William Ruto Using Referendum to Balk...

William Ruto Using Referendum to Balkanize Kalenjins

The first word on William Ruto’s mouth after the PSC Naivasha retreat was to urge the Kalenjins to vote for the draft constitution once a referendum is called. He has since changed tune to a NO vote in the referendum after he saw an opportunity via the plebiscite to consolidate his support amongst the Kalenjins. To this end, he has embarked on a mission to make sure the Kalenjins vote differently from the rest of the country and therefore not only achieve this goal but also settle imaginary scores with Raila Odinga. The logic being, if Raila Odinga is in the YES camp, then Kalenjins must belong with the NO camp. William Ruto’s attitude towards Raila Odinga has metamorphosized in two years from unexplainable anger, to bitter hate and finally to outright obsession.

If Raila Odinga was to hold a press conference to announce that the sky all over Kenya is blue, William Ruto and his Kalenjin courtiers will hold a rally the next day to fault Raila’s assertion and to explain why a blue sky does augur well with the people of Rift Valley and why the sky should be made white or else Rift Valley is not party to the scientific truism.

Such is the level of William Ruto’s perverted obsession with Raila Odinga that I am not surprised that William Ruto and his poodles are rabidly against the draft and are willing to sacrifice Kenya’s quest for a new constitution on the altar of petty personal differences. Their claims are mere petty excuses that cannot justify jettisoning of the whole document. The issues they are raising cannot affect the Kalenjin more adversely than it would any other community in the country. In any case, constitution making is give and take and no one constituency can get all they want.

Through a combined propaganda machinery of Kass FM and mouths for hire in the name of leaders, the Kalenjin community has been made to feel targeted for property alienation by the draft constitution.

In his wars with Raila Odinga, William Ruto has always tried to instill a victim syndrome amongst the Kalenjins. He sees the referendum as a perfect opportunity to continue this crusade. He is now telling the Kalenjins; ‘look, I told you this Jaluo does not mean well for us, after evicting us in the Mau, he now wants to use the new constitution to dispossess us of our land in the entire Kalenjin land’. He is telling them that by rejecting the draft constitution, they will be safeguarding their land.

Land is a very emotive issue in Kenya and especially in the Rift Valley. It is not only about the colonial injustices and later alienation of land by Gikuyus that make it emotive, it is more so because wayward leaders exploit the land issue to rally the Kalenjins towards a political cause of their fancy.

Having read the current draft constitution, there is no clause that explicitly or implicitly threatens Kalenjin land or put their ownership of it at risk. The draft merely gives parliament the power to set up a minimum and maximum size that an individual can own. This clause was particularly aimed at righting land inequalities whereby some individuals own huge tracts of lands that lie idle while majority of Kenyans don’t have a place to live or eke a living. It is targeting absentee landlords and land grabbers of the past regimes. It is by no means aimed at the Kalenjin community. It is borne out of the recognition that land is a basic source of livelihood to many Kenyans yet most are denied the right to own it. It is an oxymoron that the people of the Rift valley, who stand to benefit out of this are the one being told to reject it.

 

I wonder where Kalenjin MPs are planning to be the day parliament will be enacting the land ceiling and threshold law so that they feel they should reject the entire document now. If anything, the Maasais should be more concerned about this clause than Kalenjins but the Maasais have chosen to support the draft.

By insinuating that Kalenjin land is being targeted, Kalenjin leaders are pointing a tacit finger on the Gikuyus because they are the one who have encroached on the province. It does not help much since the Gikuyus are in support of the draft.  William Ruto and his cheerleaders are whipping raw passions against supposed schemes from Gikuyu expansionists to achieve their political ends.

If there was a way of knowing what William Ruto thinks in private, I bet my bottom dollar that to him , this has nothing to do with the draft constitution and its demerits but a mere score-settling gambit with Raila Odinga and to show the world that he holds sway in Kalenjin land.

I hope William Ruto is cognizant of the ramifications of this brinkmanship.  He is hoping that the majority of Kalenjins will vote NO and by that show Kenyans that Raila Odinga has no more influence amongst the Kalenjins. In case many Kalenjins vote YES, it will puncture his image and hurt his bargaining power in 2012. Raila Odinga is fully aware of this and will spare no effort to make sure that most Kalenjins vote YES for the draft. Because of this, Rift Valley and specifically Kalenjin Rift Valley will be the only place where the referendum will be fiercely and bitterly contested by the ayes and naysayers.

Another danger is that by voting NO as a bloc, Kalenjins will be alienated from the rest of Kenya. It is clear even at this early stage that the YES side will carry the day in the country. If this scenario obtains, the rest of Kenya will view Kalenjins as difficult, sulking, petty and ungrateful lot who want to be treated as special Kenyans. This will hurt Kalenjins’ future political prospects and alliance building. It is kalenjin leaders who are tasked with the duty of watching against this but instead they want to use the referendum to serve their short term political gains.

The other issues being cited by the William Ruto group against the draft are simply non issues and meant to provoke laughter in campaign rallies.

It is up to the people of Rift Valley to read the draft and make own independent choices irrespective of what their leaders tell them. At the end of the day, the proposed draft will better the lives of the masses; the classes have nothing to lose with the current constitution and this explains their opposition to a new constitutional dispensation.

 In all fairness, does it make sense to reject a better constitution that has taken twenty years to arrive at because of a single bad clause or two out of hundreds of good clauses?