IT'S A DEAL: Raila Odinga and Former President Mwai Kibaki shake hands after signing the National Accord. Raila credits Kibaki for one exemplary thing he did that day: His refusal to meet a coterie of Narc adherents prior to signing the accord by the steps of his office shortly thereafter.
Former President Mwai Kibaki with Former Prime minister Raila Odinga in a past function. Photo/Nobert Allan
FORMER Prime Minister Raila Odinga reveals how he called former President and his co-principal in the grand coalition Mwai Kibaki a thief to force him make concessions in the post-election talks of 2008.
The tirade against Kibaki was delivered in the presence of chief mediator Kofi Annan, former Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa and current President Jakaya Kikwete on February 28, the day the National Accord was signed.
In his biography, 'The Flame of Freedom', launched last week, Raila tells of how he used his engineering prowess to squeeze Kibaki into making the final concession on constitutionalisation of the accord which had been agreed by their nominees at Serena.
He says Kibaki had grown stiff, playing the victim and was unwilling to countenance any form of compromise.
"I was not about to let him get away with it. I was thinking in engineering terms. When you want to change the physical quality of a metal you must first heat it until it is red hot, then immerse it in a cold solution, either water or oil, for rush cooling. This is the kind of shock treatment needed here," he says.
He says he told Kibaki to his face that he (Raila) was not prepared to "sit there and entertain arrogant tales of impunity from someone who had stolen an election." Kibaki grew livid and started shouting with Kikwete and Mkapa having to calm him down.
To save the situation, the two Tanzanians and one Ghanaian resorted to old African tricks to admonish Raila: "They urged us to show leadership. They pointed out that Kibaki was old enough to be my father and I should give him the respect he deserved according to African traditions."
The understanding forced by the altercation saw the impasse saved with Raila agreeing to PM post only after Kibaki agreed to constitutionalise it. Raila credits Kibaki for one exemplary thing he did that day: His refusal to meet a coterie of Narc adherents prior to signing the accord by the steps of his office shortly thereafter.
Raila claims Kibaki's men and women led by ministers Martha Karua, Kiraitu Murungi, George Saitoti, Sam Ongeri and Moses Wetangula had insisted on meeting Kibaki before he signed but he turned them off: "To give him his due, he refused saying we had already negotiated and agreed and there was no need for further consultations."
In the book, the former PM also pays tribute to the courage, tact and sense of purpose in which his ODM colleague William Ruto (now the deputy President) approached the talks. He mentions several occasions when Ruto flatly denounced the talks saying Kibaki was not serious. Instead, he rooted for a plan where ODM took over Parliament, conducted swearing in of Raila as a parallel President and effected and renewed strategy every two weeks.
He quotes Ruto strongly refuting a suggestion by former Ghanaian president John Kufuor that ODM considers leaving it all to Kibaki since it was his last term: "Lets be serious!" Ruto allegedly retorted after the advice.
In the book, Raila also reveals the 2007 debacle of vote tallying centre at KICC, how he stormed into Kivuitu's office at KICC on December 30, 2007 and how Kivuitu conceded to him that "people" had tampered with results only to recoil in fear when Karua walked in:
"I watched in amazement as Kivuitu's demeanor changed completely. He now looked like a dog facing a leopard."
Raila paints Kibaki in the often-mentioned picture of a cold, calculative, ruthless, stiff and mean politician. He points to an event in 1980 when the then Nyeri Town MP Waruru Kanja, a former freedom fighter, had lost his seat on trumped-up charges. According to Raila, his actual mistake was that he belonged to Kibaki's camp which was engaged in silent war with a camp led by former powerful Attorney General Charles Njonjo. Raila was then a deputy director at Kenya Bureau of Standards but was involved in political activities working with rebel MPs whom Njonjo had dubbed "seven bearded sisters."
"The most interesting thing is that Kibaki did not lift a finger to help his friend but left Kanja to go to prison," he says.
In the by-elections that ensued, Raila's group cast their lot with a journalist, Wang'ondu Kariuki, who worked with Salim Lone at Viva magazine. Raila says he drove up to Nyeri alongside friends Mashengu Mwachofi, Abuya Abuya, Paddy Onyango, James Orengo and Koigi Wamwere to campaign for Kariuki who however lost to Njonjo's Kanyi Waithaka.
Reading through the book, one understands why during the launch Raila pleaded with those whom he has depicted in the negative light to forgive him. Most of them are to date his close friends and they attended the launch. They are Njonjo, former minister William Ntimama and former Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka.
On Musyoka, Raila confirms an often-repeated gossip that he ducked a crucial parliamentary vote on July 2005. The government had prepared a draft constitution which the Raila's LDP group which Kalonzo was part of, was opposed to. Top LDP luminaries and ministers including Raila, Anyang' Nyong'o, Najib Balala and Ochilo Ayacko voted no.
"Musyoka was not in parliament that day. I had met him in one of the corridors of Parliament buildings and he urged me to join him in not participating in the vote, which I flatly refused to do," Raila writes.
The government carried the day garnering 102 votes against opposition's 61 but lost the referendum to Raila's group. The effect of the parliamentary snub that day lives with Musyoka to this date. Former Kibwezi MP Kalembe Ndile who was then supporting the draft made it his pet subject in rallies dramatically telling how Kalonzo hid in Parliament toilets until the vote was done.
The book demonstrates the great influence of Jaramogi on Raila's political life and their almost enviable father-son relationship. Barely in his teens, Jaramogi was strutting all over the country and the region with his son and his elder brother Oburu Odinga. And even when they went to study abroad, he took them along to political meetings with important figures.
He describes how he accompanied Jaramogi to a Kremlin meeting chaired by Politburo member Alexsei Kosygin in which he witnessed “constructive discussions” which agreed on a host of development projects in Kisumu and Kenya to be funded by Soviet Union.
“I was thrilled to be present at the meeting and excited about what would come out of it for Kenya,” Raila writes. He nevertheless records his disappointment that a year later, another group led by Raila's nemesis and Justice and Constitutional Affairs minister Tom Mboya and agriculture minister Bruce Mackenzie arrived in Kremlin a year later to “specifically cancel” the projects.
“Only the hospital project in Kisumu, whose construction hadn't already began survived the chop,” he says.
During a two month visit to Kenya in 1965, Raila says they (him and Oburu) travelled round the country with Jaramogi meeting MPs, cabinet ministers, civil servants, lecturers and students. He specifically mentions tours they did to Ukambani, Embu, Rift Valley, parts of Nyanza, Kampala and Dar es Salaam.
When Jaramogi quit the government in 1966, he counted on Raila to organize the logistics of printing his new party KPU manifesto in London. No local printer would dare do the job. Raila recounts how he almost lost the documents packed in 50kg steel boxes at Heathrow Airport, how he ran for the plane to Berlin and how the “precious cargo” eventually found its way to Kenya via Entebbe, Lake Victoria, Kisumu and to Nairobi.
Raila was only days back into the country from his Germany studies when the infamous Jaramogi-Kenyatta 1969 face-off in Kisumu took place. He tells of how he dashed for his father's life when Kenyatta's convoy greeted Kisumu resident's KPU slogan chants with gun-fire on that fateful day.
"My first thought was Jaramogi. I ran towards the hospital gate with Jaramogi's driver, my cousin Okello Oloo. In the hospital compound, I found panicky police officers hitting people indiscriminately. I could not see Jaramogi,” he says.
The previous day, Raila says, Nyanza MPs had pleaded with Jaramogi not to show up in Kisumu fearing a plot to kill him. They however eventually agreed he should go fearing the snub might be confused for a plot against the President.
Once gun shots died, Raila says, Jaramogi went and sat with the crowds facing the President who didn't waste time to rain insults upon them. He says Kenyatta descended on an insult mode referring to KPU “insects” by their mother's cunts.
Raila says he has never seen a more chaotic situation after Kenyatta left the scene. Although he claims he counted bodies until he could not count no more, he says he believes there were more than 100 dead.
“In all, I believe more than 100 people were criminally massacred that day, one of the bleakest and most terrible days in the history of independent Kenya,” he said.
Thereafter, KPU was banned, its key leaders arrested and Jaramogi placed under house-arrest in his Lakeside home in Kisumu. Raila says in those initial days of the siege, they used his school-going cousin Millicent to sneak out notes to Kisumu's Jaramogi office.
When the government decided to substitute house arrest with detention, Jaramogi's friend and former head of vice presidential escort was given the “unpleasant task” of arresting him, Raila says:
“I walked with my father to the land rover waiting outside. He got in and we said goodbye. And then, as I stood , feeling desolate and helpless, the land rover drove off, taking Jaramogi to a place we did not know, and where we feared for his safety."
Raila reveals that he first toyed with the idea of joining politics that year (1969) when Parliament was dissolved and elections called in December. He says however, “heavy responsibilities at home” and urge to go back and do PhD studies swayed him. Again in 1974, he thought he could run but his father prevailed upon him to leave the Lang'ata seat to his friend Morris Omwony.
But it is his story on birth of Standard Processing Equipment Construction and Erection Company (Spectre)EA Company which is inspiring and almost unbelievable. He recounts how the gas cylinders company was born through a Sh20,000 parcel thrust out of Bank of India near Macmillan Library by one Mr Njai of Bank of India.
He had been paining on how to raise Sh12,000 to buy some second hand machines from an Asian who was fleeing Idi Amin's murderous regime in Uganda when he approached the bank. Unknown to him, Jaramogi who was then in prison, had an account with the bank. The bank gave him the money without him signing a single loan paper.
He partnered with Franz Schinei, a German, and CMG Argwings-Kodhek widow Joan to form Spectre. He claims that he personally designed and built some of the machines when Spectre went large-scale after getting a loan from Kenya Industrial Estates.
"I also designed and built a heat-treatment oven, gas-fired, for the an-nealing process, as well as building a sand-blasting machine and motorising a formerly manual rolling machine."
Raila's close relationship with James Orengo (now Siaya Senator) can now be explained. In the book, Raila says he facilitated Orengo's parliamentary debut in the 1979 election after the election of Mathews Ogutu's victory was overturned and his main rival Archbishop Stephen Ondiek barred. Jaramogi preferred Maura Okeyo whose father was a founder member of Luo Thrift. Okeyo was also one of the students Jaramogi had sponsored to go to India for studies in the 50s.
"I preferred Orengo. I had known Orengo as a student leader when I was a member of the university's academic staff and had been impressed by his fearlessness in confronting the administration in very repressive times," he says.
He says he spent "an evening" trying to convince Jaramogi who tried to mediate between the two sides. Eventually, the other side relented and Orengo was left alone to run. Raila was Orengo's chief campaign manager running a group he only refers to as "Wakombozi" which after Orengo's victory crossed over to Karachuonyo to campaign for Phoebe Asiyo who also won.
For the first time, Raila confesses to his underground activities in the period leading to his first arrest and detention in 1982. He says they had started the process of public education and mobilisation through publication of pamphlets with messages exposing the government's culpability in political repression.
"The content of the pamphlets was written by journalist Lone, Paddy Onyango, Prof Peter Odhiambo and myself," he says. He says this was a "transitional phase" for what the group would propose in the future.
He reveals that the group was operating in cells and was in charge of a printing cell which operated from International Life House using the office of his brother-in-law Ambala (Beryl's husband who according to the book caused the family untold suffering).
When working at Ambala's office proved risky, they shifted to using British Airways offices in between their scheduled flights: "Once the London-bound flight had left and the BA office had closed for the night, we would move in to duplicate our documents, working from about 1am to about 3am."
The phamphlets were then distributed in the darkest hour before dawn to various places where people going to work would find them. Raila says they were looking forward towards moving their activities above the ground, to engaging in positive action.
"We were creating a structure and the necessary machinery, and were thinking along the lines of the Iranian revolution and the overthrow of the Shah. This would mean mass demonstration and peaceful civilian revolution, which required meticulous preparation and underground structure," he says.
All this happened ahead of planned launch of a political party, KASA which was spearheaded by Jaramogi and George Anyona. A fake journalist would however betray them when he got too close to Anyona. In the book, Raila singles out Njonjo for the disservice he did to the country on June 9, 1982 when he removed the constitution of Kenya amendment bill (section 2a).
Njonjo was seconded by Kibaki in saying Kenya could not afford the luxury of multi-partism. He faults Wamwere, Orengo, Abuya, Mwachofi and Sifuna for "meekly" joining the "aye" chorus regardless of their opposing conscience.
He describes the move as a cornerstone. He says it left them at the mercy of Nelson Mandela's historic justification for armed struggle and led to the August 1 coup attempt which he did not explain. As it were, Raila chickens out from telling the story of the coup and postpones it "to another freer time in our country's history."
Although the matter rests there, one cannot help but get the impression that Raila is begrudging the "peripheral role" intimated by the publication 'Raila Odinga: An enigma in Kenyan politics' of 2006. It may therefore probably be worth it to wait for the story.
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