Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi’s meeting last Friday on the Kenya-Uganda border town of Busia might have been low-key, but politically strategic and potentially beneficial.
The January 27 meeting in Bulanda village on the outskirts of Busia town took place at the home of former Labour Minister Philip Masinde, where invited guests witnessed the crowning of Mudavadi as political leader of the larger western Kenya community.
While Mudavadi, who has been politically active for the last 34 years, has several times been anointed leader of the Luhya community, the gesture extended to the former Sabatia MP is different and much more loaded this time round.
Besides members of the Luhya Council of Elders, last Friday’s event was also graced by elders from the minority communities of Sabaot of Bungoma County, Teso (Busia) and Terikeek, who reside on the border of Vihiga and Nandi counties. Terikeek is a subtribe of the larger Kalenjin community of the Rift Valley region.
This approach, aimed at consolidating the larger cosmopolitan western Kenya base under the Prime CS, is born out of the realisation that the region is not solely home to members of the populous Luhya community. Truth be told, members of other tribes who reside in the region have previously felt left out of the political mobilisation drives mounted under the cover of ‘Luhya unity’ or ‘the Mulembe nation’.
It is during this event that Busia Governor Paul Otuoma declared his willingness to work closely with President William Ruto and any other senior officers in his government “if that will help in any way to speed up development for our people”.
Otuoma’s stand is as weighty as it is shocking to some, considering the politician’s closeness to opposition chief Raila Odinga , and the fact that Busia is the strongest opposition base in western Kenya.
The timing of Mudavadi’s dalliance with western Kenya governors may also be linked to President Ruto’s planned tour of the region later this month. Busia is not particularly politically friendly to the current administration, so the Prime CS may also be on a mission to prepare the ground for his boss’s visit. Using Masinde as the entry point to Busia and to wooing the larger western region could not have been more apt. The former MP for Nambale, who enjoys strong ties with the Mudavadi family, is also Chairman of the Luhya Council of Elders.
Masinde briefly served together with Musalia’s father, the late Moses Mudavadi, in Daniel arap Moi’s Cabinet and claims that his friend, who passed on in 1989, left Musalia in his care.
A day after the Busia meeting, Musalia met Governor Wilber Otichillo of his home county of Vihiga, and the county’s entire leadership, which included members of the county assembly (MCAs) and the governor’s executive team. The ODM-allied Governor promised to work with the government of the day, remarking rather hilariously that political parties “are just uniforms which we wear to get onto the pitch to play, but once the game is over, we discard them”.
Mudavadi is said to have an elaborate plan to win over all the governors allied to the rival Azimio La Umoja-One Kenya coalition party. Besides Otuoma and Otichillo, the Prime CS has made political overtures to Fernandes Barasa of Kakamega and his Trans Nzoia counterpart, George Natembeya. Last November, Mudavadi hosted Barasa at his Nairobi office, where the two “discussed matters of development in Kakamega County”.
Observers also believe Natembeya, who is the immediate former regional commissioner of Rift Valley, may embrace the government’s de-facto number three in command with little resistance. Having served in government in various senior capacities, Natembeya is well wired in government circles and is probably more comfortable on the government side than the opposition. The remaining governor in the region is Bungoma’s Kenneth Lusaka, who is already allied to the ruling coalition, Kenya Kwanza.
In his engagements with the county bosses, Mudavadi has stressed the need for collaboration between the national and county governments “for the benefit of county residents”, a factor that has appears to have persuaded the governors from the opposition parties to embrace Mudavadi “for development’s sake”.
While the turn of events reflects the aspect of inter-dependence between the two levels of government, the argument of working with the central government “for purposes of development” has previously been (mis)used as a ploy for political defection or entry into new political marriages. The cooperation for development aside, Mudavadi is a seasoned operative who is alive to political reality; of course, he is also seeking partnerships beyond 2027.
The counties are a product of a devolved system of government introduced under the Constitution of Kenya, 2010. Article 174 of the Constitution provides that one of the key objectives of devolution is to promote social and economic development and provide proximate, easily accessible services throughout Kenya. The import of this is that county governments, which enjoy direct funding from the central government, should function almost autonomously.
However, owing to the five-decade experience of a centralised system of government in which administrative units depended on the President’s goodwill or handouts for development, many leaders still look up to the President and the Executive for favours.
But Otuoma maintains that there are certain initiatives that are a preserve of the national government, and this has compelled him to seek cooperation. He is specifically keen on transforming the Kisumu-Busia highway, which serves as the entry and exit passage to and from the neighbouring country of Uganda, into a dual carriageway.
The former cabinet minister, who served in the Grand Coalition Government of 2007-2013, maintains that ODM remains his political outfit: “For now, I have a duty to deliver services to my people. Let the parliamentarians do the politicking; my business is to offer good governance.”
Also lined up in the second phase of consultations are MPs – Senate and National Assembly – as well as MCAs. Mudavadi actually kicked off the discourse with the MPs last November at his Nairobi office. The next layer of talks will involve professional and community groups. Outside his western Kenya backyard, Mudavadi has made tangible efforts to draw the coastal region into his political fold. Late last year, for instance, he relinquished his position as party leader of Amani National Congress (ANC) to his long-time ally, Lamu County Governor Issa Timamy, upon appointment to the Cabinet.
Matuga MP Kassim Sawa Tandaza hailed the move as one that would help to strengthen ANC in the coastal region. Incidentally Tandaza, who is from Kwale County, served as Mudavadi’s deputy at ANC for four years.
Meanwhile, Mudavadi’s push for political unity in his backyard comes up against Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua’s equally energised campaign to galvanise political support in the Mt Kenya region. Though they have both denied it, the two Kenya Kwanza leaders have been engaged in a quiet battle for political might, with each having a realistic chance, at the moment, of succeeding Ruto.
On the unity front, Mudavadi will require the solid support of his “brother”, National Assembly Speaker Moses Wetang’ula. There were jitters last week, though, when the Ford-Kenya leader, who was supposed to accompany Mudavadi on the Busia trip, failed to show up.
Instead, Wetang’ula held separate meetings with MCAs in Trans Nzoia and Bungoma counties and is this month scheduled to meet MPs and MCAs of Busia County. While their political tours are not synchronised at the moment, their mission is reportedly the same – to win over Azimio-allied governors to the Kenya Kwanza government.
But even as Mudavadi rides on the card of incumbency to hammer out political deals and seduce new allies, some, like Tandaza, believe that any realistic hopes of his succeeding Ruto at State House lie in the opposition.
Since the advent of the second phase of multipartyism, the Matuga MP notes, history has shown that winning the top seat from the government side is a Herculean task. While making it clear that he is not calling on his former party boss to exit government, Tandaza advises Mudavadi to manoeuvre tactfully in the coming years, even as he walks on the same political path with President Ruto and DP Gachagua.
Indeed, the country’s third President, Mwai Kibaki, took over from Daniel arap Moi in 2002 from the opposition benches, as did Uhuru Kenyatta from Kibaki in 2013, when he was considered ‘less governmental’ than PM Odinga and Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka . And at the end of his second-term, Ruto subtly shifted camp to the opposition, becoming an “outsider” in a government of which he was Deputy President. At that point, Ruto portrayed his main rival, Odinga, who had gone into political bed with sitting President Uhuru Kenyatta, as “a government project”.
“To win the top seat in Kenya, history shows that one has to use the standing and influence within government to galvanise support, but stage an electoral onslaught from outside,” Tandaza told The Weekly Review.
