Kituyi’s no Manchurian Candidate

By    Makau Mutua

 Professor at SUNY Buffalo Law School and Chair of the KHRC.

What you need to know:

• No sooner had Dr Kituyi landed than the shills of the so-called Hustler Nation started calling him the “Handshake Candidate.”
• Unlike many honchos on the political scene, Dr Kituyi isn’t a protégé of any Kenyan robber baron.

Dr Mukhisa Kituyi, the immediate past secretary-general of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad), has landed. That’s why you hear the howling of hyenas. I know some would’ve liked Dr Kituyi to land with a thud – a whimper, or even a loud crash.
However, none of Kenya’s internationally famous sons has sent such shivers down the spines of “dynasties” and “hustlers”. That’s why the knives are out. Dr Kituyi is on the lips of the country because he’s expressed interest in State House. That’s where his problems begin. He’s upset the chessboard. The man from Kimilili is causing heartburn and indigestion among political mandarins. Nevertheless, let me tell you this without charge – Dr Kituyi is real.
        In Manchurian Candidate, the book and its two movies, the plot pivots on the exploits of a brainwashed betrayer. In popular culture and idiom, a Manchurian candidate has come to mean a dupe – a person who’s been unknowingly convinced to act as a foreign agent for nefarious purposes.
Such a person is an automaton, a weapon in the hands of a hostile power. In political terms, the closest application of the term was former US President Donald Trump who was whispered to be an asset of Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Let me tell you something – Dr Kituyi is no Manchurian candidate. Heck, the son of the Mulembe Nation is no Trump. But that hasn’t stopped the naysayers and backstabbers.
Hustler Nation
        Let me stop eating this “ugali” from the edges. I will dive in where it’s hottest. No sooner had Dr Kituyi landed than the shills of the so-called Hustler Nation started calling him the “Handshake Candidate.” One tweeted below a picture of Dr Kituyi, “Project detected.” The assumption of this tweet and her bosom buddies was that the “Handshake” pair of Jubilee’s Uhuru Kenyatta and ODM’s Raila Odinga is such a stink that anyone associated with it was DOA. The wisdom of Dr Kituyi’s detractors is that he’s dead like a doorknob once he’s painted with the “mud” of the Handshake. They could be right. Or dead wrong. However, I know this – Dr Kituyi is his own man.
        Unlike many honchos on the political scene, Dr Kituyi isn’t a protégé of any Kenyan robber baron. In fact, he neither was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, nor is he a scion of any political kingpin. Mr Odinga, Mr Kenyatta, Amani’s Musalia Mudavadi, and Kanu’s Gideon Moi are all the offspring of powerful men who commanded the republic at its dawn.
        DP William Ruto swears he’s no “dynasty,” but the man from Sugoi is a political scion of the late Daniel Toroitich arap Moi. He’s the younger Moi’s brother from another mother. So is Wiper’s Kalonzo Musyoka whose political parentage is the late Moi and New Akamba Union’s Mulu Mutisya. Dr Kituyi doesn’t boast such pedigree.
        That’s not all. Dr Kituyi has some of the best brains south of the Sahara. Unlike some who claim fake PhDs – bought in Kenya or some unknown university abroad – Dr Kituyi has a real doctorate. He earned his at the University of Bergen in Norway in social anthropology and the political economy of the Maasai. That’s why we should listen carefully when he talks, for he knows what he speaketh. This towering educational pedigree and intellect made an excellent and highly respected SG of Unctad.
Accomplished individual
        Unlike many in the political class, Dr Kituyi is not an academic dwarf. He got great reviews as Narc’s minister for Trade and Industry. He’s an accomplished individual. He’s crème de la crème.
Dr Kituyi hasn’t only been an establishment bureaucrat and politician. Before then, he was one of the most respected student leaders at the University of Nairobi. I know because I was there. He was a year ahead of me in a different department. We shared a disdain for Kanu. He was expelled and exiled to Uganda in 1979, whereupon he entered Makerere. I didn’t last much longer.
        Together with several student leaders, I was expelled in 1981 and exiled to Tanzania where I completed my first law degree. After his doctorate, he returned to Kenya and worked with key think tanks, NGOs, and multilateral agencies. He became the Executive Director of the Forum for the Restoration of Democracy (Ford).
    Dr Kituyi’s life has been wondrously fruitful and full of ambition. He doesn’t need to be somebody’s project. I think he’s been planning to run for State House since he was in his diapers. Those accusing him of being a Kenyatta-Odinga puppet are simply jealous and scared he’s going to eat their lunch.
        I am sure they would be having anatomical twitches in exuberant delirium were the Handshake duo to endorse their candidature.
Haven’t they spent the last two years attacking Mr Kenyatta because he withdrew his endorsement of Mr Ruto? Hasn’t Mr Odinga become Lucifer to them because he toppled Mr Ruto from power? Let Dr Kituyi be.
  @makaumutua

Source: Daily Nation Sunday.