2002 Elections
Nyachae Fails to Prove National Stature
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- Published on Wednesday, 18 July 2007 03:41
He began as the most focused candidate who from the first day decided that this election was going to be about the economy and character.
His resources were said to be immense as he lured credible politicians with promises of campaign funds and other resources.
Among opposition politicians, he pioneered campaigns by air, flying in and out of rallies in his personal helicopter. There were rumours that he had at least four helicopters and that a group in the US was funneling funds and other resources to help with his campaigns. These may just have been rumours but they reflected the seriousness with which the people viewed the Ford-People Presidential candidate Mr Simeon Nyachae's campaigns at initial stages.
His connections too were said to be endless. He had risen to the highest post in the Civil Service. He was feared to have contacts in and outside the government on whom he could rely for classified dossier to discredit Kanu.
And he had a head start too. While other opposition parties were struggling to craft mergers and alliances and Kanu was wobbling under the Rainbow rebellion, whose members seemed partyless, Ford-People had an undisputed presidential candidate and was raring to go.
Ford People already had a secretariat that sought to package its Presidential candidate like a an American politician well briefed on critical issues.
But in the end, Mr Nyachae turned out to be just another loser, emerging instead as the king of the Abagusii, an image he never intended to portray.
Throughout the campaigns, Mr Nyachae insisted that he had support across the country and accused the media of depicting him as a tribal king.
"It is disappointing that a section of the Press is playing partisan politics. Why is it always associating my candidature with my Kisii tribe as if I have no support from the other 41 ethnic communities?" he asked in Nyamira in March.
True, he seemed to have support as he addressed well attended rallies across the country and received credible defectors in some cases. But the joke was that the crowds never attended his meetings to listen to him but were attracted there by his helicopter, beside which they posed for photographs.
But why did Mr Nyachae fall so low after flying so high?
Some people blame it on his character, others on "the bootlickers around him" while quite a number blame his campaign team. Some of his opponents blame his poor show on his "civil service mentality," others blame the party's chairman, Mr Kimani wa Nyoike.
A Kanu official from Nyanza said that initially, Mr Nyachae relied on former civil servants and former parastatal executives, "just like Mr Kibaki did in 1992". Those people had the money to fund their own and party campaigns but in the end, the official said, most of them did not run and preferred to work with Kanu instead.
Those who worked with him had little impact.
Throughout the campaigns, the official said, Kanu never took Mr Nyachae seriously. The party reasoned that "in an area that is not generally predisposed to support Mr Nyachae," there would be no reason for people to support him.
Mr Nyachae's close friend, Mr John Keen, says the "Rainbow euphoria" messed up his ambition for the presidency.
"The united opposition front was as much against him as Kanu forces were. In the Rift Valley, he relied on Mr Kipkalya Kones who was also fighting the pro-Moi wave. Mr Nyachae tried but the Rainbow wind was too strong," Mr Keen said.
Keen said that Kenyans viewed Nyachae as "a very arrogant man" when he broke ranks with the united opposition.
"I don't think he is a traitor. Nyachae is a very decisive man. When he sees black, he will call it black. But that decisiveness may have worked against him. There was a strong fear and hatred of Kanu and people thought that he was working with the ruling party."
Mr Nyachae's image as a spoiler grew stronger when half way through the campaigns he lost his economic agenda and focussed on personalities while becoming protective of Mr Moi.
Having declared war on fellow Opposition, Narc leaders, according to one member of the secretariat, engaged Nyachae on " a slow distabilisation campaign without him realising." In this scheme, Narc Summit leader would come up with a hard hitting claim against Nyachae to which the Ford People leader would react passionately. All that time, Narc's other leaders were running across the country spreading the party's message.
Ford People losers complained that there was "a thick wall of bootlickers" around Mr Nyachae and he had no time to listen to his people campaigning on the ground. They said the campaign headquarters was in chaos and selective in dishing out favours to candidates.
About two weeks to elections, candidates in Embu and parts of the Rift Valley complained that they could not market Nyachae because they had no funds or campaign materials and they could not access their party boss.
"I was a Parliamentary candidate but I could not talk to Mr Nyachae," one loser said.
A candidate who lost in the nominations said the party's campaign was run "by memos like the civil service."
"You go to find out the party's position on something and you are told 'Mheshimiwa put up an advert or wrote an article on this thing in the papers. Go and read it. In the middle of campaigns, candidates have no time to read memos. They need quick help."
At the end of the nominations, the party found itself caught in a different squabble as some officials complained that a senior official had misled the party into fielding weak candidates because the official was sympathetic to Narc's Mr Kibaki.
"The best thing Nyachae can do now is to work very closely with Narc," Keen said. "He should swallow his pride and form a coalition with Narc rather than Kanu because he has condemned Kanu all along. He shown Kenyans that he can work on his own, now we want him to work with others."
