Raila Odinga’s name is synonymous with the fight for liberation, and several failed stabs at the presidency. For these, and many more reasons, the second-born son of Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, independent Kenya’s first Vice President, is loved and hated in equal measure. It was the late Vice President, Wamalwa Kijana, who once said that those who hated Raila did so with passion. Likewise, those who loved Raila were prepared to die for him. So, Raila is, indeed, an enigma. Raila’s public life is akin to the proverbial elephant that was experienced by six blind men. Each of the men attempted to describe the elephant depending on the parts of the gigantic animal that they touched. At the end of the day, none of the blind men had a holistic impression of the entire elephant. In Kenya’s political context, Raila Amolo Odinga is that elephant. The former Prime Minister has captured the imagination of Kenyans for several decades, yet nobody seems to truly capture the holistic nature of this enigma. First, Kenyans across the length and breadth of the country love to have him around. They truly cherish listening to him. But, for some strange reason, the very people who view him as their saviour from the excesses of the executive, do not want to make him their President. On several occasions, he has lost the presidency with a whisker. Pundits opine that there have been instances when his win was grabbed from him by the barrel of the gun. The most obvious one was the 2007 presidential poll which insiders intimate President Kibaki lost by a sizable margin. Most Kenyans too agreed that Raila won that election, especially when they realized that the results that were announced at the national tallying centre in Nairobi in favour of President Kibaki were significantly higher than the actual votes at the polling stations where they voted. For that reason, Kenyans from across the country voluntarily went to the streets to demand electoral justice. The rest is now history.
Let us take a look at the sacrifices that Raila has made on behalf of Kenyans, and how the same people have paid him back. In the late 1980s up till the early 1990s, the maverick Raila, together with a group of “Young Turks”, including James Orengo, Paul Muite, Gitobu Imanyara, Joe Ager, Mukhisa Kituyi, Kiraitu Murungi, and others, fervently opposed President Daniel Moi’s increasingly draconian KANU regime. Moi responded by jailing and detaining the critics without trial. Raila endured nine years of detention without trial and a long period of self-imposed exile in Europe. Back home, his wife, Idda, was sacked from her post as a high school teacher at the Kenya High School. Raila’s efforts bore fruits when in December 1991, President Moi acceded to the repeal of Section 2A of the constitution, thus ushering in a new constitutional dispensation that allowed for multiparty democracy and expanded political space. Many leaders who could not dare stand up to Moi’s repressive regime now had a field day, creating political parties left, right and centre, courtesy of Raila’s sacrifices. Raila’s struggles for a better Kenya never ended despite harassment from security agencies, thus making him the symbol of Kenya’s “Second Liberation.” In 2002, Raila suspended his political ambition and put his weight behind Mwai Kibaki’s presidential bid. Matters got thicker for Raila when Kibaki was involved in a near-fatal road accident on his way from a political event in Machakos. The presidential candidate was flown to the United Kingdom for specialized treatment. As the most charismatic politician with a national appeal then, Raila took the mantle of coordinating Mwai Kibaki’s presidential campaigns while the candidate recuperated in London. Raila electrified the campaign trails, leaving in his wake exuberant voters who were rearing to go. When the polling day came, Mwai Kibaki romped home with a clear win over his closest rival, Uhuru Kenyatta. Yet, when President Kibaki invited Raila to serve as the Vice President, he turned it down, instead giving way to Wamalwa Kijana. This act of selflessness confirmed that Raila was not in the struggle for personal gains, but rather to liberate Kenyans from the yoke of the KANU dictatorship. Raila holds the record of the person who has made the highest number of unsuccessful stabs at the presidency (1997, 2007, 2013, 2017 and 2022). Asked why he continues to gun for the presidency despite the unfortunate results, Raila insists that his commitment is to see a better, freer and more democratic Kenya where citizens are protected by constitutional safeguards. That summarizes his commitment to better governance that culminated in a new constitutional dispensation in 2010. In the August 2022 presidential poll, Raila lost narrowly to his rival, President William Ruto. Pundits agree that it was the Mount Kenya region that tilted the vote in favour of President Ruto. It is now emerging that the excitement that the region’s voters manifested towards Ruto was not so much because they loved him, but rather due to their disdain of Raila. Opinion is still divided as to whether Ruto would have received the same number of votes from the Mount Kenya region had Raila not been in the presidential ballot. That is now water under the bridge. The recent impeachment of the Deputy President, Rigathi Gachagua, brought to the fore the fluidity of the relationship between the region and President Ruto. It is now clear that the people of Mount Kenya supported President Ruto only on the condition that their own son, Rigathi Gachagua, would eventually succeed him as the head of state. This confirms the earlier speculation that the region did not love President Ruto as much as they relished the possibility of regaining the presidency that they have so far held for a whopping thirty-five years since Kenya’s independence in 1963. The region therefore, made a conscious decision to vote for William Ruto to punish Raila whom they believed would not be malleable for their long-term political strategy. The region made it publicly known that they hated Raila, and would not vote for him whatever the circumstances. But now that Rigathi Gachagua has been impeached, and the region’s hopes of clinching the presidency through him have dissipated, President Ruto has become an object of hate within the region. The intention is to isolate the President so that he becomes vulnerable to the forces that intend to remove him from the presidency. There has been behind-the-scenes lobbying to sway Raila to support the isolation of President Ruto from the rest of Kenyans. Once it became apparent that Raila was not keen on that scheme, he too became a target of unwarranted attacks and slander. Following Raila’s public declaration that he was on the side of President Ruto in the matter of Gen-Z uprisings, the Mount Kenya region felt embarrassed and jilted by the man they hoped to misuse as a doormat to help them launder their political mess. It is very difficult to be a Raila. People hate you with passion, but when their hatred backfires, they try to blame you for it! It is immoral to publicly demonstrate hatred towards a person, yet still expect him to support your selfish political moves. When in 2003, Raila mobilized his supporters to demonstrate against the high cost of living, the Mount Kenya region blackmailed him for using goons to destroy their businesses. After listening to the feedback from Kenyans, Raila called off the demonstrations and instead opted for negotiations with the government. In June this year, the Gen-Zs poured onto the streets of Nairobi and other major cities and towns to demonstrate against the very things that Raila’s supporters had been complaining about. The Gen-Zs and their backers must have expected Raila to support their course. Raila had other ideas. The opposition leader was very categorical that Kenyans had asked for broad-based negotiations rather than violent street demonstrations. He, therefore, flatly rejected the Gen-Zs’ demand for President Ruto and his government to vacate office. Suddenly, the Mount Kenya region turned their heat on Raila for being a traitor.
Raila has recently joined the race for the African Union Commission (AUC) Chairman which falls vacant when the current office holder, Moussa Faki, retires in February 2025. Again, some Kenyans are all over the place claiming that Raila is not qualified for that position. The said naysayers have been sponsoring propaganda to malign Raila’s integrity throughout the continent. They started by falsely claiming that Raila did not hold any recognized academic qualifications. But the moment Otton Von Guerricke Universitat, Raila’s German Alma Mater, confirmed that he was a bona fide holder of a Dipl-Ing (Master of Science) in Mechanical Engineering, the story shifted to politics. The story that is now going around is that Raila is still too deeply involved in Kenya’s local politics, and should, therefore, not be entrusted with a continental position. Ordinarily in global politics and diplomacy, once a country supports its candidate for a regional or international position, all the citizens should support him or her. Kenya has broken this cardinal diplomatic practice by parading its dirty linen in the continental arena.
For several decades, Raila has been the to-go-to “Mr Fix It” for all Kenya’s political problems. Yet, Kenyans do not want to make him their President so that he can gain executive powers to fix the issues from the top. Whenever he takes up his role as the opposition leader, the same Kenyans claim that he is disturbing their peace. Whenever he steps aside to let Kenyans manage their affairs without his interference, the same Kenyans claim that Raila has abandoned them. The question is: what exactly do Kenyans want Raila to do?
Copyright ©️ Vincent Ongore 2024
