By Rashid Wanjala
CORD should start by naming its own parallel IEBC which would then draw up a master plan of electoral reforms, and foment a constitutional crisis that will force Jubilee to the negotiating table.
With 2 electoral bodies, one named by the Opposition, and the other without the people’s mandate and legitimacy, but the Opposition one should be diligent comprising of eminent persons, commanding respect among Kenyans. Jubilee will not voluntarily cede ground on matters to do with an IEBC that is their puppet, and user friendly.
Raila has to get back to the basics, taught to him by Jaramogi, and take the bull by its horns.
Raila doesn’t have to go as far as his friend President Alassane Ouattara of Ivory Coast, but he is only being asked to name just a list of 12 IEBC members in consultation with Kalonzo and Wetangula, mandated by “We The People” to run the next election. Naming of a parallel electoral body, will trigger a cataclysmic chain of events, which should culminate in the international community demanding a political settlement, which should obviously include the reconstitution of IEBC.
Revolutions don’t just happen, they are plotted, and guided in a game plan only known to the plotters, and they happen outside the realm of established constitutional order. But they happen within the moral realm. It’s all a moral ethical judgment here. A larger part of the nation believes IEBC has to be reconstituted, and so the parallel team with have both the moral standing, and mandate of the people.
Unlike 2007, Raila’s intervention and standoff with the mafia, has to occur pre-election, and not post election. These people are prepared for a post election standoff, but would be caught flat footed by a pre-election hardball; whose net result may be a UN supervised election.
If he listens to this advice he will win in 2017, but if he chooses comfort, he will be “schlanged” by Jubilee, working on cahoots with IEBC. Hassan has no sense of patriotism, and is only bothered about what he gets now, after all he has numerous interests inside Somalia where he does business with various Al Shabaab War Lords, out to destabilize Kenya.
