Why the presidential poll remains two-horse race
By Editorial.Team, February 14, 2022In a country with an impressive Internet penetration rate, the battle to win the perception war is now taking shape on the digital platform.
Well, it’s not clear how many Kenyans follow or even take the political conversations on social media pages seriously, but clearly, the battle to showcase different candidates as popular wherever they go has become a career for many. Social media live video clips and well chosen pictures have become the campaign materials of choice for whipping emotions and wooing voters.
The agenda both on digital platform and on legacy media seems to be about the two leading political formations—Kenya Kwanza Alliance and Azimio La Umoja movement. Dominance of the two formations on these spaces tells you that a third force is unlikely. However, One Kenya Alliance (OKA) imminent move to join the Azimio team and the emergence of Jubilee Party as the outfit that has this track record that almost all major presidential aspirants want to lay claim on is likely to change the landscape.
Granted, Deputy President William Ruto is no political pushover and he has certainly been rattled and unlike ODM leader Raila Odinga, when he’s pushed against the wall, he rarely takes time to reflect, restrategise and pull through but roars back with ferocity that belies his position as a principal. This has exposed him enough time, and even though he’s one of the most energetic and stoically determined of all the top principals, I guess he will be put on a perpetual mode of responding to little rattles and his campaigns will probably be overdosed with ferocious response and attacks to a few politicians who will rattle him. The battle on the digital space will, therefore, oscillate around the interesting rebuttals he is giving and even though in politics they say any publicity is good publicity, it remains to be seen how these short clips of a rattled presidential candidate will play out in the grand scale of things.
On the other hand, Raila seems to be putting his experience to good use and appears to be fairly strategic and almost always calculated in his response when he is up against the wall. How he wiggled himself out of the crumbling BBI to unveil Azimio la Umoja which seems to be a vehicle that he intends to use to continue with his transformative agenda is astonishing. Azimio has captured the aspirations of many Kenyans.
Interestingly, the loss of Senator Moses Wetangula and ANC leader Musalia Mudavadi, who were for all intent and purposes within the framework of the Azimio aspirations until they realised Baba is first among equals, seem to have pushed Baba up against the wall and probably solved a problem for him.
OKA is poised to join Azimio and probably after the loss of the two western leaders, Baba and his team had to pull all stops to solve the OKA conundrum because a lurking OKA would definitely have been a disruption and a big dent on Azimio la Umoja.
In fact, if Kalonzo Musyoka and his OKA principals join Azimio and then you have the three Ukambani Governors on board, the Kamba nation territory will be locked and with Jubilee locking Mt Kenya, the race becomes tighter for Kenya Kwanza Alliance.
Maybe and just maybe, Mudavadi and Wetangula joining the DP is what Baba and Azimio needed. Kalonzo, Ngilu are powerhouses in Ukambani and together with the other two governors, they will run Kenya Kwanza out of the Kamba nation. In Mount Kenya, there is no doubt the revamped Jubilee Party will erase any doubt who is the king of the mountain.
My crystal ball tells me that as it goes, the Azimio distributed campaigns will probably weigh down Kenya Kwanza Alliance in all the regions and probably leave Western Kenya and just a few regions on the Coast and Rift Valley as battlegrounds. We have not seen the end of what some of these leaders can pull. In fact, they say politicians eat back lots of their words and they rarely have shame. The rate at which Azimio is mentioned in Kenya Kwanza is probably a clear sign that a lot can still happen and as we can never tell until the two main contenders unveil their running mates.
—hesbonhansen@gmail.com