A pact between Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto, often mooted in recent weeks, is back on the agenda (assuming it was ever off in the first place). The respective leaders of The National Alliance (TNA) and the United Republican Party (URP) may be all for it but will those they are supposed to lead be quite so happy, especially the Kalenjin?

WAMALWA AND NGILU IN, OUT, IN, OUT, SHAKE IT ALL ABOUT…

It was only on Friday that the front page of The Star suggested that Kenyatta and Ruto were considering a back-up plan of supporting a presidential election team of Charity Ngilu and Eugene Walmalwa if they happened to be ruled out for running for office by the courts over that slight matter due up before the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.

Come Monday and all change again. The Star’s front page reported that Wamalwa deal in any shape or form was off. Kenyatta is supposed to have offered the position of Speaker. Not good enough was Wamalwa’s reply – vice-presidential running mate or no deal.

RAILA, RUTO AND THE RIFT…

Earlier last week there was still talk of a deal between Raila Odinga and Ruto whilst the Prime Minister headed of to the Rift Valley in the search for votes, apologising along the way to the Kalenjin community if he had “wronged” them “in the process of dealing with many complex and difficult issues in a very difficult coalition arrangement”.

By the weekend, according to the Daily Nation and others, that deal too was off, as Ruto accused Odinga of ‘causing the displacement of thousands of Kalenjins from the Mau Forest’.

All this manoeuvring and posturing seems to have left Deputy Prime Minister Musalia Mudavadi (UDF) and Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka (Wiper Party) out on their respective limbs, at least for time being.

DEADLINE WITH THE REGISTRAR OF POLITICAL PARTIES

There is now one month to go before the various presidential candidates running for the top job in Kenya have to file their pre-election coalition agreements with the Registrar of Political Parties.

So come December 4 will it be Uhuru Kenyatta against Raila Odinga and A. N. Other? Possibly, says the Kenya Forum but consider this…

William Ruto may be a leader of a political party largely centred in the Rift Valley support-wise but he doesn’t necessarily fully command his Kalenjin followers. Many of them, as phone-in after phone-in programme on Kenya’s radio stations attest, do not like the idea of Ruto in alliance with the Kikuyu Kenyatta, certainly not as the secondary figure in the alliance.

MAKING THE FIGURES ADD UP

One of the reasons for all the political chicanery going on at the moment is that the figures don’t add up for the leading candidates on most permutations of the alliances they are considering.

As the Kenya Forum has suggested before (see posting of October 3), Raila Odinga looks very likely to get around 36 per cent of the vote in the first round of a presidential election but where do the other 14 per cent plus of votes come from to take him over the 50 per cent threshold in the second round?

Meanwhile, Uhuru Kenyatta looks as if he will be in a position to benefit more from second round votes shifting to his cause but again enough to reach 50 per cent plus one? It looks close and Kenyatta will be battling against the not inconsiderable anti-Kikuyu vote.

MORE THAN TWO HORSES…

Try this: it is not going to be just a two-way deal – Kenyatta with Ruto or Odinga with A. N. Other – the winning team in Kenya’s next presidential election will have made a three or four-way deal (or more!) offering up government positions (anyone for Speaker?) in order to secure a broad enough base to win in round two of the election.

This political horse trading has several furlongs to go yet.

KENYA FORUM- US ELECTION NIGHT REPORTS & ANALYSIS

The Kenya Forum will be running a continuous posting from the early hours of Wednesday 7^thNovember (starting about 3.30am Nairobi time) reporting the results of the US presidential elections as they come in with commentary and analysis from our Nairobi-based team and from a US-based political scientist ‘APJB’ giving his views (for latest Kenya Forum posting on US elections and APJB’s views – ‘US Presidential Election 2012: Obama ahead in certain swing states’).

The Kenya Forum will welcome comments on the night from our many readers in Kenya and around the world and we will publish them live (if they are polite and do not break the laws of the Republic of Kenya!). To join in on the night/early morning please email your thoughts and views to kenyaforum@me.com, or kenyaforum@gmail.com, or become a ‘subscriber’ (no fee!) via www.kenyaforum.net to make a comment.