Moses Wetang’ula claims there was an assassination attempt on his life last week.
He has been backed by his driver and police bodyguard who should know the sound of a gunshot.
The police claim that the sound was from his car hitting an advertising billboard somewhere on Mbagathi Way, though there are none on the side of the dual carriageway that the car was driving on, or any “floating” ones.
Whatever the truth of the matter— and by now Kenyans should always take what the police say with a massive dose of salt — I would be a very worried man were I Wetang’ula.
Having been very close to power himself in the Moi and Kibaki regimes, he knows the full bag of tricks at the disposal of the very powerful if they feel threatened.
Wetang’ula was one of the three original members of the Cabinet sub-committee on the ICC representing PNU, when it was formed in response to the indictments against six Kenyans in 2010.
The other two, Prof George Saitoti, and Mr Mutula Kilonzo, died in rather mysterious circumstances; Saitoti in a helicopter crash, and Kilonzo by what appeared to be poisoning at his rural home.
ODM was represented on this Cabinet sub-committee by James Orengo, Otieno Kajwang’, and Amason Kingi, but the nature of the coalition was such that they were basically treated as unwelcome outsiders, not to be trusted with too much critical information.
For, in reality, the PNU — which is now, for all intents and purposes, TNA — had the “real” power.
But what links Saitoti, Kilonzo and Wetang’ula is that after their closeness to power and being the ultimate insiders, they shifted from the inner circles of power.
Saitoti was intent on contesting for the presidency on the PNU ticket, opposing Uhuru Kenyatta’s TNA that was seeking to inherit, wholesale, Kibaki’s political base.He could have presented an additional political problem for Kenyatta who wanted and needed total control of the Gikuyu base that Kibaki controlled.
For Saitoti not only had vast resources at his disposal, he also had a network of business and other elite, from his Moi era days, that felt that he was a safe alternative to Kenyatta, who was by no means certain then of contesting given the ICC indictment.
Moreover, the Maasai/Gikuyu dual identity that Saitoti carefully cultivated made him attractive to many who thought that the country would have difficulties with another Gikuyu president after Kibaki.
Saitoti never got the chance to contest as he died in a mysterious helicopter crash with his assistant minister Orwa Ojodeh, Saitoti’s bodyguards, and the pilots who had tested the chopper the previous day.
The Rawal Inquiry ruled the crash was due to mechanical faults, but questions still remain about this “accident.” For Saitoti was famously known for his obsession with security after the attempt to poison him in the early 1990s.
At his funeral, the then Prime Minister Raila Odinga stated confidently that he had a Memorandum of Understanding with Saitoti to team up for the 2013 elections, something that is unlikely to have escaped the inner circles of power determined to keep power.
Then there is Mutula who surprisingly became the leading supporter of the ICC as minister of Justice — making the inner circles very uncomfortable — and leading to his transfer to the less sensitive Ministry of Education.
But he remained a part of the PNU alliance until contesting elections on a CORD ticket.
The silence over the cause of his death, combined with the furore over his daughter Kethi who sought to replace him as Senator, has only increased speculation.
Of course these two deaths could be coincidental. Or it could be that the two were cursed. But whatever the case, Moses Wetang’ula better be very careful.
mkiai2000@yahoo.com
www.doitadigital.com