By Anderson Ojwang’
Governor James Orengo has seen it all in the corridors of justice and court battles involving presidential election disputes.
For Orengo, it has been tears, pain, burning midnight oil and, in the end, what he described as misfortunes, one after another, for the last 30 years.
The alumnus of Alliance Boys will pass as the country’s longest litigant for various presidential candidates in the last six presidential elections.
And now Orengo has declared that it was time to bury the misfortune with the 2027 presidential election by ensuring the opposition candidate wins the election.
Orengo has now predicted that the opposition will win the 2027 presidential election and that the incumbent, William Ruto, will be a one-term president.
“It is my wish and I have stated this openly, and my co-principals, Embakasi East MP Babu Owino and Nairobi Senator Edwin Sifuna, here know that my position all through was to have one party and one presidential candidate,” he said.
Orengo said in his recent meeting with Babu and Sifuna, he impressed upon them the need for a single political party.
But the single party is now a mirage, as Orengo is now associated with LDP, while Babu has Mwananchi Party, while Sifuna at the weekend unveiled The Equitable Party (TEP).
“At the last meeting we had with Babu Owino and Edwin Sifuna somewhere in Nairobi and we didn’t quite agree at that time, I paid for the lunch. I felt very bad.
Because I insisted that we should have one party, that we should have one party and one presidential candidate,”he said.
Misfortune
Orengo explained the sad moments of representing his clients and witnessing some of them break down into tears.
“My position has not changed. But I want to remind you, and that is why this meeting is very important, and I like Babu’s last remarks.
Ever since we had the multi-party system in Kenya, I have had the misfortune of sitting with great men and great leaders after the elections,” he said.
A visibly teary Orengo became emotional as he flashbacked to moments with his clients after elections.
“It is very bad looking at somebody at my age crying after ‘losing’ an election. When former Ford-P, the late Kenneth Matiba, and Democratic Movement (DP), the late Mwai Kibaki, lost the elections, which were rigged, and Ford-K presidential candidate, the late Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, I was with them. After they failed to have one presidential candidate, they went for the election and we were to go to court to contest the result,” he said.
Orengo represented Jaramogi at the presidential election petition and it was one of the hardest moments.
“I had the unfortunate responsibility of representing Jaramogi in court in his petition,” he said.
Orengo also represented Matiba, whose petition was dismissed on a technicality that he was incapable of signing his election petition.
“I represented Matiba, in the court where one of the issues was that it was alleged that he was incapable of signing his own election petition, and I represented Mwai Kibaki and kept on telling him when he was the president that he had never paid my fees and he died without ever paying my fees.
I forgave him many times because he was a good man. After every election in Kenya, I have the misfortune of sitting down with the candidates having lost and dealing with the consequences of losing an election and going to court in the various election petitions,”he said.
Orengo said he will not avail himself for the 2027 election petition as he exuded confidence in victory.
“So I keep on saying, in 2027, I shall not avail myself to go to court. So I keep on, 2027, there is a possibility that it will not be necessary to go to court because I have never seen in my lifetime a president who is unpopular as President Ruto,” he said.
Orengo claimed Ruto’s unpopularity, which may hurt his re-election in the next year’s General Election.
“I have, when I was a student at the university during the late Mzee Jomo Kenyatta presidency, I have never seen a president whose popularity is low,” he said.
Raila
Orengo has been the lead counsel for the late Raila Amolo Odinga in his three last petitions in 2013, 2017 and 2022.
In 2017, the Supreme Court nullified the presidential election, with then-President Uhuru Kenyatta winning the repeat election after Raila boycotted the election.
