Presidential Race 2012: Something Is Cooking

Many Kenyans have gotten extremely angered with the way the 2012 race for State house seems to have started so prematurely. And you really can’t blame them because we still have IDPs suffering like you can never imagine and scores of other pressing issues which the political class has no time or inclination to address.

Still, what is now slowly emerging is the deadly PNU game plan to get their man into State house at all costs when the next elections come (I have always said here that I don’t believe it will wait until 2012).

At the centre of that game plan is one Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta.

It is no accident that this son of Jomo “land grabber” Kenyatta has been in the news in recent weeks like never before. First there was the 10 billion jigsaw puzzle in the supplementary budget (believe what you want but that cash is long gone. I reveal exactly where it has gone in my raw notes to be published tomorrow.)

It is no secret that Uhuru drinks too much (and he drinks the kind of stuff that burns your throat all the way down) and the pressure has been telling for anybody who looks at press photographs carefully. My information is that the political class (which includes Baba Moi) have heaped all their hopes on Jomo’s son. In other words Jomo Junior goes down and the whole political class goes down with him. I will elaborate this point further in my later posts to come. But an interesting aside here is that former president Daniel arap Moi has also been in the news a lot in recent weeks. This too is no accident. Moi is still smarting from the bitter defeat he suffered in the hands of Narc and Raila Odinga in 2002 and seems to have decided that a revenge victory is his sole life’s mission before he inevitably faces his maker like every man has to. His intricate plan to get Uhuru to State house is already in motion. It is a plan that seeks to incorporate all Rift Valley bigwigs (including William Ruto).

However what is most revealing about the next presidential race is that it is now abundantly clear that this will be the race for young candidates and anybody who will be over 50 will quickly find themselves irrelevant (and you can take that to the bank even if you are a die hard supporter of Kalonzo Musyoka and Raila Odinga). There are people here who have made an occupation out of labeling me a Raila stooge, but let me just say that I will never vote for Raila Odinga again but if truth be told, he was the legitimate winner of the disputed 2007 elections. The double standards and sheer hypocrisy that western countries often display just irks me because European countries have asked for a repeat of the presidential polls in Iran while nobody dared to suggest the same for Kenya in early 2008. Not because the tribal animosity and emotions were not healed but simply because some very powerful nations decided that they could not trust Raila Odinga to rule the strategically important Kenya. These same “powerful forces” have now thrown their weight behind Uhuru Kenyatta. More so after his maiden budget that appeared to “take care of the poor.” I get very amused when all manner of experts start to analyze the budget and make all kinds of projections. Does anybody ever bother to look at the levels of implementations of the previous budget before a new one is read? NEVER. To me the budget is just a political statement meant to achieve political objectives as funds are allocated to pay the big salaries of our horribly bloated coalition cabinet and to enable the rich and powerful to embezzle.

There is another very interesting development in the coming presidential race. All the candidates who have so far shown clear indications of running (except one) are all from the house of Mumbi. They are Uhuru, Martha Karua and at least two prominent well known persons from the civil society. This would have been excellent news because we would have managed to de-tribalize the race for State house which would be ideal just now, so soon after the 2007 debacle. However in view of what happened in 2007 and President Kibaki’s persistent policies, it is highly unlikely that any campaign (no matter how ingenious) will be able to successfully sell a Kikuyu to the electorate. This is the reason why the PNU think tank is working on winning the presidency by a slim margin. One of the reasons why the party is pushing for more provinces based on population. If Central province has two provinces and a Kikuyu province is hived out of Rift Valley, then it will make it much easier for a candidate like Uhuru to get the required 5 provinces a presidential candidate needs to be declared winner.

The odd man out of the presidential candidates list so far is of course agriculture minister William Ruto whose game of political chess has climbed a notch or three higher in the last 2 years. Still, Ruto’s bid will fail for many reasons, perhaps the most important being the happenings of January 2008.

Notice that all names mentioned are below the age of 50.

Whatever happens, Kenyans can be sure of one thing—and that is that this one will be the most interesting presidential race Africa has ever seen.

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