Musalia Mudavadi tells us that, "I would be comfortable working with Ruto." (The Standard, 29 July 2012). Ruto considers he might be comfortable working with Uhuru. Uhuru considers he might be comfortable working with Mudavadi. All this is not leadership. It is followership. Running alone they offer no leadership. They have no history of leadership. They have a history of holding office. But holding office is not the same as leadership. They all owed their offices for years to a patron, Moi, in whose gift these offices were. They were all Projects. They are the Project Kids. That is no training in leadership.

It is training in followership. They were drilled to obey without question. They were drilled not to question. They were drilled not to have their own beliefs. This was no apprenticeship in national leadership. Rather, it was an apprenticeship in doing the bidding of power groups. They have no history of having any distinct political beliefs of their own. This is showing up now. Their statements are turning out not to have any national character. Upon the slightest criticism, they retreat into sectional defences. A leader's national commitment is not judged by the people from his US-style fancy party launch or ghost written speeches or glossy manifestos or television advertisements with the flag. He is judged by his actions now and, importantly, over his past. These possible 'comfortable' allies have little in their pasts of such actions.

Some Projects have been clever followers. They now think that having been a clever follower has qualified them to be a leader. But these are different professions. A leader is a person who can offer a direction and its energy in a difficult situation. None of these three can, nor have they. This is why each of these Projects is now seeking out the others. But even running together they offer no leadership. They think that putting Three Projects together adds up to One Leader. As any primary schooler could tell them, one plus one plus one does not equal one, and never can. Bad maths.

It is also bad politics. A person who has only followed, will not lead when he is in the top seat. He will only do what the power group that put him there will tell him to do. That was what happened to Moi. Of course, a project can break away from his puppet-masters. Moi did. But there was a cost, and it was a cost paid by the country, and not by Moi.

The cost was our bad history from 1982 to 2002. When Moi broke away from his puppet masters, he could only do so by breaking Kenya's institutions. He could only break the power group's 17 year-old control of Kenya (1963-1978) by establishing personal rule, in place of the existing governmental institutions. To survive on his own, he had to bring under his personal control the Executive, the Judiciary, the Legislature, the security apparatus, the civil service, the political party, the Constitution, the Land Office, local government councils and so on, ad infinitum. The price Kenya paid for Moi the Project to turn into a 'leader' was the destruction of state institutions, the impoverishment of the people, gross violations of human rights, and the loss of respect for Kenya. We do not want that to happen again. Especially now, that we are on the right path to correct the terrible depredations of the past.

We must therefore no longer give power to Projects. It is giving power to the puppet masters. It is breaking our country again. We must therefore not allow the present power group of ethno-businesses and mega-land owners to control who is 'comfortable' with whom. For these 'alliances' are not being made for the benefit of the nation. These 'alliances' shift all the time, one day with that individual, another day with another. If these individuals truly shared national political objectives, there should be no need for these musical chairs politics.

The alliances shift because they are serially proposed by and for the power group puppet-masters, who are trying out alliances to see which one will work best for them. The single clear thread running through these alliances - Keep Raila Out - betrays that these alliances have a single source - the power group puppeteers, the group which gains the most from keeping him out. It is not even the individual Projects. It is certainly not the nation. Hence, the need to reject these 'comfortable' alliances.