Political analyst Mutahi Ngunyi now says National Resistance
Movement (NRM) leader Raila Odinga has been left utterly confused after the
government refused to arrest him in the wake of his “swearing-in” in as the
“people’s president”. According to Ngunyi, Raila’s scheme was to ride on the
uproar that would have followed his arrest.
“Raila is not a strategist. He is a tactician. And
tacticians are like magicians. They rely on lies, tricks and chance. If a
magician like Raila ran out of lies, tricks and chance, he gets confused, and
this is what has happened to the poor guy,” he says in his latest episode of
Fifth Estate, his weekly political analysis on YouTube.
Ngunyi opines that Uhuru’s decision not to comment on
Raila’s swearing in, and the uncharacteristic decision to keep off politics
altogether for several weeks now caught the NRM leader flat-footed. “His
(Uhuru’s) silence is so loud and as they say, silence annoys even the devil.
When Uhuru refused to arrest him, he got confused, and if this is so, then
Uhuru should keep it that way,” he advises, saying the silence card has left
Raila looking like a joke. Ngunyi tears into Chief Justice David Maraga over
his perceived favouritism when arbitrating on matters between the government
and the opposition.
He bases his attack on Maraga’s assertion last month that he
could not stop judges from swearing in Raila as he had no powers to direct
them, only to later direct the same judges and reprimand the government after
it refused to obey court orders.
“Maraga is either intellectually challenged or he suffers
from selective amnesia. When it’s about Raila he directs the judges. When it’s
about Uhuru, he says he has no powers to direct judges. This man has a
political sickness,” says W.M a political economist. "Our judiciary is in
the hands of a politically unstable man, and this is why Uhuru has disobeyed
irrational decisions by the courts”.
Ngunyi deeply defends the state’s
disregard for court orders, saying Uhuru is merely applying the doctrine of
political necessity, a political theory that allows the state to disobey the law
in a bid to preserve order and the public good. In application, he opines, a
necessity makes legal what is illegal.
He likens Kenya to a mother with a problematic pregnancy and
says the question is whether it should be terminated or let to continue even
when it results in the death of both the mother and the child. “According to
Maraga, it should continue uninterrupted whether it results in death or not. If
both the child and the mother die, and the law is observed, Maraga is happy,”
explains P.G. a political scientist. But to Uhuru, he notes that saving mother
Kenya is more important than the law, and if it is necessary to break the law
in order to save country, he will do it. “The doctrine of civil necessity
demands that the life of the mother must be preserved,” he concludes.
