The Big Five, a catchy phrase, normally conjures up images of the animal world.

Coined by big game hunters in Africa, the term includes the fearsome lion, the elusive leopard, the monstrous African buffalo, the majestic but humongous elephant, and the stampeding black or white rhinoceros. Surprisingly, the enormous hippopotamus is not among them because it is not difficult to hunt.

In the human world, however, the Big Five is an intriguing metaphor for Kenya's executive pentagon that sits atop the state. Those who made it to the pentagon - President Mwai Kibaki, Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka, Prime Minister Raila Odinga, Deputy Prime Minister Musalia Mudavadi, and Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta - were perceived to be pivotal to the legitimacy of the coalition government.

Not surprisingly, they all came from the four parties with the highest number of seats in the legislature - ODM, PNU, ODM-K, and KANU, in that order. It was no accident, either, that they were drawn from four of the five biggest ethnic communities in Kenya. Only the Kalenjin identity, which would have rounded off the Big Five communities, was left out.

Although the analogy I wish to draw between the Big Five in the human world and the Big Five in the animal kingdom is a rhetorical one, it is a potent and salient political tool. As we know, any game park with the Big Five is a tourist's dream.

But is Kenya's political pentagon a dream or a nightmare? What is one to make of an executive that is designed to accommodate personal ambitions and defuse the collapse of the state in an ethnic cauldron? Is the Big Five a marriage of Kenya's competing political factions in an unholy alliance, or does it portend the possibility of a renaissance?

Let us examine the identities and proclivities of the Big Five in the animal kingdom. It is often said that the lion is the king of the jungle. Presumably, this speaks to that cat's ferocity in submitting all and sundry to its rule of the wild. But like the Kenyan presidency, the lion does not exist alone. It must share its habitat with the agile leopard, the slow but sure buffalo, the intimidating elephant, and the stubborn rhinoceros.

Who in the pentagon matches these creatures? What about the only other big animal - the hippopotamus - that did not make the pentagon? Perhaps Mr William Ruto, who by identity should have joined the apex, could have turned it into a hexagon.

In constructing the leadership cabal, the key actors decided that gender was unimportant. Consider that about 50 per cent of Kenya's population is female. So, how come none of the Big Five is a woman? Would this be acceptable in the animal kingdom? What if we substituted ethnicity for gender?

By the currency of politics, three women were qualified to join the executive pentagon. Dr Sally Kosgei, Mrs Charity Ngilu, and Ms Martha Karua should have been as important as any of the Big Five, and gender is the most compelling explanation for their absence atop the pyramid.

This brings me to the question of political and biological parentage and the logic of leadership in Kenya. It is clear - or should be - to all Kenyans that the only way you get to the top is either by inheritance or adoption. That is, either you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth, or you have been the creation of a godfather.

To be a leader in contemporary Kenya, you must be the progeny of former leaders or their sycophant. That is why the Big Five are composed of the scions of a former president and a vice- president. Mr Kenyatta is only holding a place as Deputy Prime Minister to keep alive his ambition for the presidency - the office that his late father held.

Mr Odinga, on the other hand, reluctantly took the premiership, although what he really wanted - and many people think he won - is the presidency which eluded his late father.

The other three members of the executive pentagon do not have the pedigree of Mr Kenyatta and Mr Odinga. President Kibaki was a technocrat and budding intellectual who was recognized by President Jomo Kenyatta and given room to flourish. In that sense, he is a creation of the late president.

Mr Mudavadi, the scion of the late Moses Mudavadi, the so-called king of the Luhya, is largely a creation of former President Daniel Moi. Mr Moi plucked him from political obscurity at the tender age of 29 and gifted him with a cabinet post.

Similarly, Mr Musyoka was for a long time the darling of Mr. Moi, the former president who raised him to the rafters of the one-party state and kept him aloft after multi-partyism in 1992.

Although Mr Kibaki, Mr Mudavadi, and Mr Musyoka are the protégés of former presidents, they have been embraced by their respective ethnic communities as barons. But so have Mr Odinga and Mr Kenyatta.

In the animal kingdom, the Big Five reproduce themselves. Lions beget lions - not leopards, hippopotami, elephants, and rhinoceros. What is important is that all the Big Five co-exist in the wild.

That appears to be true in the human world as well - Kenya's political Big Five have decided to cohabit. I never cease to be amazed by the incredible parallels between politics and nature.

Makau Mutua is Interim Dean and SUNY Distinguished Professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo Law School and Chair of the Kenya Human Rights Commission.