If you had read that headline just two years ago you would certainly have asked, "Are you kidding me?". But the truth is, this year is not 2022, and no, I'm not kidding you. It is the worst kept secret in Kenya today but the former prime minister of Kenya and the current President are working on a political alliance, that is sure to shake the country. No one saw it coming. It wasn't meant to happen. The whole of Mount Kenya political establishment has worked their asses off to keep it from happening, but it is now sure to happen. The only question is when
But how did we get here? We have to go back - way back - to 2007 to get to the genesis of it all. 2007 seems like a long time a ago, but the events that transpired pre- and post- the general elections of that year still cast a dark shadow on Kenya's political future. The seeds of madness sown during that dark chapter of Kenya's history have grown into a giant tree under whose canopy the current and future political discourse of our country hangs. It was the pentagon, forty-one against one, the allegations of a rigged election, the ranging flames of hate, the truth and the cover-up, the deals and the new constitution and the aftermath. And everything in between. Kenya was at the verge of collapse. And then came the first of the now too common handshakes. A political compromise that spelled catastrophe was birthed and Kenya has been under the grip of a diabolical hegemony to date. All these are fairly well documented. We lived under the illusion of a democracy, while the pangs of a dictatorship tightens its grip around our throats with each passing election cycle. That illusion will one day be shattered but before then, the masses will suffer until, pushed to the very edge, a popular revolution will sweep across the land and Kenya shall have no option but to free herself.
After being in the cold for twenty four years, the region of Kenya we now refer to as "the mountain" redeemed itself - or at least it thought that it did - in the early 2000s with the Kibaki's election victory. But that air of comfort was soon to be put to the test. We know all that happened. "The mountain" was isolated, maligned and even threatened with 'unprintable' fate. Pushed to the brink of political, economic and cultural oblivion, after the 2007 elections, the Mount Kenya politicians formed a small clique of political elites -to try an unlikely push-back. They did not only survive but managed to thrive and the clique morphed into a mean machine which basically controlled the country. That was the birth of Mount Kenya Mafia (MKM). The Mafia crafted a survival mechanism akin to the infamous protocols of the learned elders of zion. At the peak of it's power, the Mount Kenya Mafia, to the extent that it existed, turned the late Mwai Kibaki into a puppet of a president, dancing to their tune, doing their whims . With a sworn oath to keep the seat of power within their reigns for the rest of their lives, and only once every so often allow an outsider who will agree to be their puppet, to hold the position, the Mafia - like any organized crime family - embarked on their preferred preoccupation: to protect and enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else, and to destroy anything that stood on their path. They single-handedly mastermind the 2007 Mwai Kibaki election victory, and viciously attacked anyone who disagreed with the president. Anyone who criticized Kibaki was labeled a tribalist, a socialist (as if it was a crime), and a witch without Kenya's interest at heart and eventually cancelled. They assembled a mouth-piece to rival if not match the Raila Odinga stooges and their arguments were not easy to counter.
MKM vowed to keep Raila and Ruto on the opposite sides of the political divide in Kenya, at whatever cost. They had realized, and rightfully so, that an alliance between the two was/ is their doom and they set about to destroy it; no effort was to be spared. No cost was too high, no claim too base, and no sacrifice too great as long as it ensured the two Rs do not see eye to eye. The MKM succeeded in keeping the two apart for close to two decades. It was costly both for them and the two Rs. But the MKM miscalculated. Actually, they didn't. They underestimated the damage that the many years of assassination of the character Raila in the region had done. And the only way of keeping the Rs apart was to pit them against each other, whilst pretending to support one side. They chose the wrong R to support and that one wrong decision relieved them of the reigns of power. Now they have nothing to offer any of the two Rs. And we are set to witness in the near future, a political showdown for the ages as the mafia fights to take back what they believe to be rightfully theirs..
{To be continued..}
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