DR KIPRONO CHESANG
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Raila Amolo Odinga is a walking tragedy. In the last decade, he has straddled Kenyan politics like a colossus. He is the most powerful individual outside state institution – see how the President treats him. He is a good man and means well for Kenya. He has a midas touch with the hoi polloi. His name evokes passions – mixed. But he has failed to be President. How unfair can it get?
Odinga burst to the national limelight in 1982, accused of plotting a failed coup. For a decade he was in and out of detention. Two decades later he was at the centre of national politics.
His career was peaking. Detention without trial made him a martyr of democracy. He had inherited his father’s immense influence in Luo Nyanza. Since 1992, he had demonstrated outstanding political talent, cutting deals, building alliances and spectacularly deploying propaganda, speech problems aside.
In 2002 he was in the unlikely position of secretary general of Kanu, a well-oiled electoral machine. The Presidency was within reach. Only one thing stood between him and the Presidency – Moi’s endorsement. Then the rain started beating him, relentlessly.
Moi was sitting on an unpleasant secret. By his own admission, none of his would-be heirs had the guts for the big seat. Odinga had colourfully demonstrated that none of them was at par with him. Moi feared an Odinga Presidency – what if he was galled when he recalled the sadistic experience at his hands in the 1980s?
In bad humour, Moi unilaterally nominated Uhuru Kenyatta, a dark horse and the son of Jomo Kenyatta. Quintessentially, he did not spell out Odinga’s future role. Maybe he played deaf to history, asking it to repeat itself, make an Odinga second another Kenyatta, again. Whatever cooked in Moi’s mind, it was clear that Odinga had placed his fate in the hands of another man – a no-no in power politics.
Odinga reacted in character, mixing anger with political judgement. He promptly left Kanu, alongside his loyal NDP troops, and an unlikely cohort of loyalist hawks in Kanu – George Saitoti, Joseph Kamotho, Musalia Mudavadi, Katana Ngala and Kalonzo Musyoka, who dilly-dallied to the last minute. Too late in the day to mount an effective campaign, Odinga and his rickety alliance threw their support behind the Kibaki’s campaign. It was a masterstroke, which stunned Moi. Kibaki won the election with a landslide.
Reputed indolence
Kibaki rose to the Presidency on a limp, literally. His debilitating medical condition, well-reputed indolence, and possibly encouragement, saw a shadowy ethnic mafia close to him capture the Presidency.
Odinga was marginalised from the centre. Kibaki was quiet, seeming unfazed that Odinga gave his campaign the mojo it needed to trounce, hands-down, Moi’s candidate. A catfight ensued, and with it emerged a secret MoU that promised Odinga premiership in the Kibaki government. Once more, Odinga had stacked his future on the goodwill of someone else.
Odinga did not only brood, he also scouted for every opportunity to spite Kibaki. The opportunity came in the 2005 referendum on a new constitution, based on a flawed constitution Kibaki forced through. Making amends with Uhuru Kenyatta, Raila Odinga joined up with William Ruto, and a bevy of other ethnic potentates in a strategy that would isolate the Mt Kenya region from the rest of the country to reject the proposed constitution. Kibaki lost the referendum, by a mile.
Odinga then did what he should not have. He bragged that the referendum victory was a foretaste of things to come. Repeatedly, he used violent imagery to frame a tussle where red-ants besiege a snake. Kikuyu-phobic statements, together with a de-facto anti-Kikuyu electoral strategy accompanied Odinga’s imagery. Equally powerful was propaganda that continued Kikuyu hegemony dooms the rest of the country to a lowly second-class citizenship.
The Antichrist
For Kibaki’s ethnic coterie, Odinga was the anti-Christ himself, his Presidency, apocalypse itself. They shrewdly propagated their sentiment downwards to the Mt Kenya masses. The hardening of attitudes on either side was complete. There was no way anyone could win the election and expect easy submission by the other.
What followed was a surprisingly smooth election dangerously contaminated by a suspect tallying process. Hell broke loose. A government of national unity resolved the election’s messy aftermath. Odinga was offered the premiership and Kibaki the Presidency. Odinga accepted the premiership, living to fight another day, and leaving tonnes of speculation: Could he have declined the premiership? Could he have demanded a repeat election? Could Kibaki hold on to power for another two weeks? Surely, he had little to lose by playing hardball!
The period between 2007 and 2013 would force the worst out of Odinga. First, he got stuck in a battle of minutiae with cheeky civil servants intent on frustrating him with little slights in the ceremonies of public office. His angry complaints made Kibaki look really bad, but also made him look pedantic. Crowds read complaints as a subliminal sign of weakness, or worse, defeat.
Second, Odinga drifted from what should have been his principal business – keeping the astute ethnic alliance, The Pentagon, together. By the 2013 election, he had lost all Pentagon members to the competition. Unfazed, he reconstituted a weaker triad of ex-Kanu notables, himself, Moses Wetang'ula, and Kalonzo Musyoka, who had built a strong reputation for flip-flopping.
Third, he allowed an inexplicable fight with William Ruto to get out of hand. The ‘official’ explanation was that their difference rose out of the eviction of Kalenjin settlers in the Mau complex. But unenthused, the grapevine stirred with more dramatic theories – a tiff over a female politician, a disagreement on the proceeds of a famous grain scandal, and Raila Odinga’s paranoia of a potential Ruto putsch in ODM. The rumours left neither contender’s reputation in better shape. Odinga had more to lose.
Unclamp Odinga’s grip
His relationship with Ruto collapsed. Ruto sought cover in the Kibaki regime, and his lieutenants began a war of attrition to unclamp Odinga’s grip on the Rift Valley. Odinga played the contempt card against Ruto, breaking a cardinal law of power –never underestimate an opponent.
His opponent was a particularly able politician and Kenya’s most experienced campaigner. He had played a central role in every multiparty election in Kenya – in 1992 as vice chairman of the discredited YK 92, in 1997 as Kanu’s director of election, in 2002 as Uhuru Kenyatta’s wingman, and in 2007 as Odinga’s political hammer. He had lost only once, in the opposite camp from Odinga’s. He would come back with a painful bite in 2013. Ruto’s career was peaking too. He was the most visible and influential politician in Rift Valley, and the region’s Presidential candidate.
In a stunning miscalculation – against calls to withdraw the ICC case – Odinga argued the case should proceed to its logical end. For Ruto’s wingmen, the counter-script was easy – this man panicked and negotiated himself out of power when we had Kibaki over a can! This is the man we fought for, not Ruto! This man who took us to the ICC, see how he talks! This man is now evicting our people from Mau! If he knew his support in Rift Valley was ebbing, Odinga wore a poker face.
In the run-up to the 2013 elections, Odinga was by all accounts the clear front-runner. He built a strong platform on social democracy promising candy to the largest voting basket – the poor. But he had created too many powerful enemies. He had made Mt Kenya very anxious about his Presidency, and spurned the Rift Valley. Because of 2007, they were unlikely allies. Because of 2007, their Presidential hopes – Ruto and Kenyatta – had a common cause; shake off the ICC from their backs, which meant preventing an Odinga presidency, come what may.
Odinga tripped again. He went on the offensive. Kenyatta and Ruto were criminals, not suspects. They should clear themselves at the ICC before presenting themselves to public office. He had forced them into a corner. They fought for their lives, while Odinga shot for glory. In politics, as in war, it is imperative to give an enemy an escape route. To do otherwise is to make them desperate and dangerous. Kenyatta and Ruto were fighting for their lives, while Odinga was shooting for glory.
But Odinga’s story is not ripe to write yet. If there is one thing he can do, that he must do, it is to run for the President in 2017. It is a win-win situation. Winning would be a bonus. If he loses, he will have fought the good fight and lost. Not running would be criminal. JAP would obliterate the opposition. Then, we can settle to write his legacy.
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