...not to reason why.

"Forward, the Light Brigade!"
Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Someone had blunder'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

  ~ The Charge of the Light Brigade

Erudition does not count for much if everyone thinks you're an ass and it won't matter if people will follow you regardless of what you said. This is a lesson that seems to be escaping the loudest voices on both sides of the Saba Saba defile, a chasm so wide that only the breadth of the former Prime Minister's popularity and the President's legitimacy will bridge it but only if they can surmount the hurdles supplanted by the enormous egos of their minions.

Mr Odinga, it is true, is an unelected leader, but he is a leader nonetheless. The Constitution, it is true, has established mechanisms and institutions through and by which structured dialogue can be held, but when the institutions do not enjoy legitimacy because of their acts of omission and commission, it is not enough to demand the strict fidelity to the provisions and the spirit of the Constitution without guaranteeing that calmer minds will prevail.

The rallies headlined by luminaries of the Coalition for Reforms and Development (CORD) have not attracted the "hundreds of thousands" of followers the coalition claims; nor have they been held in "near-empty venues" as maliciously suggested by the yokels of the Jubilee. It is for this reason that the Saba Saba ultimatum should be abandoned, whether CORD gets anything in return or not. Mr Odinga has already demonstrated that it is possible to communicate with the President without getting into a pissing contest. Sadly, it is no longer up to the President or Mr Odinga alone. 

Mr Odinga has a remarkable group of acolytes around him and in public you would think their loyalty to Agwambo is total. They perform the oratorical equivalent of prostrating themselves before Baba with their very loud declarations of fealty and the haste with which they rouse themselves to anger every time the name of the former Prime Minister is taken in vain by anybody, especially anybody who happens to be Jubilee. It is remarkable given that it is almost certain that Kenya has made a giant leap into the future where seventy-year olds will no longer have the capacity to reach for the brass ring, simply because they are too old - too old in the context of the dynamic duo that is #TeamJubilee.

But the President is the one who has been cornered by the most ardent sycophants in the twenty-first century history of Kenya. It is not that his sycophants are nincompoops - far from it. They are smart professionals from and of the Digital Age with fund-raising and networking skills at home anywhere in the world. But they seem to have made the same bargain as the the sycophants who surrounded Baba Moi for nigh on twenty years. They are willing to do whatever it takes to make the President happy and, just like the acolytes surrounding Tinga, they will spit verbal fire in the service of their feudal liege. They will twist and bend their professional skills so that they can remain members of the inner circle, men of substance, people to be seen and heard. They will shamelessly lay, metaphorically speaking, supine before the Commander-in-Chief just for the chance of a similarly metaphorical belly-rub, a presidential "atta boy!"

Both the President and Mr Odinga can, of course, roll back the excessive exuberance of their ardent followers. But if they do that, they run the risk of having nowhere to direct their energies to. Whether the minions on both sides will admit it, neither of their lieges has a clue what to do now that the general election is many, many moons behind us. It is why Raila Odinga is still campaigning and why Uhuru Kenyatta cannot seem to go beyond campaign rhetoric in his governance. It is why the political air remains poisoned. It is why many are apprehensive about tomorrow.