Former Karachuonyo MP Phoebe Asiyo is one of my favourite leaders in the entire country.
Because of her impeccable history, I consider her to have been born ahead of her time.
As first African boss of the Maendeleo ya Wanawake, the first woman senior superintendent of Prisons and one of very few early women MPs in post-independent Kenya, Asiyo has previously narrated how she and other women leaders approached Jomo Kenyatta, before independence and actually demanded a 50-50 gender parity in the impending independence government.
It would have been revolutionary, such many decades ago.
In her memoir, It Is Possible: An African Woman Speaks, she has one interesting anecdote that should be compulsory reading for politicians navigating through leadership transitions.
The year was 1994 and Ford Kenya leader, the great Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, had died and been buried at his Kang’o ka Jaramogi home.
Subsequent to this, Asiyo who was then the Karachuonyo MP, Hon Asiyo, hosted a meeting of Luo MPs at her Wikondiek home in Karachuonyo constituency.
The agenda was simple: after the then Ford Kenya vice chairman Michael Kijana Wamalwa had risen to the party’s top position to succeed Jaramogi, the 21 Luo MPs, including Langata’s Raila Odinga, needed to reach a consensus on who between Raila and the then Ugenya MP James Orengo would take over the vice chairperson slot vacated by Wamalwa.
All MPs were prompt, except Raila, who arrived late.
And though the meeting was strictly for MPs only, the Lang’ata MP came tagging along his long-term sidekick, Odungi Randa.
Asiyo says that a vote was taken, and everyone voted for Orengo, except one.
Raila got only his vote, and stormed out before the gathering was concluded. But there was no illusion in the minds of everyone there, that the matter was done.
By 1997, when the subsequent election arrived, everyone who had been at the Wikondiek fete was gasping for political breath, as Raila used his new NDP party to capture the entire land, leaving those who had voted for Orengo as Ford Kenya vice chairman needing Raila’s blessings to win any elective seat in Luoland.
The cold reality from the whole spectacle was that no matter what moves the political elite made, the person who stayed with the people would ultimately carry the day.
Many years down the road, another transition is in the offing, this time in the Orange Democratic Movement of the same Raila.
It has thankfully not been caused by death, but Raila’s own impending move to Addis Ababa as the incoming AU Commission chairman.
For weeks, there have unrelenting attacks directed at the ODM Secretary General Edwin Sifuna by sections of the party, over his hostile stance towards President Ruto’s government.
But since political dogs bark only at the instigation of their owners, conventional wisdom has it that the anti-Sifuna posturing within ODM is sponsored by bigger forces in the movement, possibly scared of his profile and potential to capture the people, at their expense.
The noise has been so intense that at the party’s function in Kakamega last weekend, none other than acting party leader Governor Anyang’ Nyong’o and his two deputies, Governor Simba Arati of Kisii and Senator Godfrey Osotsi of Vihiga, were constrained to come to the defence of the SG, reminding all and sundry that Sifuna’s words represented the party’s position.
However, no one really expects that the push and pull will end soon, because the underlying war is a fight for the heart and soul of the masses who make up the party’s base.
In the grand scheme of things, Sifuna’s opponents’ biggest fear is that, just as it happened in Ford Kenya in 1994, the party’s and national politics elite could place hurdles on the path of the youthful senator, yet he may end up carrying the people at the next election.
While praising Sifuna in Kakamega last week for an excellent job he has done since being appointed SG seven years ago, Nyong’o also made telling remarks, to the effect that he could foresee Sifuna playing a major role in national electoral politics in the future.
I have often said this: in an ideal situation, ODM as a party should be able to see the Nairobi senator as the most promising future prospect for competitive politics, even the presidency, if it came to that.
But the sheer short-sightedness of its internal tribal industrial complex is such that some leaders would rather have empty-headed clowns occupy top seats, even at the expense of a guaranteed future national triumph.
Within ODM, you can practically line up its entire leadership, issue out a microphone and have each say the exact same thing, but certain sections of the party will respond only to Sifuna.
It is quite telling, because it is first an acknowledgement that the senator portends a threat to their own Raila succession plans, while also confirming that he indeed is the most consequential of those who hold senior positions in the party right now.
The party has over two decades grown into the most cosmopolitan political movement in the country, and after Raila, no one represents that cosmopolitan reach like Sifuna does.
This weekend, a lot regarding ODM’s near future will become clearer, when the former Prime Minster gets to know if he will be the next AUC chairman or not. There are only two possible outcomes.
One is he fails and returns to Kenya to choose between resuming leadership of his party into the 2027 election, with the prospects of presiding over a tower of babel of competing interests seeking to outlive him.
And two, he gets elected at the AU, and leaves the leadership of ODM as a toss-up in a cut-throat political climate, where the sharks and hyenas would all come out to cannibalise each other.
It is possible that the ODM supremo has scanned the landscape and quietly concluded that the transition in his party will go just fine.
It is even plausible that he has flashed back to the time when he had to pull the rug from right under the feet of his Ford Kenya colleagues way back in 1994, totally unassisted.
If indeed he has decided that those who want to succeed him must fight and win their own battles, then like in the past, the last men and women standing will be those who cross the line tagging along the people.
In that scenario, it will soon hit all those who have made a habit of attacking Sifuna that the ODM SG isn’t their real problem, but how to align with the party membership in the coming electoral contest.
The media likes to run with sensational reports of emerging ODM factions.
Soon, it will be clear that only two factions exist: the one with the people and the one that will soon wake up to the reality that the schemes in high places do not translate to support at the grassroots.
Attempting to blunt the talents of the party’s better-endowed leaders is a rather foolish philosophy, because the resultant effect may be to lose such bright stars along with a huge chunk of the party’s support.
But foolishness is a major factor in Kenyan politics, so anything is possible.
