Commentary By Leo Odera Omolo

WHEREAS the ODM party leader and the Prime Minister Raila Odinga has extended an olive branch to his party rebel MPs who had campaigned vigorously to derail the draft constitution during the just concluded referendum voting, a group of ODM MPs from the Rift Valley appeared not to have appreciated this good gesture.

These MPs have flagrantly refused to reciprocate the PM’s political magnanimity and statesmanship and have gone solo unfairly attacking every move made by Mr Odinga to normalize the working relations within his party.

Led by Belgut MP Charles Keter and the Konoin MP Dr Julius Kones, the group has gone overboard as far as likened Mr Odinga’s alleged dictatorship tendency to be even worse than those of the former despotic and murderous ruler of Uganda Idi Amin.

Keter and his cronies, however, seemed to have forgotten that most of them had faithfully served in senior positions of decision making in the former KANU regime of the retired President Daniel Arap Moi who used to crack his whip on dissident Ministers over the Voice of Kenya lunch time news broadcasting without consulting individual concerned. And off course Keter and his cahoots never complained about this kind of iron fist dictatorial ruling style.

Many Kenyans had gone through the harrowing experience at the now infamous “Nyayo House torture chambers’. Some were maimed and even lost their manhood, while the unlucky one perished. But the likes of Keter were silent not to even to utter a word in protest against this kind of draconian police brutality of the time. They heaped many good songs of praise and continued worshipping Moi like the small God. Why? Is it because he was their fellow Kalenjin?

Anyway, for Honorable Keter who lost his lucrative ministerial position a few months ago as an Assistant Minster for Energy owing to political miscalculation, one could understand his sentiment that he is ‘crying over spilt milk”

It is time these political novices and mediocre from the Kalenjin community to come into terms with the political realities that for their people having voted unanimously for the Prime Minister Raila Odinga’s presidential hopeful in during the year 2007 general election, this did not qualify them to hold the Prime Minister at political ransom nor for political enslavement. This is highly primitive way of doing politics in modern Kenya. Politics is a game that is not static, but kept on changing according to the political circumstance prevailing at the given time.

It is not compulsorily necessary that only Raila Odinga will be the next President of Kenya, and even if it must be so, must he be subjected to enslavement to an extent of kneeling before the Rift Valley leaders and becoming an apologist to the Kalenjin MPs? Although I am in agreement with those upholding the school of thought that politics is the question of numbers, it doesn’t work that way.

The just concluded referendum voting outcome had indicated that even those most vocal anti-Raila MPs from the region have lost touch with their constituents at the grass root.

A case in point is that of Hon Joshua Kutuny in Cherangany constituency whose constituents voted unanimously for the Green despite their MP in the forefront in the Reds camp. Another good example is the Eldoret North constituency where the electorate voted almost on 50-50 ratio giving the area MP William Ruto who headed the No camp a narrow and negligible lead over the Yes camp.

These were all clear indication that nobody had the monopoly of the Kalenjin votes. Even the born again Ruto’s latest credible ally the retired President Daniel Moi had all his three sons shown the exit door during the 2007 polls in all three constituencies where they had wanted to be elected to Parliament, though the grand old man seemed not to have learnt a lasting lesson from this shameful experience.

What we are seeing is that the present crops of Kalenjin getting sucked into politics of mediocrity couple with wrong, immature and childish strategies. No wonder some people had coined the word that there were MPs for sell in the current 10th Parliament. These words were coined during the massive maize scandal in which every youthful Kalenjin MP it was alleged to have become multi-millionaires over night.

They lacked the intellect instinct and true nationalism which was exhibited by their predecessors like Dr.Taaita AraapToweett and John Marie Seroney who stood firm and steadfast with their fellow early nationalist from other Kenyan communities and gave the colonialists the sleepless nights during the struggle for liberation of this country from the colonial yokes.

These political novices nee to learn that the Rift Valley Province is not the exclusive home of the Kalenjins ethnic groups alone, but an area which is more or less a cosmopolitan region housing and accommodating people from the various ethnic background, tribes and races who have chosen the region to be their home.

Ever since Keter and his friends were elected to Parliament none of them has ever stood up and demanded that the land leases covering up to the 999 years issued to the white farmers and the foreign owned multinational tea companies in areas like Nandi Hills, Kericho,Bomet, Buret, Belgut and Sotik be reviewed and negotiated afresh for the reasonable 99 years. But what we do hear is about the big scramble for cheap handouts and business deals from these tea companies, Though the talk about the loopholes in certain clauses of the new draft constitution had rent the air during the referendum campaign nobody addressed these leases as part of the contentious land issues. Are these gentlemen of Parliament truly and genuinely representing the views of their constituents?

Is it Raila Odinga that has stopped these MPs from articulating the views of their electorate on the realignment of the leases for the prime the land in their region that are still being occupied by foreigners The anti-Raila MPs from the Kalenni community must go back to the drawing board and learn how to be cohesive enough. In fact it was Mr Odinga’s popularity that made some of them to be what they are to day. Most of them could not have defeated Moi’s KANU blue eyed boys in 2007 election. And the recent referendum voting has taught us a lesson tat the dreadful KANU Y92 is still very much alive in William Ruto and Cyrus Jirongo.

These MPs should be repentant and accept the olive branch extended to them by Raila Odinga and join hands with the rest of Kenya in the real task of nation building instead of chest thumping rhetoric and useless political antics

Ends

leooderaomolo@yahoo.com