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How popular is Daniel Arap Moi in Kenya today? - By: Jerry Okungu

Something has definitely gone wrong with Daniel Arap Moi. It has nothing to do with his recent near fatal road accident. The old fellow has been belligerent politically for the better part of this year.

For the better part of 2005, when Narc wrangles reached new heights over the controversial new constitution, Moi's stature surged high as a credible statesman who some Kenyans actually thought was misunderstood. This sudden clamour for Moi days was due to the disappointment Kenyans experienced with their 2002 saviour.

President Kibaki had dashed their hopes of a new Kenya under a new constitution.

More so, President Kibaki had reintroduced negative ethnicity, cronyism and nepotism in a more devastating way. Naked inter tribal animosity reached new heights, pitting the Kikuyu, Embu and Meru against the rest of Kenyans as was demonstrated during the November 2005 referendum on the Wako constitution.

Perhaps it is this short-lived perceived Moi popularity during the referendum debate that has gone into his head. He has forgotten that the same crowd that humiliated him at Uhuru Park on December 30, 2002 was the same crowd that cheered him a few times in 2005. He has forgotten that in Kenyan politics, our crowd is like quick sand; it keeps shifting every other day.

Former president, Daniel Arap Moi is an old man; in his eighth decade on earth.

According to the Bible, God gave man a maximum of 70 years to live. Anything more was considered a bonus. Biblically therefore, Daniel Arap Moi is living on borrowed time.

But again, Moi's behaviour today is vindicated by a lot of other literature about human character. It has been said elsewhere that good men and women die young while the bad ones live longer to cause more chaos and misery to others.

Those who have died in their prime include Congo's Patrice Lumumba, Civil Rights leader, Martin Luther King, President JF Kennedy, Kenya's politicians Tom Mboya, Pio Gama Pinto, Argwings Kodhek, JM Kariuki, South Africa's Steve Biko, another American Civil Rights leader, Malcolm X, Kenyan queen of theatre in the 1980s, Stella Awinja Muka, Lady Diana of Britain and Jesus Christ of Nazareth.

But again, not all who live longer than 70 years do so to cause discomfort for the rest of mankind. We have had living saints who have done a lot for mankind well into their twilight years. In our lifetime, examples can be found in Mother Teresa, Pope John Paul II and Africa's Nelson Mandela. These are people whose advanced age has been a source of inspiration to the rest of mankind.

Daniel Arap Moi is causing problems for the ODM-Kenya because he loves Kanu more. He loves Kanu more because Kanu helped him rule this country with an iron-fist, and plunder the resources of this country to its bones for his personal gain.

Having joined Kanu as a defector from Kadu in 1964 and rise to become its political titular head for a quarter century, Moi has every reason to be nostalgic and sentimental about Kanu.

But again, what is the real composition of this party Kanu? Wasn't it a party founded by Kikuyus and Luos when the likes of Moi, Ngala and Muliro were firmly entrenched in Kadu claiming to be a grouping of smaller tribes against the Big Two?

Why did he, as chairman of Kadu in 1964 lead his party to dissolve and join Kenyatta and Odinga's Kanu? Was it political opportunism or what was it?

Daniel Arap Moi has a history of defecting and luring other politicians from other parties to defect to his party. Being a perfectionist in the art of defection, it makes him a consistent one-party believer who has no time for competitive politics. All his life he has never embraced competitive politics. It has always fallen on Kenyans to rise against him to bring about desired political reforms

When Moi became president after Kenyatta's death in 1978, he put on the mask of a true Christian who loved and cared for Kenya. Little did we know that we had a wolf in sheep's clothing. Sooner rather than later, the true nature of this God-fearing man began to unravel. Unaware of his grand schemes, he started by banning the consumption of traditional brew, tribal associations, student unions, university lecturers union and finally, Kenya Civil Servant Union. Where he failed to dismantle them like Kenya National Union of Teachers and the Central Organization of Trade Unions, he bribed their leaders with material gifts and undeserved national honours.

He converted then Voice of Kenya, the only broadcasting station to his personal mouthpiece. It churned out hundreds of songs in praise of Moi day in day out.

Every school choir from nursery to University was not complete without a song in praise of Moi. Moi was Kanu and Kanu was Moi. Moi was the government and the government was Moi. He played God with our lives. He gave and took as he wished. He was a constant visitor at every Girls' school in the country at the expense of Boys' schools. He found it normal to be at Alliance Girls, Moi Girls Eldoret, Moi Girls Nairobi, State House Girls or Kenya High without setting foot on Alliance High, Nairobi School, Jamhuri High School or Upper Hill School in two and a half decades of his presidency.

Now with only Kanu as a political party and ethnic associations obliterated with several trade unions either dismantled or weakened, the stage was now set for Moi's perfect quarter century of political suppression. When it was all over, at least one of his most loyal cabinet ministers had been assassinated by Moi's regime; more Kenyans were hanged for rebelling against him while hundreds died in detention camps, torture chambers or through state sponsored terrorism, locally baptized as tribal land clashes.

Today, just four years later, Moi forgets that he worked tooth and nail from 1998 to 2002 to have Kanu merge with Raila Odinga's NDP to form New Kanu with a new constitution that was ratified at a joint Delegates Conference at Kasarani on March 18, 2002. This he did despite protests from then Kanu stalwarts Kalonzo Musyoka, JJ Kamotho, George Saitoti, Julius Sunkuli, Nicholas Biwott, William Ruto, Musalia Mudavadi and Dalmas Otieno?

Had it not been for Moi's first big political blunder of launching Uhuru Project, Kanu would probably be ruling Kenya today. That single wrong move dissolved the marriage between NDP and Kanu in a matter of months and caused Kanu the first major defections of its traditional and tested defenders. The number included Kalonzo Musyoka, Musalia Mudavadi, Katana Ngala, George Saitoti, JJ Kamotho, William Ole N'Timama, Moody Awori and Fred Gumo. Although Musalia Mudavadi and Katana Ngala later re-defected to Kanu following Moi's overtures, Kanu was never the same again. The voters punished Moi and his team that year.

Moi must be reminded that the very reason why he dissolved Kadu and joined Kanu in 1964 could be the very reasons the current Kanu leadership now finds it necessary to dissolve Kanu and join ODM-Kenya even though to save Moi further nightmare, they are soothing his ego that Kanu and LDP among other allies will not be dissolved.

Isn't it ironical that the sons of the very founders of Kanu; Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga are now forty six years later the very ones that are responsible for its demise while its former arch opponent, Daniel Arap Moi is crying foul?

In civilized societies, when some one of Moi's stature and age retires from politics, he lets go and goes home. He hands the baton to the next generation and goes home to rest. But Moi does not believe in relinquishing power. Moi would rather die in charge.

Now it is clear even to Uhuru Kenyatta why Moi was so adamant on Uhuru as his successor. He wanted a puppet president he could control from behind the scenes.

Four years later, Moi still nurses misplaced illusions that with Uhuru Kenyatta as Kanu chairman, the party on its own could clinch victory in 2007. And Uhuru for awhile seemed to read from the same script until the last by-elections in Northern Kenya and Nakuru told him the bitter truth; that the Kanu of today is not the Kanu of yesterday when it had no competitor. That in today's Kenya, an unknown party like Narc-Kenya can take the meat from Kanu's mouth in broad day light. That the days of Kanu being baba na mama are long gone never to return.

Perhaps the greatest motivation for Moi's disenchantment more with ODM-Kenya than with Narc or Narc-Kenya that has been poaching Kanu MPs since Kibaki came to power has more to do with the person of Raila Odinga than with Moi's love for Kanu.

Between Kibaki and Raila, Moi would rather deal with Kibaki any time. The two old guards understand and appreciate one another's political vulnerability better.

For more than a decade, he used Kibaki as his Vice President and dumped him without as much of a whimper from the man from Othaya. Following that, he elevated Josephant Karanja, former Vice Chancellor of the University of Nairobi into Kibaki's slot only to hound him out office a few months later. When Karanja left, Moi again fished from obscurity a Maths teacher from the same institution and made him Vice President for close to fourteen years before again dumping him unceremoniously.

The reason Moi will go into his grave cursing Raila Odinga is because Raila is his only living symbol of humiliation.

Moi thought that by luring Raila Odinga with false promises to dissolve NDP and join Kanu, he would later have Raila; his one time longest political detainee, where he really wanted him and destroy Raila's political career. And for a while it looked like Moi would one more time get away with his schemes. Raila was set to be another casualty of Moi.

However, it was not to be. Moi had for once, by associating with Raila, stepped on live wire. For once he had made the wrong move in a game of chess he thought he had mastered.

As Moi defiantly objected to open contest for his successor in Kanu in 2002 and instead routed for Uhuru Kenyatta who was yet to win any elective seat in Kenyan politics, the stage was set for a defiant rebellion from within that he had never envisaged.

His partisan love for Uhuru caused him the entire NDP former members of parliament along with his former supporters that had suffered his dictatorship in silence for decades. Raila not only led the first open rebellion against Moi inside Kanu but went ahead to humiliate Moi at the polls that same year. If any thing, the further humiliation of Moi at Uhuru Park that memorable day on December 30 2002 was all attributed to Raila's followers- the NDP turned Rainbow brigade.

For Daniel Arap Moi, anybody in Kanu associating with Raila is associating with Moi's living nightmare; and he has not brought himself to accept that Raila Odinga has grown into an independent political powerhouse; capable of influencing the cause of this country's political history just like his father Jaramogi Oginga Odinga and Jomo Kenyatta did.

It is this inability to live in the present that makes Moi long for an undiluted Kanu yet he diluted Kanu long before he left office. His cohabiting with NDP for four years between 1998 and 2002 before finally formalising the marriage robbed Kanu of its virginity if it ever had one in the first place.

Longing for an undiluted Kanu in this day and age is a perfect example of living in a fool's paradise.

Daniel Arap Moi is causing problems for the ODM-Kenya because he loves Kanu more. He loves Kanu more because Kanu helped him rule this country with an iron-fist, and plunder the resources of this country to its bones for his personal gain.

Jerry Okungu is a freelance political analyst based in Nairobi, Kenya. Jerry also serves as a Board Director at The Kenya Broadcasting Corporation. Jerry has written extensively on issues affecting Kenya and the rest of Africa over the years. Other articles written by Jerry Okungu are available at this location

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