These days I don't get the time to relax with cheap thrillers but I am NOT ashamed to say that for many years I have always enjoyed a good James Hardley Chase novel. Yep, those primary school kids novels. I have always been a sucker for the drama, suspense and edge-of-the-seat cheap tricks that make up these small books that were written by a Brit imitating American "thug language."
Will this man's calculated sucker punch against the JUBILEE Presidency work?
My favourite has always been The Sucker punch which is the story of a perfect murder that went wrong because of one silly little detail. At some point the main character is watching a fight where there is this boxer clearly winning and all over his opponent. But his overconfidence is his undoing because the losing fighter sneaks in one punch that floors him and ends the fight. The sucker punch.
For weeks now there has been lots of excitement in the CORD fold, like there is something big about to happen. And the guys seem to have taken an oath of secrecy or something because my best efforts were met with people who were not going to tell me anything. But about 2 weeks ago CORD principal Kalonzo Musyoka let it slip that elections would be very soon long before 2017. I went and did my research and still could not see how this could be made to happen. At least not legally. Then over the weekend I learnt that there may be a plan to impeach the president over the rampant insecurity in the country.
Still it did not make sense to me because the rubber stamp JUBILEE coalition has the numbers in the senate and overwhelmingly so. I forgot about the ridiculous theory until I hit the shower. In the middle of soaping myself it hit me. There has been widespread rebellion within the ruling coalition. The truth is that currently only a small tiny push will throw things out of control.
Even more interesting is what Katiba says. If such a motion were to be successful then the Deputy President would take over for the remainder of the term. Now that sounds like just the right kind of incentive to rally the entire Rift Valley behind such a motion. To survive the said Deputy president would also need to do business with CORD and so our politics would change overnight and both houses would look very different even with the same legislators. In such a scanrio a fresh election before 2017 becomes a real possibility.
Now insecurity is one subject that is mighty close to Kenyans just now. Police say that an average of 3 matatus are carjacked daily. Some observers say that the number is closer to 10. In some of these incidences women passengers are raped...and even male ones in one or two bizarre cases. Not to mention the fact that many parts of the country that were previously crime free now have unprecedented crime waves sweeping through them. No Kenyan in their right mind would fail to admit the fact that the government has failed in its' fundamental responsibility of guaranteeing security for its' people.
And the crimes are not only increasing but also getting more heinous by the day. Small children being kidnapped for ransoms and then being murdered in cold blood is the kind of thing that would cause any responsible leadership to stop what they are doing and address the problem as a priority. But nah, our government has been too busy with the ICC cases at the Hague. And the little spare time senior police officers have away from their efforts to make huge sums of money using their good offices is all going into rather belated efforts to fight the infiltration by terrorists into the very fabric of Kenyan life. When you allow people to walk into the country and radicalize youths over a long period of time, to them it becomes a normal lecture at the mosque as usual and their right to be radicalized which should NOT be disturbed by police. That is why there was so much blood letting at the Mombasa mosque over the weekend when police finally made a decision to make a move against this practice that has been ongoing for a long time.
In fact if you want to know how serious things are consider the fact that some people are now saying that Uganda is more stable and much safer than Kenya and are being taken seriously.
But back to the sucker punch from CORD. Is it really plausible? Can Raila Odinga's coalition pull it off? My straight answer is that it is plausible but unlikely to succeed. The people who marshaled the whole of Africa against the ICC are likely to make mince meat of CORD and are not the kind of fighters who would fall for a sucker punch from the opposition just now.
Fortunately also for them, they have been spending fortunes trying to destabilize CORD ahead of the ODM elections next week. In fact they have done such a good job of it that the ODM which will emerge from those elections will indeed have a national outlook but will be much weaker than the ODM that led the CORD coalition into last year's general elections. I keep reminding you guys that this is politics and not primary school elections for class prefect.
