Politics and Tribal Alliances
In the past the Meru were in a coalition with the Embu and Kikuyu which yielded some political power. The coalition, called G.e.m.a. (Gikuyu-Embu-Meru Association), is not as strong as it once was, but the Meru typically voted with the opposition after the advent of multipartism. This has since changed with the defeat of KANU in the 2002 general elections that saw a number of Meru leaders in the government of NARC. This does vary from location to location, but would generally hold true. Developments under the multi-party experiment since 1992 have renewed an informal political alliance between GEMA peoples and much of the Kikuyu community.
Read more about this topic: Meru People
Famous quotes containing the words politics, tribal and/or alliances:
“The history of American politics is littered with bodies of people who took so pure a position that they had no clout at all.”
—Ben C. Bradlee (b. 1921)
“What is this conversation, now secular,
A speech not mine yet speaking for me in
The heaving jelly of my tribal air?
It rises in the throat, it climbs the tongue,
It perches there for secret tutelage....”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)
“An alliance is like a chain. It is not made stronger by adding weak links to it. A great power like the United States gains no advantage and it loses prestige by offering, indeed peddling, its alliances to all and sundry. An alliance should be hard diplomatic currency, valuable and hard to get, and not inflationary paper from the mimeograph machine in the State Department.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)