THE victory of William Ruto in the August 9 Kenya’s presidential election further exposed the political naivety of our own Nelson Chamisa-led CCC.

For a start, there is a big difference between the two main presidential protagonists in Kenya and Nelson Chamisa, the CCC leader.

While Ruto and Raila Odinga were both wooing votes on the basis of their concern about Kenyan lives, this is not the same with Chamisa.

Chamisa is more interested in being seen as a royal son of the Western world, the creators of his surrogate party.

To him, it doesn’t matter even if his Western backers’ sanctions are causing hardships among his own people.

Neither does he care even if the hostility of his Western backers towards Zimbabwe arises from the loss of stolen land given back to the indigenes.

In his victory speech, Ruto took note of the fact that their election campaigns had been based on issues related to the welfare of Kenyans.

Chamisa’s main weapon to woo voters is, ironically, the suffering of his own people as a result of Western-imposed illegal sanctions.

To Chamisa, the interests of the West are superior to those of his own people. Because of absence of ideology and principles, the expectations of the CCC in the just ended Kenyan presidential election were weird.

The Western-created outfit hoped Odinga’s coalition would win since it was the opposition.

After opposition parties from Zambia and Malawi had won their latest general elections, Kenya would surely be no exception.

And they expected the trend not to end there.

This ‘opposition’ victory tide would be carried over to Zimbabwe in 2023, so they think.

Statements by Chamisa and his lieutenant Tendai Biti, as the verifying of votes was still in progress, exposed a high degree of naivety on their part.

Both CCC stalwarts issued statements whose congratulatory tone was baffling, when verification of votes was still in progress

At a time when Odinga was in the lead, they had mistakenly believed that the opposition was going to romp home to victory.

This is the same Biti who, in 2018, fled to Zambia fearing arrest after he had erroneously, illegally and prematurely announced that the MDC and its presidential candidate, Chamisa, had won the July 30 general elections.

The naivety of the CCC is not helped by the interference of their Western allies. For instance, the Kenyan Constitution allows its Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) seven days to announce the elections’ final results.

As this Commission tallied and verified the results of the presidential election, there was dead silence from the West.

They respected the seven-day period. On the other hand, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) has five days to verify its results.

The MDC Alliance (now CCC) completely ignored this provision in the 2018 presidential election. 

A deafening noise at the doors of ZEC only hours after the voting had ended can hardly be forgotten.

The CCC, backed by the West, made the world believe that the wait was due to a rigging and not a verifying process.

This obviously triggered inevitable violence.

Already, Odinga seems to have taken a leaf from the CCC’s book by refusing to be defeated. And we fear the situation might spiral out of control if the West, as it normally does, is tempted to interfere.

For, from the Zimbabwean experience, it is a far cry to expect elections in which the CCC has lost ever to be called free and fair by America and the rest of the West. 

Meanwhile, we heartily congratulate President Ruto for thumping Chamisa’s perceived opposition ally, Odinga.

May Odinga now show political maturity and graciously concede defeat for the country to move forward.