other groups, men and women who will move this nation forward as a united Kenya, not those who will perpetually trap us in the old, discredited politics of tribal alliances.

It is a time to think issue not tribe.

Let the man go now!