By Charles Wachira
Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta's name is doing serious rounds, particularly in his ancestral Mt Kenya backyard and neighbouring regions. Uhuru is being touted as leading contestants for the top seat after President Kibaki's exit.
About a month ago, for example, in a meeting in Limuru, Kiambu District, and attended by the political brass, drawn exclusively from the Mt Kenya enclave, the 47-year-old scion of Kenya's inaugural First Family, was rubberstamped to the status of bellwether. His mission, for now, was innocuously decked in partisan altruism. The role of Gatundu North MP, who also holds the Finance docket, was basically to lead an onslaught within the Mt Kenya region, rallying the local populace to adopt a new constitution in the August 4 referendum.
However, it was not lost to political pundits the event was a carefully orchestrated plot, seeking among other issues, to test the waters and to give notice to the ubiquitous naysayers who think the region — read Kikuyu community — will capitulate and instead back a candidate from another community for president.
Ethnic voting
It is telling that while the country's 47-year-old independence history has witnessed successive democratic elections, it has not escaped the attention of all that of the three presidents, the country has had so far; two have come from the Mt Kenya region.
But Paul Muite, a lawyer and former MP for Kikuyu, thinks the obsession with the Kikuyu community in regard to how they vote, is misplaced.
"It is not just central Kenya people (who vote for their own). Nyanza Province exhibits the same trend. So long as a community has a serious presidential candidate, that community will vote for the candidate. It is the curse of ethnic politics since 1963 which inevitably includes nepotism and corruption among others," Mr Muite says.
Is there hope that positive change will engulf the national psyche in the days to come?
Says Muite: "We are moving towards democratising and de-ethinicising Kenyan politics. Moi was president as an individual. It is not the Kalenjin people who were president. So was it with Jomo Kenyatta and Mwai Kibaki.
You cannot ask a Kalenjin or a Kikuyu not to contest simply because the 'two communities' have produced presidents. That is not democracy. Let the voters decide.
If a majority of voters choose not to elect a Kalenjin or Kikuyu on the basis that there have been presidents from those communities, so be it but you cannot ask individuals from those communities not to offer their candidatures."
"Other ethnic groups would take it in bad taste should another Kikuyu become president. I don't think other tribes will accept it. There is a palpable feeling around the country that the Kikuyu think of themselves as being superior compared to other communities. But indeed Kikuyus can demystify the negative ethnicalisation of Kenya politics were they to choose to back a non-Kikuyu," says Dr Richard Bosire of the Department of Political Science and Public Administration, University of Nairobi.
But Prof Macharia Munene, a senior political science lecturer at the United States International University, thinks labelling individuals along ethnic lines is archaic.
Numerically strong
"This kind of nonsensical thinking should be discarded. Democracy means voters choosing their president and not what some pseudo-pundit would like to prescribe. The minute you start telling a Kenyan not to aspire for president because of another person who is assumed to be his tribal kinsman was president, you engage in political demagoguery of eroding the rights of a Kenyan citizen," he says.
Muite says it is intellectually fallacious to knee-jerk a candidate from running for public office on account of ethnicity. He bursts the bubble of ethnic homogeneity in regards to the Kikuyu community, saying a discernable voting pattern lacks.
"It is difficult to decipher a pattern. Real electoral choices occurred in the first multi-party General Election of 1992. At the parliamentary level, South Imenti, Central Imenti, and Kikuyu constituencies voted Ford-Kenya MPs against the grain in the region, notably for Ford-Asili and DP.
Tribalism
At the presidential level, Kiambu, Nairobi, Murang'a, Nakuru and Nyandarua voted for Kenneth Matiba while Nyeri, Kirinyaga, Embu, Meru and Laikipia voted for Mr Kibaki.
Former President Moi and Kanu blocked Matiba from entering and campaigning in Embu and Meru and appeared to have been giving tacit support to DP in those areas in a strategy of splitting the region's vote," he argues.
On paper, the argument that the Kikuyu, numerically the country's biggest group, ought to give the presidential race a miss in 2012 on account of having produced two of three presidents the country has had so far, makes for good academic debate.
But in real life the sophistry for now, simply loses altitude.
This is because the Kikuyu as a community is heterogeneous and suffers from the fault of ancestral roots, socio-economic differences including, gender suspicions.
Mr Tim Okwaro, a lawyer in Nairobi, captures a particular stereotype that debunks the myth of a cohesive Kikuyu nation that has sometimes played on the national stage.
"I was born in Samia District in western Kenya, but I attended Kagumo High School in Nyeri District, in the mid 1970s. As a student I learnt that in general the Kikuyu had choosy epithets for each other.
There was particularly a saying that went along these lines: the Kikuyu from Murang'a are born to do business. Those from Nyeri are supposedly cut for police work. Those from Kiambu were pigeon holed as born leaders. That's why, the argument went, the initial training police college was located in Nyeri, while the political leadership of the country had its roots in Kiambu with business enterprises having the face of a male figure hailing from Murang'a."
And one may ask, why is Uhuru the flag bearer of the Mt Kenya region?
"Because Uhuru has matured politically. He has the good interests of the Mt Kenya region. And despite being wealthy, Uhuru remains a people's person. He means what he says and says what he means," says Mr James Njiru, formerly Kirinyaga Kanu chairman.
Source: The Standard | Online Edition
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