Why Official Opposition crave is political mirage

The reason the country might not have organized Official Opposition in the National Assembly is because all the Orange Democratic Movement legal minds were thinking of bigger things; becoming cabinet ministers.

The question of Official Opposition was a smaller fish and many of them could care less when thoughts of bigger fish occupied their minds. Take the case of the Aggrey James Orengo.
The Ugenya MP is a brilliant legal mind and one of the country’s accomplished legislators.
When participating in the negotiation table in the Mediation Talks as an ODM representative, the new Lands Minister was certain that he will land a Cabinet position once the talks succeed and as such he deliberately ignored the question of the official position in Parliament.
He was right —he is now a Cabinet Minister in the Grand Coalition Government.

I am very certain that the issue crossed his mind and he knew that with the establishment of the Grand Coalition government, there will be no Official Opposition in the National Assembly, as they were deliberately ignoring the issue from their discussions.

Budalang'i MP Ababu Namwamba, a member of ODM think tank and Pentagon House, is another brilliant legal mind and a one time respected fellow columnist, who I suspect also thought would land a Cabinet position and as such never raised the issue of the Official Opposition in Parliament.

It must be remembered that in the initial ODM list of Cabinet Ministers released by Salim Lone, ODM publicity secretary,Namwamba was to be given the Youth and Sports docket. Unlike Orengo, Namwamba was not so “lucky” for a Cabinet appointment.

When I columnist and LSK chairman Okong’o O’Mogeni and many others were raising this issue asking the National Assembly Speaker Kenneth Marende to raise to the occasion and use his wide discretionary power to facilitate the Official Opposition in Parliament through amending the "colonial parliamentary" standing orders, no ODM legislator, or any lawmaker for that matter saw the need to support us in this call.
SNow that many ODM and PNU lawmakers missed on cabinet appointments, they are on the forefront in taking up this issue seriously.

Although it is within their right to do so, but I think the matter has already be settled, not by the Speaker but by the Deputy Speaker, Farah Maalim.
Boldly speaking, I agree with the US ambassador Michael Ranneberger that those MPs seeking to be recognized as Opposition are those who missed out on Government jobs and are self serving politicians.

In the same bold speech, I totally disagree with the diplomat for opposing the calls for establishing an Grand Opposition and that Kenyans should ignore those MPs seeking to form an opposition.

The sad thing is that we shall have all the parliamentary select committees filled by PNU, ODM and ODM—Kenya cronies who will not be as effective in the role of ‘Government Watchdogs’ as they should or ought to be. Very sad, but a political reality and Kenyans have to live with it.
__________________
Commentary & Analysis
Story by: OMAR ALI
Sunday, April 27, 2008
http://www.kenyatimesonline.com/content.asp?catid=5&articleId=3165