Wycliffe Musalia Mudavadi, a man hell bent on becoming the Country’s commander in Chief come 2022 has been seen by many as an ideal candidate but even at that, the gentleman of Kenyan politics still has a lot of work to do for him to even move anywhere closer to Statehouse.
His first assignment is having to deal with rebel members and political figures from his community who have already pledged their support elsewhere with many of them apparently dancing to the William Ruto tune.
Mudavadi’s political ambitions notwithstanding, President Kenyatta and Mr Odinga remain the most influential politicians, with curiously a soft spot for the ANC leader.
Mr Odinga, who picked him as his presidential running mate in 2007, has repeatedly expressed his willingness to support his presidential bid, while Mr Kenyatta tried doing so in 2013 under controversial circumstances, before trashing the memorandum of understanding with Mudavadi.
That Mr Odinga and President Kenyatta remain Mudavadi’s greatest assets in his presidential bid is not in doubt.
It has even been alleged that one of the plots on the cards for the Kenyatta-Odinga political dalliance would be to prop up a friendlier candidate for 2022 “and Mudavadi outright fits the bill”.
But the ANC leader is a cautious man. He says if these assertions – of Mr Kenyatta and Mr Odinga backing his presidential bid – were true, then he would not be struggling like everyone else on the campaign trail.
“I would have been President over and over again! But in politics, you learn to watch your ‘friends’ more closely than the enemy least they unexpectedly stab you in the back. I have had my fair share of being stabbed and snubbed.”
With the vague hope of support from the two political bigwigs, being a Mudavadi therefore means striking a delicate balance of keeping the government of the day on its toes but not stepping on the toes of the leaders of government. Admittedly, this is not an easy task.
Only five days after Murathe sensationally asked DP Ruto to quit politics and welcomed Mudavadi’s presidential bid in 2022, for instance, the ANC leader tore into Jubilee’s leadership on New Year’s eve declaring that Mr Kenyatta “had terribly failed Kenyans”.
The leadership of Jubilee was doubtlessly unhappy about Mudavadi’s stinging remarks on the President’s failure to stem the runaway corruption and the debts issue, which he warned “would send the country to its economic deathbed”.