OMWENGA: Matiang’i presidency can end two-tribe rotation for State House

Former Interior CS Fred Matiang'i / FILE

Some of us have been singing since 2007 that we needed a break from the presidency rotating between two communities, and by extension, two regions. In an open letter to President Mwai Kibaki on July 25, 2011, I implored our now-late head of state as follows:

“When we say Your Excellency needs to ensure peaceful handover of power to your successor, …we are also implicitly asking Your Excellency, and now openly urge you to use your power and influence to make sure that we not only have free and fair elections in 2012 but, equally importantly, you must ensure that tribalism is crushed as the determinative factor in electing our leaders.”

I further implored our third president thus, “If you accomplish this, Your Excellency would not only have presided over the changing of Kenya from the old to the new … you would have also planted a seed that would germinate to an even more beautiful Kenya where our affairs are governed not by tribe and negative ethnicity, but by who we are as Kenyans.”

I concluded my plea to Kibaki by appealing to his sense of patriotism, saying, “[the] way I see it, Your Excellency, there are a number of things you can do to lead in this effort to defeat tribalism-based schemes to succeed you and therefore cleanse our nation of this debilitating disease of tribalism in Kenya.”

I then went on to enumerate and describe what these were, including for Kibaki to “inform our brothers and sisters from Central that, with 42 tribes in Kenya, and having had Your Excellency and our first President Mzee Jomo Kenyatta elected from Central to lead our country, let our brothers and sisters from the area show love and unity with other Kenyans and vote for someone other than their own this time around.”

As I previously noted, I don’t know whether Kibaki ever saw my letter, but I do know a key adviser did, and that fact notwithstanding, now-retired President Uhuru Kenyatta was sworn into office following the 2013 election.

It was therefore music to our progressive ears when Uhuru announced after the handshake, that it was time another son or daughter from outside Mt Kenya led the country. By supporting Raila Odinga, Uhuru was also saying let’s end the rotation of the presidency between two communities.

Leaders from the region joined the chorus, starting with Jubilee insiders such as David Murathe, Governor Anne Waiguru and opinion leaders such as Prof Mutahi Ngunyi.

While that was Uhuru’s mission, namely, to put someone in State House other than one from Mt Kenya, or the Kalenjin community for that matter, someone from the latter had a different mission.

That mission by the latter succeeded.

We are now thrust into a situation come 2027 when Kenyans must decide whether it is time – as it is - to have a president from elsewhere than these two communities who have led us since Independence.

Forget about who has said they’re interested in vying in 2027, there are only two candidates who can successfully challenge and make the current president a one-term president and these are former Super CS Fred Matiang’i or former Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka.

If you listen carefully, you’ll hear former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua ‘shout loudly’ that he is not interested and therefore will not vie in 2027.

His mission is two-fold: to be a vital factor in determining who makes Wantam a reality and to have an oversized say in the next government.

Both of those objectives are monumental, but one would be purely speculating if they told you how that would play out in the end.

What one can state objectively is this: if Uhuru failed earlier to end the rotation of the presidency between two communities, he will not fail this time around.

Now all is set for Uhuru to hand over the Jubilee Party to his former Interior CS from the Abagusii community in Kisii. It would therefore follow that if a majority of voters cast ballots for Jubilee’s presidential candidate – expected to be Matiang’i - then this noble notion all progressives have been dreaming about will become a reality come 2027. No more two-tribe rotation, and with that tribalism will end in Kenya as a factor in presidential elections.