JUMA: Removal threats against Wetang’ula far-fetched

National Assembly Speaker Moses Masika Wetang’ula/FILE

This was under the infamous single-party rule, and a police state, in any association with people who had just tried to overthrow the constitutional order could have been seen as inviting jail or death.

This courage and resilience must have been noted in high places, enough for Wetang’ula to be nominated to Parliament after the 1992 elections, when the ruling party would take up all the nomination slots in Parliament.

After he finally entered Parliament in the 2002 elections, he has not lost any elections. You could say the Speaker is a man who knows his stuff.

Whenever any political drama surrounds Speaker Wetang’ula, the common story is that he is being persecuted for refusing to fold his party, Ford Kenya, to join the ruling UDA, as did his counterpart, Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi.

On one level, it is easy to understand the Speaker’s motivation.

Unlike Mudavadi’s ANC, a largely small-time player with no premium history, Ford Kenya has been one of the most consequential players on the nation’s political scene.

At the restoration of multiparty democracy in Kenya in 1991, and especially after the split of the original FORD, Ford Kenya was led by none other than the great Jaramogi Oginga Odinga.

It had some of the finest politicians to ever grace this land, a large group of uncompromising firebrands then loosely known as the Young Turks.

In fact, the cast was so elite in terms of their political power, that even Wetang’ula would never have featured among them if he had been a member of the party at that time.

Many political commentators point out that Jaramogi was buried in a casket draped in the Ford Kenya colours and the party’s lion symbol of the party.

In terms of grounding and history, the party was Jaramogi’s home, a revolutionary movement for which he bore scars from the trenches of the Second Liberation struggle.

If you were to strictly follow a political doctrine of the liberation movement, you would aver that Wetang’ula in fact holds the party in trust for those who placed their faith in it.

It would be foolhardy to just fold a party of this nature and join another, for political expediency. Especially if this entailed dissolving Ford Kenya to join a political Johnny-come-lately, such as UDA.

The latest threats directed at the National Assembly Speaker come from a ruling by the High Court on February 7, quashing a 2022 ruling by Speaker Wetang’ula, in which he had declared the Kenya Kwanza coalition the Majority in the National Assembly.

Regardless of how this plays out, the Speaker will surely be aware that the forces gunning for him are many and diverse. In the fast-changing political scene, his seat may even become part of the negotiation items on the table.

In the tight 2022 election, it is widely acknowledged that his delivery of Bungoma county to Kenya Kwanza ultimately tilted the balance in favour of President William Ruto.

The political colossus called Wetang’ula has weathered many storms, some quite intense, and it would be naïve to assume that he is a pushover.