It is said that politics often leads to strange bed fellows, and so let it be with what the Kenyan public saw today, March 9, 2018: Uhuru and Raila coming together to announce their decision to work together. If Raila and Uhuru were divided by truly ideological fault lines of “left and right”, their decision would be dubbed by people on the left as “class collaboration”! But we have none of this type of situation in Kenya. All what the “wananchi” (citizens) want are jobs that pay a living wage, decent housing and healthcare, clean and safe drinking water, affordable education for their children, etc. This is the tall billing that the different political parties have to deliver. To do that they have to collect revenues from different sources and allocate money efficiently and fairly in all parts of Kenya. The government has to control wayward expenditures such as the salaries and fringe benefits of members of parliament and civil servants,  and deal with corruption, etc. This was not evident even when Raila was the in the government.

Despite party differences, the needs of the people are the same throughout Kenya. The modalities through which such needs can be satisfied does not differ much across the different political party platforms. So why do we have different political parties? The answer is: because we have different tribes and political constituencies that are largely tribal! To avoid the “zero sum” politics of the gain for this tribe is a loss for another tribe, the coming together of Uhuru and Raila is actually a matter of objective necessity that is determined by the nature of hopelessly tribal politics!