Raila Odinga.Photo/File
ODM had for a long time swept salient issues under the carpet. I was actually surprised that Raila chose ODM as was constituted up to botched election weekend as his vehicle for 2013 at a time when Uhuru had just launched a fresh, new and re-energised entity, TNA.
The ODM that Raila went to elections with and was leading up to ‘Kisirani’ weekend didn’t espouse his persona and leftist ideology. In an effort to accommodate a broad coalition that included rightwing ex-Kanu diehards, Raila had moved ODM to the center- Left.
Raila’s moderation of leftwing rhetoric was probably guided by a reality that the right also controls the moneybags in corporate and government circles.
We can all recall Raila making an unusual visit to the NSE in the run up to 2007 to reassure investors that he is not as leftist as they thought.
Unfortunately, Raila’s center-left message continued beyond at a time when Jubilee moved to the far right even by the choice of their name Jubilee which signaled a phony nationalistic renaissance. Jubilee message in 2013 emphasized Kenyans going back to their sovereign roots which are essentially Kanu and its days of repression.
In fact, Jubilee preferred the word perform and castigated reform as promised by Cord. And they recently lived true to this by enacting repressive media laws. Now that’s rightwing politics.
Even though their win has been highly questionable in scholarly and media circles, that ideological Jubilee differentiation and unapologetic definition of the retrogression that they espoused made them competitive and reduced the gap in election outcome.
Of course Raila as PM was too busy doubling between running the government and running his own campaign. He didn’t get a chance to re-organise his party at a time when he needed to move his message further to the left to properly differentiate himself from the rightwing Jubilee.
Though too little too late, this surprise development at Kasarani offers ODM that golden opportunity to rebuild, redefine and start afresh. With all officials having stood down, Raila came out of Kasarani with a clean slate to restart a party without forming a new one. And ODM has a lot of hope.
Seeing the two line-ups with a national image (replete with young, learned and energetic politicians) that had emerged in the run-up to Kasarani is testament to the depth and wealth of unmatched talent that ODM as a party possesses. Had the election of new ODM officials proceeded, worse acrimony would probably have resulted. The losing line-up would probably have formed a new party or begun the process of exiting the party altogether.
ODM was doomed if it did elections. Damned if it didn’t. The outlook seemed bleak. And so it’s either that someone sensing defeat - or an ODM diehard with genuine love for ODM who feared for the disintegration of the party - hired these goons in black to save the Raila party from extermination. Presenting two line-ups was a recipe for disaster in the first place.
Zani and Ababu teams should have been merged before Kasarani and one line-up arrived at by consensus should have been presented to delegates for approval by acclamation or secret ballot. We may never know who was responsible for the skullduggery witnessed at Kasarani, but the mayhem descended at a point where the public and the party leader had gotten an idea of what the mood of the delegates was. In that sense, I concur with Ababu that elections by acclamation happened.
And Raila is not a fool; he will use that understanding to inform his re-organisation of his movement going forward. However this is where Raila’s leadership comes in.
Delegates or the public might not always be right. They can be influenced by choppers, flamboyance or even cash or at worst a clandestine state operation with brief to engineer a coup within the party that represents the biggest threat to the status quo. Bringing together Namwamba and Zani teams, the interim transitional committee that was formed recently is a blend of both the perceived will of the delegates as demonstrated by the ululations when certain names were mentioned while also addressing the serious doubts about the Namwamba team’s intentions towards 2017.
And so it’s a compromise between trust versus doubt. The Namwamba team now has an opportunity to reassure the party base that all their intentions are in the interest of the party. Otherwise the two team members have counterchecks for each region, and that is good balance of power in the party.
If Ababu from Busia exits, in comes Otuoma from the same county and so on and so forth. Someone said, good or bad, all publicity is good publicity. Navigating around the Kasarani aftermath puts ODM in the media focus for longer just when Kenyans hoped that Kasarani would mark the end of drama in ODM. This Darwinian “survival for the fittest” moment seen in ODM leading upto Kasarani will through “natural selection” cleanse the Raila party of “softies and rightwing “gold diggers” collected along the way in his days in government. We already see neo- conservatives like William ole Ntimama and Ngunjiri Wambugu falling by the wayside which gives ODM a chance to form an energized and fresh political network around the nation.
And as Kenya’s premiere political coach, nobody has as good a track record of “cloning” national figures like Raila. Balala, Mudavadi, Magara and Ruto are all esteemed graduates of “The Raila Political Academy”.
Events preceding Kasarani gave the ODM party leader a rough idea of who among his platoon are the ‘battle hungry and hardened’ soldiers with the temerity, audacity and tenacity to match with him in the rough opposition terrain towards a landslide victory in 2017.
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