Political alliances in the country began to take shape in earnest after the 1997 general elections. Immediately after the elections there was a short-lived political alliance amongst the opposition parties with the intention of denouncing the presidential results in which Moi was declared the winner.
This alliance began to falter with the beginning of cooperation between Moi’s KANU and Raila Odinga’s NDP. This cooperation became necessary because KANU which was declared the winner in the elections did not have the parliamentary majority for it to effectively pass government bills in parliament.
A quick alliance was to be crafted to ensure that the government could enjoy a majority in parliament. KANU and NDP, therefore, began to cooperate within parliament. This cooperation required each party to support and defend the other’s position, especially within parliament.
This resulted in NDP supporting some of the KANU’s positions in the house. KANU reciprocated by supporting NDP’s positions. Their attempt at cooperation was first seen in the election of Speaker and Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly. NDP supported KANU’s nominee to the post of Speaker while KANU supported NDP’S nominee to the post of Deputy Speaker. Both the nominees won on the strength of the two parties’ cooperation in parliament.
This cooperation was also accompanied by ethnic realignment. The hostilities that existed between Raila Odinga and his Luo ethnic group on the one hand, and Moi and his Kalenjin ethnic group on the other hand, ceased to exist. Luo Nyanza began to accommodate Moi and his Kalenjin ethnic group with ease.
The Kalenjins also began to accommodate Raila and his Luo ethnic group. Both KANU and NDP began to collaborate in joint political activities even at the local level. On the whole, cooperation between the two parties enabled NDP to galvanize support at the local level with relatively more ease than other opposition political parties as the Provincial Administration and the police would rarely interfere with its meetings.
Any opposition politician who was perceived as trying to threaten that cooperation was not kindly treated by the two different cooperating ethnic groups. In September 2000, for example, James Orengo (a politician from Luoland) teamed up with some opposition politicians to form Muungano wa Mageuzi (Movement for Change).
This organization began to visit different parts of the country to demand for a “people driven” constitution. A large section of the Luo community chastised Orengo and accused him of attempting to undermine Raila who according to them was being groomed to take over the presidency from Moi.
Similarly Orengo’s movement was not welcome in parts of the Rift Valley where the Kalenjins predominated. NDP’s appointment to the government led to a series of preparations for the merger of the two parties.
In 2001, cooperation between the two parties witnessed the appointment of Raila Odinga and several other NDP Members of Parliament to the cabinet.
The immediate interpretation of this was that Moi was grooming Raila Odinga to take over after his retirement since the constitution did not allow him to run for a third term. The two parties (KANU and NDP) had different reasons for merging.
Those in NDP expected the merger to place them – and their leader Raila Odinga – strategically next to Moi in preparation for the succession race. They thought that given that Moi had agreed to work with Raila, this was equivalent to choosing him as his successor.
Those in KANU had slightly different reasons for the merger. They expected the merger to give them numeric advantage over opposition political parties. In the absence of Moi who had led the party to victory, they required a clear majority and a bloc of ethnic votes in order to win the forthcoming elections.
On 18 March 2002, delegates of the two parties met at Kasarani Sports Centre, Nairobi, and began the process of merging and filling the new party positions.
Those selected for the positions of the Vice Chairmen were: Uhuru Kenyatta from Central Kenya; Kalonzo Musyoka from Eastern; Musalia Mudavadi from Western; and Katana Ngala from the Coast. The position of the party Secretary General went to NDP leader Raila Odinga.
The way in which the party positions were distributed was to ensure a strong political force with a strong ethnic and regional base. Since voting behavior in the past two general elections was largely characterized by ethnicity and regionalism it was deemed necessary to maintain ethnic and regional balance in the sharing out of the positions. The idea was then to identify those who were regarded as ethnic or regional leaders and these were given top party positions.
The merger between KANU and NDP was short-lived. Its collapse was occasioned by the anointment of Uhuru Kenyatta as the new party’s flag bearer for presidential elections.
The other ethnic and regional leaders who had been elected to key party positions and who also haboured presidential ambitions openly protested against Moi’s choice. They were led by Raila Odinga and together formed the ‘Rainbow Coalition’ to distinguish themselves from the Moi-Uhuru faction of KANU.
They demanded that a genuine elections for the party’s presidential candidate. They insisted that the secret ballot be used in the nomination of the presidential candidate; that an independent body to supervise the nomination exercise be used; and that they be allowed to scrutinize the lists of delegates to the conference.
The Moi-Uhuru group declined to meet these demands. The national delegates’ conference was convened on 14 October 2002. The Rainbow Coalition declined to attend the conference and instead held a public rally at Uhuru Park, Nairobi, where they announced the taking over of a little known party, the Liberal Democratic Party, and transformed it into a vehicle for their opposition politics.
This marked the collapse of the merger. The collapse of the merger also witnessed the deconstruction of the Luo-Kalenjin alliance that began with the cooperation between KANU and NDP. In Kenya’s political struggles since independence the construction and deconstruction of ethnic alliances began with political elites at higher political levels and the masses accordingly re-aligned at the bottom.
The Opposition Coalition 1998-2002
Political Party alliance was not only restricted to KANU and NDP. The defeat of opposition political parties in the 1992 and 1997 election continued to serve as an important lesson for opposition political parties. All the opposition mainstream parties, therefore, watched keenly the merger between KANU and NDP.
An issue that put them together, in addition to their worry about KANU and NDP cooperation and its implications for the succession politics, was the need for a comprehensive review of the constitution. In the early 1998, the mainstream opposition parties came together to renew demands for constitutional reforms.
Groups of rebel MPs in NDP, KANU and members of FORD-Kenya and DP often travelled together to different parts of the country for the purpose. The opposition leaders also began to meet regularly to discuss possibilities of working towards a united opposition.
In January 2002, they formally launched the National Alliance for Change (NAC). Another alliance evolved soon after the formation of NAC. The new alliance, Kenya’s Peoples Coalition, comprised several parties that had initially distanced themselves from the three parties that had formed NAC.
Leading this coalition was Simeon Nyachae of FORD-People who had led one of the rebel groups in KANU. NAC invited Nyachae’s coalition but he declined to join them. NAC nevertheless appointed a committee to study and make recommendations on how to achieve opposition unity.
It developed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that all participating parties had to sign. As a show of commitment to political change the party developed a new organizational structure with the position of Prime Minister as means of decentralizing power from the president.
The participating parties then dished out positions within the new structure in anticipation that it might form the next government. Mwai Kibaki of DP was nominated as the presidential candidate with Michael Wamalwa of FORD-Kenya as his running-mate.
The post of the Prime Minister went to Charity Ngilu who had earlier on formed the National Party of Kenya (NPK). The NAC coalition finally established a secretariat and changed its name to the National Alliance Party of Kenya (NAK) which was initially Charity Ngilu’s party – the NPK.
The new party was also formed on the basis of regional and ethnic considerations. It was an attempt to form a broad based ethnic and regional alliance.
It was a well calculated move meant to galvanize support from the Luhyias of Western Kenya; the GEMA community of Central and parts of Eastern Kenya; the Kamba of Eastern Kenya; and a sprinkle of ethnic and regional groupings that were dissatisfied with the KANU and NDP merger.
Similarly, in the Kenya Peoples Coalition, only FORD-People had a regional support in the Kisii Nyanza. Others were minor parties with little numeric and ethnic support. The new national alliance, NAK, continued to hold joint rallies in different parts of the country to demonstrate the new unity among opposition parties.
Following the fall-out among the new KANU leaders in July 2002 after Moi named Uhuru Kenyatta as his preferred choice, the Rainbow Alliance faction in KANU began to discuss how to work together with NAK. Together they formed the National Rainbow Coalition (NARC).
The parties signed a Memorandum of Understanding to govern the formation of the government upon winning the election. Mwai Kibaki became its single presidential candidate. This coalition became a strong ethnic and regional alliance as all the larger ethnic groups were incorporated. Even the Luo-Kikuyu feud which had characterized Kenya’s political struggles in the 1960s and the 1990s subsided.
Those who had earlier on enjoyed ethnic and regional support and failed to join the party were marked as the ‘enemy’ of their respective ethnic and regional groupings. They were, therefore, defeated in the parliamentary elections in their respective constituencies.
Some of them had even been members of parliament for a long period of time representing those constituencies. The casualties of this new political wave were: Musalia Mudavadi in Sabatia constituency; James Orengo in Ugenya constituency; Katana Ngala in Ganze constituency; and Sharrif Nassir in Mvita constituency.
NARC won the December 2002 elections with a big majority. The party’s presidential candidate, Mwai Kibaki, won 62% of the votes cast while Uhuru Kenyatta the KANU candidate polled 31% of the votes.
Simeon Nyachae of FORD-People got 6%. The party NARC also won a big majority – though not absolute – of parliamentary seats. The party won 125 seats out of 210 seats. KANU won only 64 seats and FORD-People 14 seats. The remaining 7 seats went to smaller parties.
References
- Kanyinga, K. ‘Limitations of Political Liberalization: Parties and Electoral Politics in Kenya, 1992-2002’, in W.O Oyugi, P. Wanyande and C. Odhiambo Mbai (eds). The Politics of Transition in Kenya: From KANU to NARC. Nairobi: Heinrich BÖll Foundation, 2003. Pp 96-127.
- Wanyande, P. ‘The Politics of Coalition Government,’ in P. Wanyande, M. Omosa and C. Ludeki (eds). Governance and Transition Politics in Kenya. Nairobi: University of Nairobi Press, 2007, pp. 107-129.
Leave a Reply