Why Raila is popular yet the most hated and discussed leader in Kenya

By WILLIAM OCHIENGPosted Tuesday, February 22 2011 at 20:07

As a rule, I hardly write about individuals. Most visible individuals, particularly political leaders, are never nice people. Thinking or writing about them simply lodges a critical burden on one’s mind.

But today I want to say a little about Raila Amolo Odinga. I want to say little because most of Raila’s life is already in his biography: Raila Odinga: An Enigma In Kenya Politics, by Nigerian writer, Babafemi A. Badejo; and whatever else remains to be said Raila will tell us in his forthcoming autobiography, which I am told will be in the market before 2012 general elections.

According to the recent published public opinion poll Raila is the most popular Kenyan leader. I have no problem with that. But we also know that Raila is the most hated and the most discussed leader in Kenya today. I will reserve writing on reasons for his popularity for another day, and go straight to discuss why he commands a belly ache of belligerence and fear.

If you look carefully and diligently at Raila’s main opponents in Kenyan politics you will notice that the majority of them have social, political and criminal questions to answer.

Given Raila’s well known history of struggle against stupid governance, rampant injustices and impunity in Kenya, which led to his political detention without trial several times, there are those who fear that if Raila became the president he will take many Kenyans to court because of their previous misdemeanours, and for this they feel they should block his move forward.

There are those who since independence have swindled Kenyans and have amassed inexplicable wealth. Some in this category have their cases still pending in the offices of Kenya’s Anti Corruption Commission, in Nairobi.

But there are also those whose names feature in the previous assassinations. All these people are damn scared.

Then there is the category of the tribalists, those diehards who intolerably detest people from outside their own community.

They are intolerably selfish, and they are saying that Raila is busy collecting and bringing to the centre riff-raff communities whose place should be at the periphery. This, according to the tribalists, must be stopped.

Then again, although Raila, as a politician, has never represented any constituency in Nyanza, he nevertheless belongs to the Luo community, a tribe which is often ethically derided for its outspokenness, arrogance and outlandishness.

There are those who for unknown reasons would rather that the Luo were kept out of Government, despite the Luo’s historic centrality in Kenya’s political and social development since the colonial times.

Thus, when leaders talk of ethnic alliances they would rather skip the Luo. Is there some sweet food at the centre which the Luos must be kept away from?

Finally, there are also those who in Kenya’s previous regimes treated Raila’s father shabbily, despite the critical role which Jaramogi Oginga Odinga played in Kenya’s nationalist movement, and who fear that Raila is on a revenge mission.

And yet Raila Odinga has come out very clean since he joined Parliamentary politics in 1992. His appeal and behaviour have been broadly nationalist and pan-Africanist. This has been noticed by ordinary Kenyans in the villages and streets who keep voting him above his opponents in poll-ratings.

There could be those with genuine axes to grind, but they have kept their grievances to themselves, and the more they gallop around against Raila the stronger they build his stature.

I earlier talked about the fears which certain individuals have in cases Raila becomes president. As far as I know he has not himself said he would jail or hang anybody.

In fact, as he has grown older he has mellowed and lost his earlier extremism. I can foretell that if he became president he would spend most of his active time in pan-African issues and East Africa’s integration.