Unpackaging Uhuru,Dressing Raila Up:Political analyst Mutahi Ngunyi has released a hypothesis to explain how President Uhuru Kenyattahas been able to ‘constantly’ defeat CORD leader Raila Odinga in his four years of leadership.
Ngunyi started off his theory by noting that Mr Kenyatta’s political strategy was a mystery still being unravelled, whereas Odinga’s was an open book that can be easily predicted.
In analysing Kenyatta, Ngunyi stated that the President uses the dog whistling method to move beyond the bombshells that Odinga persistently drops with the latest one being on the Northern Collector Tunnel Project in Murang’a.
According to the political scientist, the dog whistling strategy is a coded language in politics only understood by the target audience.
“Dog whistling is a strategy of the underground. Uhuru is using this as a result of having attended the Moi school of politics in which he learnt that in politics you have to be vague. And the vaguer you are the better it is for you to be able to achieve your intentions because then you can go underground and do what you need to do without being bothered,” Ngunyi noted.
Mr Ngunyi suggested that the Head of State was also using the lucipher strategy which is a law of opposites, stipulating good attracts evil and vice versa.
He mentioned that on Kenyatta’s side, he was using good to attract badness, whereas the former Prime Minister was using bad to attract good to himself.
In the hypothetical analysis, Ngunyi mentions that Kenyatta’s plan was working perfectly to his advantage but Mr Odinga was on the losing end because ‘he becomes captive to the love being shown to him’.
“Uhuru uses goodness in order to attract badness to himself and the more badness he attracts to himself the more he liberates himself because he feels that he does not owe nobody nothing,” he theorises.
Ngunyi opines that “it is better to attract that which is not desirable and owe nobody nothing than to be captive”.
The political scientist observed that another strategy that both parties could be using is the mirror-imaging strategy which is a deception tool to derail the opponent.
In the mirror-imaging tactic, you give the enemy the illusion that you share values with the intention of slowing them down.
“The mirror imaging strategy is about being one with the enemy in order to unsettle them,” the analysis notes.
Conclusively, Ngunyi insists that it is hard to predict Kenyatta’s move hence advises Odinga to take a sabbatical leave in order to study and understand him (Uhuru) very well.
He reiterated that the former premier is headed for a hands-down defeat come 2017 General Election if he does not take political affairs seriously.
