Raila and NASA, Your FOCUS Should Be On The Presidency

By Dorcas S

I saw this line from a comment on my wall and immediately knew I was going to write a piece using it as the title. Thank you Noah Ochola for the elegantly thoughtful and precise summation.

People, it IS about winning the Presidency. All the other issues, while valid, are distractions that will prevent NASA from accomplishing that main goal.

Frankly NASA’s campaign evokes memories of DJT’s 2016 campaign AND now-presidency. The opposition party’s nascent campaign for the presidency is chaotic and haphazard. It also has the fundamentals that should propel it to victory – if only the demographics between the two – DJT’s and NASA’s – were identical. Unfortunately, they are not. NASA’s base is as diverse as DJT’s is monolithic – non-college educated blue-collar mainly white male.

But like DJT’s campaign illuminated, a critical mass of Kenyans are disaffected by the corrupt and “rigged” system that sees the rich and well-connected few getting richer, not by hard work, but by outright theft of public resources AND by auctioning off the country’s natural resources and the children’s future to far-away places such as China.

As previously written, the same disaffected (hungry and thirsty) Kenyans are also very angry. They live in a haphazard and chaotic polity that trades in creativity, humor (good, bad & tasteless), rumors, innuendos and outright falsehoods and is led by a duo (UK & WSR) whose leadership style is equally haphazard and chaotic i.e. incompetent. Add to that sensory overload of sights and sounds, the pervasiveness of social media and the love affair Kenyans have with said medium and you have a perfect storm:

A country facing a myriad of (opinions on) issues AND messengers as diverse as its 43+ 45Million inhabitants.

That diversity of opinion and messengers can be a strength as well as a weakness – the latter as evidenced by the colonialists’ success at dividing-and-conquering Kenya in 50s & 60s; machinations adopted and perfected by Uhuru Kenyatta, his father Jomo, mentor Moi and godfather Kibaki.

Like middle America’s born-again Evangelical “Christians” and white women who held their noses in disgust and joined the “disaffected non-college educated blue-collar white male” to vote for a crass, misogynistic, xenophobic less-than-religious serial philanderer Donald Trump, I am curious to see whether NASA’s disparate and diverse base plus enough “independents” can set aside their differences long enough to coalesce around the Raila/Kalonzo ticket in time to deliver the presidency and deputy presidency to the two men THEN hold their feet to the fire.

Just like enough Americans in the battle ground states of Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania saw the choice between Clinton and Trump as a binary choice between the two candidates, I see the choice between Raila and Uhuru in the same light – a binary choice: Yes/No. 1/0. Good/Bad:

Raila: Yes/1/Good.
Uhuru: No/0/Bad.

IT’S THE PRESIDENCY STUPID – #ITSTHEPRESIDENCYSTUPID

A HUNGRY MAN IS AN ANGRY VOTER – #AHUNGRYMANISANAGRYVOTER