By SUNDAY NATION Team

Mr Odinga: Of course, nobody expects him to be sacked anytime soon.

The jury is still out on whether last Tuesday's Narc Parliamentary Group meeting chaired by Vice-President Moody Awori will translate into a lasting truce between the warring party factions.

Out of all the PG meetings Narc has held this year (there have been four, starting with the famous one at Mount Kenya Safari Club in Nanyuki in April) nothing like this has been forthcoming. 

Each time the members have sworn to make up and work together, only to start throwing mud at one another the following day. 

To many, Narc's past record suggests that last week's meeting merely marked a temporary cessation of hostilities, after which the battles between the LDP and NAK factions will start anew. Certainly the most divisive issue facing the coalition - the pre-election Memorandum of Understanding on power sharing between the NAK and the LDP Ñ was not resolved. 

What the PG at least agreed on was to lower the decibels of the miss-communication between the two factions. This is something that had taken an ominous direction in the preceding days, with heated insults that jolted the whole Narc house. The atmosphere was made more toxic by calls by some of NAK's leaders at a rally in Meru for the dismissal of Cabinet Minister Raila Odinga. 

It was this background that led to the summoning of the PG meeting which, by Mr Awori's own reported account, had no prepared agenda. It is one of the indicators of the vicious NAK-LDP feud that the person who as PG secretary should keep minutes, Mbita MP Otieno Kajwang, seems to have left the task to others. 

'Uncle Moody' presided over the meeting with much acrimony in the air. The Meru gathering, which was for the funeral of the mother of Tigania East MP Peter Munya, quickly became the topic. It was precisely on this occasion in Meru that coarse insults flew and the demand for the sacking of Mr Odinga was made. 

The politicians who insinuated that directly at Meru were Starehe MP Maina Kamanda and Nakuru North MP Mirugi Kariuki. Garsen's Danson Mungatana had actually been doing so before at charged rallies in the Coast. 

Mr Awori duly gave Mr Mungatana, a "born-again" Christian, the nod to lead prayers at the PG meeting at the start of deliberations. But, in a mark of his unpopularity with the hard-core LDP, the MP for Garsen was booed by a section of those MPs. 

The presence of Justice Minister Kiraitu Murungi at the Meru rally attracted attention. He did not explicitly call for Mr Odinga's dismissal, and he was at pains defending himself at the PG meeting. He explained that what he actually said at the rally was that he was "fed-up" with the bickering within Narc. Yet his presence at the Meru rally has led the LDP to read a "plot" against the Roads Minister. 

Mr Gor Sunguh (Kisumu East) set the PG alight when he revisited this issue, accusing some MPs of calling certain colleagues "devils" while alluding to others as "Gods". This was in reference to Mr Kamanda's controversial analogy at Meru about Lucifer vis-a-vis "good" angels. The analogy was straightaway understood to have been directed at Mr Odinga.

To the uninitiated, Mr Kamanda may look an ordinary, even bumbling, character within the NAK firmament. But those who know the goings-on are aware that he is a close associate of National Security Minister Chris Murungaru and, indeed, the President. 

The two may not approve of their friend's abusive language at Mr Munya's home (Mr Murungaru was in fact quoted later as urging all sides to stick to "civil" language), but there could be something in what was said there that touches on the sentiments higher up.

Of course, nobody expects Mr Odinga to be sacked Ñ not anytime soon anyway (See story on Page 11). But insiders in the Kibaki administration say that their patience with the LDP chief is running thin. "At the cabinet level there is a lot of restraint. 

But at the middle levels there are plenty of people who are simply fed-up with him," one such insider told the Sunday Nation prior to the PG meeting. 

None of these insiders thought it best to put their cards on the table at the PG meeting. The closest they came was through Assistant Minister Mwangi Kiunjuri, a foot-soldier at best, who posed: "Who are the dogs? Who are the masters?" 

He was harking back to Mr Odinga who at previous rallies had dismissed as "barking dogs" NAK foot-soldiers like Mr Mungatana who have been relentlessly attacking him. 

It was clear what Mr Kiunjuri was driving at was that the festival of abuse was not one-sided. Cabinet Minister Martha Karua sought to belabour the same point when she talked of the need to be "balanced" and "objective" in laying blame. "We must not react only because your favourite has been touched. You cannot say people are holding some as a deity when you hold others the same." 

It is not surprising that such free-wheeling insults have created a perception of a leadership vacuum at the very top. In fact, it is a perception that is getting wide public play as the Narc infighting deteriorates. 

More so when the memory is still very fresh of the era of former President Moi, who used to intervene in each and every squabble in his party, however petty, with customary swiftness and finality. In the wake of the worsening problems in the Narc coalition, there are serious questions being asked about the wisdom of President Kibaki's preferred posture of remaining above the fray. 

Indeed, at the PG, explicit calls were made for the first time for the President's own intervention in what is clearly a burning house. It was Butere MP Wycliffe Oparanya and Nominated MP Cecily Mbarire who brought the issue up. 

Ms Mbarire's clearly exasperated plea - "Where is the President in all this?" - captured the undercurrents which many of her colleagues left unsaid. It was telling that the calls for presidential guidance came from two MPs who are from the NAK wing. (Media reports that Ms Karua had joined in this chorus were erroneous). 

But how will the President act, if at all? Judging from people close to his inner circle, he is unlikely to step in openly in the manner that President Moi used to. Said one such informant: "The President has been in Bunge for 40 years. He has seen it all, the infighting, the what-have-you. He is biding his time. 

He doesn't have to come out at this stage. So far, there is a lot of hot air, nothing substantive." Kenyans who have been used for 24 years to a president who seemed to comment on just about every issue, find this strange, but it is a style of leadership they might have to get used to. 

Yet the direction the latest crisis in Narc is taking suggests such a view might be too complacent. On top of the perennial differences over the MoU and the Bomas of Kenya conference has been added the incendiary ingredient of the Crispin Mbai murder, something already dividing Narc along ethnic lines. 

Judging from various comments made at the PG meeting, a number of MPs are already looking at the matter in this way. 

Makadara's Reuben Ndolo introduced the angle of Nyumba ya Mumbi, which for emphasis he pronounced in the vernacular. His gripe was that people like him were being trashed by the other side for being considered mouthpieces of Mr Odinga. Mr Oparanya had this poser: "Is the issue parties? Or is the issue tribalism?" 

Ms Karua put the matter more bluntly: "Dr Mbai's murder has become a Luo-Kikuyu problem". Indeed, such was the view of Mrs Nyiva Mwendwa (Kitui West): "This war is causing a lot of harm. Luos and Kikuyus need to work together. In 1963 they got together to fight a common agenda. If they can sit down together it will help solve issues." 

Mrs Mwendwa, who is allied to the LDP, has an interesting take about the NAK-LDP divide which she likes regaling colleagues with. According to her, NAK went wrong by not wooing her coalition partner the way a proper lady likes to be wooed. 

That would mean making the other partner feel wanted, indeed loved, like is the case in a happy family. Failing that, she adds, the partner may fall for other ardent suitors, like Kanu. 

As expected, the matter of the MoU cropped up in the PG meeting. It was raised by, among others, Ugenya MP Stephen Ondiek, saying this was the agreement that helped Narc win the election last year. 

But too much water seems to have passed under the bridge ever since. Mr Awori was categorical at the PG meeting that the document "can be renegotiated", a point he had tried to express sometime back to a hostile crowd in Bondo which booed him. 

Interestingly, not everybody in the LDP is opposed to such a renegotiation, in principle. When being hosted by a Nation TV talk show last Thursday, Karachuonyo's Adhu Awiti wanted to know: "What is the other side putting on the table?"

One definite outcome of the PG meeting which was not made public at Mr Awori's press briefing was that the Narc Summit will be meeting this week. The fact that the Summit has been dormant is another huge bone of contention for the LDP. 

But the cast which will be meeting (probably at Mr Awori's Nairobi home) is not the original eight of Mr Kibaki, Mr Awori, Mr Odinga, Prof George Saitoti, Mrs Charity Ngilu, Mr Kipruto Kirwa, Mr Kalonzo Musyoka and the deceased Mr Michael Wamalwa. 

The Summit that will sit is an expanded group of 16. This is as agreed at the Nanyuki meeting in April to widen the top body and include two members from each province. 

A decision apparently was made long before the Nanyuki PG that Mr Kibaki would not be sitting on this Summit, which his handlers consider no longer in keeping with his standing as Head of State. Mr Wamalwa, of course, has passed on. Of the original eight, only six remain. 

No clear agenda was forthcoming from the PG about Narc elections, which one faction favours while another is totally opposed to. The reason for the dispute is that calling Narc elections implies a prior dissolution of the constituent parties, which an entity like the LDP has said it will not countenance. 

From the Coast, Local Government Minister Karisa Maitha is all set for party elections, as indeed are key elements of the old Democratic Party. But that is as far as the story goes. And it is not only the LDP which sees things differently. 

Ford Kenya, though not stating their case as militantly as the LDP, have left no doubt where they stand as they prepare for elections to replace Mr Wamalwa as party leader. 

All the contestants for the Ford Kenya chair have made it clear that their party is not going to be dissolved. Nobody is talking of the December deadline that a cabinet sub-committee set a couple of months back for all the constituent parties to fold up. 

The word from Dr Awiti tells everything about the embedded suspicions in the Narc coalition: "How do we amalgamate when there is no trust?" 

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