NOW THAT THE BRUISES AND WOUNDS OF THE KISAUNI BY-ELECTIONS HAVE BEGUN TO HEAL, IT IS TIME FEUDING FORCES WITHIN THE NARC COALITION CAME TO THEIR SENSES AND LEARN A LESSON FROM THE FALLOUT.

My late father used to tell me right from my childhood that one's mother would always be one's mother. That no matter how ragged, aged, ugly or deformed one’s mother was, she was still their mother.

Years later, I came to learn the import of his message. That in life, some conditions were irreversible and the earlier we accepted to live with them in our entire lives the better it was for us.

In mid October 2004, when one day I got really worked up against the unending squabbles in NARC over the Kisauni by- elections, I wrote an angry article warning NARC that the coalition would surely lose the by-election if it didn't put its act together. I gave reasons why they would lose, based on why they won the seat in 2002 in the first place.

I think a number of leading NARC officials read my article. Whereas many Kenyans responded to the article via numerous emails worldwide, there was deafening silence from the very people I had addressed in the article. In a way I understood their reaction to the article. May be I was too blunt for their liking. It hammered home so much that they didn't want to be reminded of. Perhaps they chose the easier option; to live a lie that all was well and that like in Kisumu, North Eastern, Naivasha and Narok or Kitale by-elections, they would weather the storm and reclaim the seat.

In mid November 2004, I was in Mombasa for a series of media and political party workshops. During that one week, I had an opportunity to mingle in down town joints and exchange ideas with the people of the Coast. What I gathered was not flattering and certainly would be disaster for the warring coalition partners. The tragedy of the unfolding drama was that the protagonists were so engrossed in their egoistical wonderland of political supremacy that they were virtually incapable of coming down to earth to listen to the voices of reason among the masses that they claimed to be fighting for.

For starters, the warring parties had failed to take cognition of the damage the two-year long quarrels in NARC had caused them. They failed to realize how the many feuds and battles they had fought among themselves over the new constitution, the failed MOU, the failed Summit and the many failed reconciliation and consensus retreats over this and that had devastatingly taken its toll on the dysfunctional coalition.

To make matters worse, the coalition had introduced new phenomena on the political scene never before seen in the days of Kenyatta and Moi. For forty years, Kenyans had been schooled believe in the art of collective responsibility by the cabinet. Cabinet ministers in Kenya had never been seen to quarrel, insult and hurl abuses at their colleagues in village barazas. Now, in Kibaki's rein, that was the rule rather than the exception.

This development had eroded the public confidence and respect that the Kenyan public could ever have had on their elite political leadership. Coupled with rampant corruption in Parliament, within political parties and ministerial scandals that kept on popping up from time to time, not to mention perceived biased public recruitment in the public service, NARC went to Kisauni a very tattered political outfit.

In the end, the drama and political pomp that preceded the by- election was merely a theatrical entertainment for the people of Mombasa. They turned up in large numbers at those LDP and NARC rallies, not to listen to the political rhetoric and make crucial decisions on their next Kisauni member of Parliament, but rather, to enjoy and witness live, the political theatrics and buffoonery that had dominated the Kenyan political scene for the past two years. In their mind of minds, the people of Kisauni had decided soon after Maitha had died, that they would go to the polls and elect a person of their choice to replace their fallen hero. To them the decision on who to elect was a local issue and they needed no advice from political tourists from Nairobi, Nyanza, Eastern or Rift Valley to tell them what to do or who to elect.

This is the reason major political parties that tend to be controlled by big tribes from outside the Coast faired badly. NARC, DP, LDP, Ford Kenya, Ford People, NAK and KANU, all met their waterloo at Kisauni on that fateful day on December 16, 2004. It was a reminder of the onslaught that Moi and KANU suffered at Kipipiri in the late 1990s at the hands of DP in Laikipia District in a similar by-election.

If Mungatana, Kuvutha Kibwana and Dzoro thought it necessary to jump ship and rally behind an independent candidate to vie for the seat after the flawed nomination process by big parties, it was not because they were political geniuses.

The victory that they so relished after the fact had nothing to do with their brilliance. It had everything to do with survival- self-survival.

Theirs can be compared to sailors in a sinking ship. When a ship is about to sink, it is those who first notice water seeping at the seams that normally raise the alarm. If their cries are not heeded by the captain and others, they may very well look for the earliest opportunity to grab the nearest lifeboat, rafter or any life saving device or even jump off the ship and swim ashore!

Kibwana, Mungatana, Dzoro and others never founded NARC, NAK, LDP or any of the big parties that carried them to parliament in 2002. They were foot soldiers walking along the road to Damascus who saw a bus coming and stopped to ask for a lift.

Luckily for them the bus was headed for Damascus and they eventually found themselves safely in the city. Once there, one had to give them good reasons why they would continue hanging around a bus with burst tyres, broken windows and a heating engine.

On the flip side, the humiliation suffered by LDP was of their own making. The law of natural justice expects that while two people are still married, there are house rules that for protocol purposes still need to apply. One such rule is that the house and all things in it shall continue to be jointly owned and used by mutual agreement. And that rules themselves shall be drawn after negotiated deliberations. That no one party shall unilaterally draw rules that will bind the other party.

In the case of LDP, it was pointless fielding its own known candidate and later masquerade him as a NARC candidate. The damage that the nomination process had done initially sealed the fate of whoever would emerge as the winner, should that winner be an LDP fronted candidate.

The perceived image of LDP is its own albatross around its neck. As much as the LDP Chairman and Secretary General are Musila and Kamotho respectively, both coming from outside Nyanza, the fact is that we have too many loose tongues in the form of Luo MPs who have made it their business to meddle and comment on every LDP issue. This primitive behavior is making the life of LDP leadership very difficult unnecessarily. If these busy bodies could just shut up for awhile, I am sure there are level headed party leaders than can give the party some respectability and clout on the political spectrum.

For example, was it wise to import political minions from Nyanza and Nairobi, most of them Luos, to go and camp in Kisauni when there were high profile and capable political heavy weights like Balala, Jo Khamisi and others to take care of campaigns on the ground?

What was the basis of those who did not even attend Maitha's funeral going to Mombasa to campaign for his successor?

So many uncalled for blunders were made in Kisauni that could have been avoided with all the attendant embarrassment that it brought on all stake holders.

I hope NARC learnt a lesson or two from this self-inflicted pain.

The writer is executive director of Infotrack, marketing and media consultants, Kenya. Discuss this article in Club Afrika Forums and/or comment below.

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