The headwinds that Senator Moses Wetangula has had to weather on his journey to launch his Presidential bid for 2017 speaks volumes about the challenges the Luhyia Nation has to surmount for it to be a formidable political force in Kenya’s politics.
The Seventeen sub-ethnicities that comprise the Luhyia Nation are each fiercely proud and independent regardless of their size. Any politician from the larger of those sub-ethnicities that makes the assumption that he will get the support of the rest without engaging them, without appreciating their world view and aspirations is doomed to be embarrassed as he or she will not get their backing as a matter of course just because he or she is a Luhyia.
Indeed one discerns the natural distrust of the smaller Luhyia sub-ethnic communities of being dominated, lorded over by the bigger ones, the feeling of being treated like step children in the house of Omoluyia. The larger groups on the other hand loathe to be led by anyone from the smaller sub-ethnic communities.
The seventeen sub-ethnic communities have their unique cultural worldviews and stereotypes and which define their uniqueness. The Luhyia nation equally has key religious mixes stretching from the Quakers (friends), Catholics, Anglicans, Church of God, Salvation Army, Pentecostal Assembly of God (PAG) to Islam as some of the oldest in the region.
In the delicate chemistry in the balance of power in the seventeen children of Omoluyia add the toxic genie of personal ambitions, self interest for those competing for political seats. Who wants to be President, Governor, Senator, Member of Parliament, Woman Representative, Member of County Assembly and using this party or that party, playing this clan against that clan, this Luhyia sub-ethnic group against the other and on top of it the external forces ready to use the divide and rule tactics to gain support for their own interest.
Senator Moses Wetangula has every right to launch his Presidential bid anywhere in Kenya and no one should stand in his way. That is a constitutional right. It is non-negotiable as there is nothing to negotiate on that point. Go, go Senator. We wish you all the best. Better fail trying than never to try at all. The late Michael Wamalwa Kijana and Martin Shikuku tried in 1997, Nickson Kukubo tried in 2007, Musalia Mudavadi tried in 2013.
The reality behind the headwinds to Senator Wetangula’s plans to launch his Presidential bid at Masinde Muliro Gardens in Kakamega county are that the incumbent Governor of Kakamega Wycliffe Ambetsa Oparanya reads the launch as calculated to achieve a dual purpose being to give Senator Wetangula a stake on the Luhyia Nation for his presidential ambition just as Musalia Mudavadi has already staked for the Luhyia Nation’s votes for his presidential ambition but more sinister to Governor Oparanya, his political nemesis Senator Khalwale who has declared interest in the Kakamega county gubernatorial seat also hopes to ride on the Wetangula Presidential launch and assert that he (Khalwale) and aspiring President, Senator Wetangula are the men to be trusted to champion and embody the Luhyia dream to political power in 2017.
The Presidential bid band wagon in Kenya has been perfected as a tool to rally tribal emotional ego and to raise stakes even when the pushers of that Trojan horse are aiming to have regional control or in the new political order to have county (ies) control. Those in the most lucrative business in Kenya , called politics must know that as 2017 draws nigh all stratagems, devices, tools, will be crafted and deployed for ascendancy to the Member of County Assembly seat, Member of Parliament, Woman Representative, Governor, and Senator seats. Those who won’t read beneath the public declaration by their opponents will wake up when the ground has shifted and disappeared and votes neatly in their enemies’ bag.
The time for interrogating, crafting Luhyia unity cannot be in the run up to an election when all leaders are struck by the bug of winning this or that seat. Luhyia unity will only be soberly negotiated in the first six months after results of the 2017 elections and in which the Luhyia Nation will unfortunately once again have miserably lost through political miscalculation which they are presently deeply engaged in.
Navigating and harnessing the Luhyia political landscape is no easy walk in the park. Politicians from the region and beyond continue to underestimate what it will take to gel the seventeen children of Omoluyia to synchronize their politics.
