So Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto are partyless and Kalonzo has been nicely shunted to the side. For all his "I am the boss of KANU" business, we know Biwott could never win an election in the North Rift, let alone anywhere else in Kenya, and foggy old Moi must plain have lost his marbles if this is the best he can come up with to counter the resurgence of ODM-K.

It is also puzzling exactly what game plan the Mount Kenya Mafia have for the perpetuation of their truly unique power grab. Are they ready to lose it all? I have never taken too seriously a Kibaki re-run for the presidency in 2007, expressly because it would seem a desperate risk with his known health problems, but such is the dearth of strategy that this seems to be the only plan they have at all. The inertia of the incumbent evident in recent opinion polls may be lulling Narc-K to sleep, but what is the plan B?  Surely never has it been more urgent to realise the cliché that failure to plan, is planning to fail.

Uhuru and Raila are the great beneficiaries of this anarchy. Long associated with the excesses of his father’s and Moi’s regimes, his present enduring street battles against Kenya’s finest will surely endear Uhuru to the mwananchi- even as he tries to distance himself from the wealthy elite that have bled this country dry these last forty years. More than that, for all the talk of the Agikuyu being intransigent in their insularity, he is throwing his lot in with an avowedly un-Agikuyu group. This will undoubtedly boost his national credentials even as NARC-K continues to look more and more out of tune with the rest of the country. This may not be useful in 2007 already, but the chips will be put aside to be cashed in at a later date.

For Raila, things could hardly be better. His KANU partners are now effectively neutered. Without the services of the feared KANU machinery, Uhuru, Ruto and the other ex-KANU men are now effectively ODM damu, even more than the LDP crowd that founded ODM. At a delegates’ conference of whatever kind, Raila can run away with the show, confident that there isn’t a political machine within his party that can rival his. Unless, and this he is not incapable of, Raila would turn so authoritarian and arrogant that he alienates either Kalonzo or Uhuru and thus forces them to hitch a Narc-K joyride, it promises to be smooth sailing on this version of the tsunami.

You can just hear the deafeningly loud smile from Raila Odinga as he contemplates how all this is panning out for him. Lachrymose they may well be from the tear gas now, but all the tears ODM-K seem poised to shed in the next year are of joy, and for Raila Odinga, the next election is his to lose.