In Raila’s ODM, Apili Wawire’s betrayal legacy remains alive

By OTIENO OTIENO

It took independent Kenya 28 long years to disentangle itself from the single party rule – in one form or the other – after Kanu lured opposition party Kadu into a merger in 1964.

But it took just about six months for Kanu to again begin scattering the opposition following the multiparty elections of 1992.

The villain of the new-era defection politics was one Apili Wawire, the then newly elected Ford-Asili MP for Lugari who crossed over to Kanu in 1993.

Mr Wawire’s shamelessness seemed to have emboldened a number of his other colleagues in the former Western and Nyanza provinces to defect to the ruling party as well.

Media reports of the early 1990s defections mostly depict Mr Wawire and others as ‘tumbocrats’ who sold out due to financial gluttony.

BETRAYAL

But the enduring impact of their betrayal on the culture of Kenya’s greedy political elite is grossly understated.

Inside every well-cut suit you see on the opposition benches in Parliament, there is always an MP dying to be courted by the ruling party.

It explains the excitement among opportunistic ODM MPs last week at having been handed the leadership of parliamentary committees at the expense of their colleagues in the ruling Jubilee Party faction loyal to Deputy President William Ruto.

They will point to the Handshake deal between their party leader Raila Odinga and President Uhuru Kenyatta in March 2018 and their role in Jubilee fallout as having earned them the right to hold those positions.

But the Handshake is itself a clever defections scheme that has allowed ODM to shamelessly carry itself around as an opposition party when it is effectively an appendage of a ruling party faction.

LETHAL WEAPON

As an opposition destroyer force, the Uhuru-Raila deal is actually a much more lethal weapon in the hands of a government wishing to deflect accountability than the individual defections orchestrated by the Moi regime in the 1990s.

It means that President Kenyatta, whose party started off with a considerable majority in the National Assembly from the 2017 elections, now has additional 70 or more MPs to do his bidding.

With nearly all House committees also chaired by the Handshake MPs, the capture of Parliament by State House is complete.

The suggestions that the reorganisation of the House committees is inspired by a desire by a section of the political elite to control the constitutional reform process should even worry Kenyans more.

In a normal democracy, something as important a change to the Constitution can’t be done on the whims of an individual.

But if President Kenyatta were to have a crazy brainwave and decide to change the Constitution today nobody would stop him.

In ODM and the Handshake, the President got a bargain in Parliament that even his mentor, Daniel arap Moi, could only dream of.

The legacy of Apili Wawire lives on.

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