GAME OF MUSICAL CHAIRS IN ARMENIANS SAGA
Plainly speaking MWANGI Muiruri

Kenya Times, Kenya
April 1 2006

Unless pigs have wings, all of our political parties are a big joke,
disappointing and outrightly undeserving to form any decent government
for the good of this country.

Consequently, we neither have a distinct governing party nor an agenda
driven Opposition. What we have is a distorted breed of parties in
Government and Opposition. The way it is now is that President Mwai
Kibaki is absurdly and ruling us with his whimsical appointments
in total disregard of who was given the majority mandate to be in
Government. In turn, he needlessly faces opposition from a majority
of those who were elected to be with him in Government.

Our political parties are only good at mutating like amoeba.

Evidence? President Kibaki’s men have just abandoned Narc and formed
a new outfit they have baptised Narc-Kenya. The father and mother of
all parties, Kanu, has just given birth to New Kanu. Narc is dead
and has left many orphans, while the Orange Democratic Movement,
a forum formed to crusade for the rejection of the ill-fated Draft
Constitution, has been registered as a political party in Meru. Where
does this leave the real owners and luminaries of original ODM? My
guess is that perhaps they will opt to register ODM-Party-Kenya.

While these parties are launched with a lot of fanfare, they soon
begin to fade out and get hit by wrangles before mutating. And when
an amoeba mutates in a human body, a litany of health complications
attack. One being your physique expressing that fitness characteristic
of a sickly cow.

It is sad that Kenyans are dreaming of these fragmented parties that
they so support are adequate to make their idolised men and women
ascend to state power. Raw reality is; we are helplessly sinking into
a political quagmire courtesy of the comical nature of our political
parties run by political clowns.

Kanu, Liberal Democratic Party, Ford-Kenya, Ford-P and Democratic
Party-the fair major parties in our political horizons are built on
ethnic concepts and are facing uncontrollable internal turmoil. What
their officials are currently doing is to litter the political arena
with a lot of verbal noise, pretending how united they are, yet they
are mutating amoebas.

If it is Kanu, what segment do we support? Uhuru Kenyatta’s, Nicholas
Biwott’s or the Government affiliated Njenga Karume’s faction?

LDP? Raila Odinga’s segment or that subset which pledges loyalty to
President Mwai Kibaki?

Ford-Kenya? Musikari Kombo’s segment or the Mukhisa Kituyi/Newton
Kulundu/ Moses Akaranga rebellious wing?

DP? Is it chairman-Mwai Kibaki- insisting that the party is dead while
his Secretary-General George Nyamweya insisting that it is alive,
healthy and roaring to go?

Yet, talk is rife of alliances to form formidable coalitions. Which
segment merges with which to carry the day? There are suggestions
that the taxpayer should be funding political parties. How will the
splinter groups agree on what wing of the fragments will retain the
signatory rights to the funds?

That is why most of our politicians-Kibaki among them- have resorted
to discern political parties politics in favour of ethnic politics.

The strength of this form of politics is that; while it is impossible
to impose decisions on enlightened party officials, it is very easy
to amass ethnic backing. Instead of political parties merging to
incorporate diversity of Kenyans and their diverse opinions on the
ideological realm, ethnic chiefs simply negotiate with fellow tribal
chiefs to form alliances.

The scenario now forming is Kenya investing on governments built
on tribal strengths. Woe unto you if your tribe is small! One can
argue-as a counter attack- that it is not sheep, cows and goats that
forms these ethnic groups. That at the end of the day we are talking
of people coming together in those tribal alliances that are flattered
to be a coalition. True.

But when you find these people being grouped together through
inter-tribal negotiations, we are talking of ethnicity not the core
doctrines of building ideological political parties. Since these
outfits cannot use a name of a local resident, they assume all those
funny names that hide the tribal factor in which they are founded on.

That is how they escape their real identities are supposed to be
LDP Raila or Tuju, Ford-K Musikari/Kituyi or Kulundu, Kanu Uhuru,
Kanu Biwott, DP Nyamweya and Narc-K Kibaki.

In the face of Kenyans who are notorious for grabbing the newest
and militantly presented political brand in town, these “astute”
politicians resort to sharing our political power behind our backs-in
boardrooms or restaurants where they craft mischievous Memorandums
of Understandings (MoU) they never intend to honour. They base their
sharing on the big tribes getting the lion’s share while the crumbs
go to the smaller communities. Eventually, they come out holding hands
and belting those sweet sounding tosha slogans to the gullible voters.

It is when those power deals start turning sour that you hear our
leaders tearing at each other in public. It then degenerates to
politics of deceit, hypocrisy and confrontations-like what we are
witnessing now. Unfortunately, this is the status quo that our tribal
chiefs will keep taking us through each time we near an election. The
era of un-honoured MoUs and the government of the day being under
siege from a coalition partner have just begun and not in a hurry to
leave us until when a flash of wisdom assaults voters. The amoebic
characteristics of our political parties sadly underlies the fallacy
that is our fledgling multiparty democracy.
From: Baghdasarian