NRM leader Raila Odinga greets President Uhuru Kenyatta during the Centenary Celebration Service at All Saints' Cathedral Church, Nairobi, on November 5, 2017. [Photo: NMG]It will take a lot of effort to persuade a significant part of the population to voluntarily shun Safaricom, Brookside and Bidco, the three blue-chip firms targeted by National Resistance Movement (NRM) boycott.Columnist and 'Independent' journalist Macharia Gaitho says that NRM may be tempted to enforce the boycott by use of force in its strongholds, 'as it successfully demonstrated in Nyanza to ensure there would be no voting during the repeat presidential elections'."Violence will, of course, attract a reaction from security agencies unschooled in the civil ways of managing unrest, provoking more anger and bitterness," Gaitho writes on Tuesday's Daily Nation.This, he adds, will make 'life very uncomfortable for President Uhuru Kenyatta at the beginning of his contentious second term, and also keep NRM leader Raila Odinga firmly in the news as a continuing scourge of the establishment'.He, however, notes that President Kenyatta has his own claims to 'legitimacy and his own ardent following that will not dissipate the way President Moi’s did in the '90s."Odinga says he is fighting for the restoration of democracy, constitutionalism and electoral justice, but there are still many who need to be persuaded that he is not simply making a bid for power," Gaitho adds.Meanwhile, Paul Ndung'u, a youth leader in Kiganjo Ward, Gatundu South, seems to be in agreement with Gaitho's last point."To me, Raila isn't after anything else but power. But his boycott calls will yield nothing because Kenyans are nowadays getting wiser by day. Let him try a different strategy," Ndung'u told this reporter on Monday via phone.Speaking through the same medium, Martha Mwikali from Witeithie estate in Thika said: "I just wish that Baba's boycott calls prove successful we see who won't suffer. I now believe those who say Raila wants to bring the whole house down with everybody inside now that his quest for power seems shattered."

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