Will lady luck smile on Raila Odinga as he makes his 5th stab at the presidency?

Presidential candidate Raila Odinga and runningmate Martha Karua. [Denish Ochieng, Standard]

Today marks what might turn out to be an epochal moment for one of the foremost mercurial players in Kenya’s politics over the past four decades. Raila Odinga has rocked the cradle of Kenya’s civic activities like nobody else, leading him seasonally in and out of government, depending on the fortunes and vicissitudes. His political choices and activities have seen him in and out of detention, exile and government. Today, as he submits himself to the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) for certification for the August 9 presidential election, he arrives in the ambiguous incarnation of the opposition leader who enjoys the support of retiring president, Uhuru Kenyatta, and as a co-president of sorts. 

He also arrives before the Wafula Chebukati-led commission with a starry galaxy of backers, including some who have been among his most ardent critics and political adversaries, significantly epitomised in his running mate, Martha Karua. Raila has previously blamed Karua as the mastermind of the bungled election of 2007, which he claims was stolen from him. He has no kind words for her in his autobiography, The Flame of Freedom. That she is today his running mate is a tale of how times and tides have shifted the Kenyan political arena ahead of this year’s poll. Raila’s Azimio la Umoja-One Kenya Alliance is at once a team of rivals and a rival team. It has been a long walk to this platform, and especially so for the man of the moment, Raila Amolo Odinga.  

December 2007 was easily his highest moment in these murky waters, and the dramas and strange twists within them. If it had gone well, it would also have been the highest moment for the entire Odinga clan. It signified the acme of hope and fulfilment for a family that has nurtured a timeless big dream for itself and its country. In that particular Christmas season, Raila came within a hairline of becoming Kenya’s national Chief Executive Officer. It was going to be his best festive season ever. But it was not to be. Hence, he makes his fifth stab at the presidency today in the hope that lady luck will smile on him this time and the fifth stab will make him the fifth president of Kenya.

Angel of mischief

Previously, having transformed the 2005 Orange constitutional campaign symbol into the most formidable political party machine since the Kanu years, Raila was all but assured of becoming the fourth president of Kenya, in the wake of the December 2007 election. The angel of mischief, however, was wide awake and in her element, with malicious designs and devices in the jinx of the Odinga family. His early lead against President Kibaki was derailed, leading the country to its darkest season, in which about 1,300 people died, 600,000 were displaced and property worth billions destroyed. It was a sad day for the country, the ODM candidate and his family that had kept hoping for great things. Perhaps, its time is nigh, this season?

Members of the Odinga clan understood the meaning of exercising political power even before the advent of colonialism. Their hits, runs and near misses have been historically numerous. Before him, Raila’s father, Jaramogi, had his own hits and close misses. He died in February 1994 without the fulfilment of his biggest dream, however. At some point, as the undisputed doyen of opposition politics in the country, he cryptically asked President Moi, through a public address, to allow him to be the president, if only for a single day. “Nitaendesha mambo zaidi (I will do wonders),” he said. 

Perhaps, said in levity, this pronouncement nonetheless underscored the import of the institution of presidency to Jaramogi. Having passed on before the fulfilment, it became the lot of Jaramogi’s second son, Amolo, to keep the candle burning. He had to begin by taking over leadership in Luoland. He did not get it on a silver platter. It was wrestled from the claws of other contenders with the determination of a skilled and determined fighter. He tamed the rising Mayor of Kisumu Town, Lawrence Akinyi Oile, Ugenya Member of Parliament, James Orengo and his Kisumu Rural Constituency counterpart, Prof Anyang Nyong’o before becoming the king of the Luo. 

At the time of Jaramogi’s death, Orengo appeared to be the old man’s preferred heir to the throne. He was both the elder Odinga’s lawyer and close confidant in Ford Kenya. Raila was then a middle-level party official and a junior politician, holding the position of director of elections. He was a first term Member of Parliament. His most outstanding credentials were a record in detention camps, flight to exile and regular tiffs with the Nairobi-based Central Kenya politician Wanguhu Ng’ang’a. The competition between the two for the control of Nairobi often got violent, despite the fact that Ng’ang’a was at the time of formation of the original Ford party eyeing the Westlands Constituency, while Raila was focused on Lang’ata. Their competition came to a close when Ford broke into two, towards the end of 1991. Raila went with his father to Ford Kenya, while Ng’ang’a and the rest of the Kikuyu politicians in Ford, except Paul Muite, went with Kenneth Matiba and Martin Shikuku to Ford Asili. Add to this the association of his name with the 1982 coup attempt and his being Odinga’s second son and his profile at the time was complete.  

 In 1994, therefore, Raila was still largely a man in the shadows of more nationally recognised senior politicians. He played in the same league with others like Gitobu Imanyara, Muite, Mukhisa Kituyi, George Kapten, Kiraitu Murungi, and a whole of other youthful politicians, who went under the sobriquet of “the Young Turks.” He would pull himself out of the crowd to surge ahead, to manage and rule those who survived. To achieve this, he had to choose the difficult role of “the alone standing man” in difficult times. 

As other Luo leaders watched in doubt in 1994–96, he embarked on the arduous task of attempting to snatch the Ford Kenya leadership from Michael Wamalwa Kijana and Muite, who were Odinga’s joint deputy party chairmen. Now that Odinga was gone, the rank and file of the party thought that the position of chairman should go to either of the two vice chairmen. The odds seemed to lean towards Wamalwa. The thinking was that the Kikuyu were variously domiciled and dominant in  Matiba’s Ford Asili and Mwai Kibaki’s Democratic Party, the latter which had been formed about Christmas time in 1991. Accordingly, a negotiated arrangement would, perhaps, see the leadership go to Wamalwa. Someone else might join Muite as joint vice chairman. Such a person could possibly come from Luoland, in order to keep the Luo legacy in the party. It was thought that the person could be Odinga’s trusted confidant, Orengo. Raila should, accordingly, remain one of the junior politicians in the formation.

Those who thought like this, however, had another thought coming. For Raila called for open competition for all seats in the party, through democratic election by party members, at a national delegates conference. Despite some level of hesitation, the elections were eventually held at the Thika Municipality Stadium in 1995. Raila sought to be the national chairman.

He defied all lobbying that sought to appease him with a lower position, “in order to keep the party stable and united.” Not even petitions through his late father’s close friend and former fellow inmate in detention in Kapenguria would make him budge. Ochieng’ Oneko sought to be the voice of reason behind the scenes. He advised Raila to accept the position of vice chairman alongside Muite, but he adamantly refused.

In the end, the decision was made at the ballot box, at an event presided over by Archbishop Manasses Kuria of the Church of the Province of Kenya (now African Inland Church). The jury remains out on what exactly happened on this day and on the following day, as each of the two main sides in the competition has had its own narrative. Suffice it to say, however, that things went awfully wrong when the vote for the national chairman was taken.

It had, in any event, become quite evident that Raila would not get the seat. The Wamalwa team had swept the boards clean this far. Violence broke out, leading to a suspension of the activities to the next day. Raila’s team did not show up. Wamalwa was declared the winner of what some have said was a one-sided election.  It was to prove to be just the first in a series of Raila’s rejections of election results and how elections are conducted; with the 2007 presidential election result rejection as the pick of the basket. But that would be in the future. For now, he had the task of making himself, first, the king of the Luo and later the towering political albatross that he has been, straddling the nation like the colossus.

Resigned as MP

Having rejected the results, Raila took the country by surprise when, on the last day of 1996, he resigned from Ford Kenya. It meant that he automatically lost his seat as Member of Parliament for Langata, a seat he had won in the multiparty election of 1992, on a Ford Kenya ticket. He would need to go back to the people. National Assembly Speaker Francis Ole Kaparo issued writs to the Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK) chairman, Zacchaeus Chesoni, declaring the Langata Constituency Parliamentary seat vacant. A by-election was called for March 8, 1997. Raila put forward his name on the little known National Development Party (NDP) about which much would soon begin to be heard. The country watched with bated breath. Was this man politically suicidal, some asked? 

Yet, Raila easily shook off his competitors, with Fred Amayo of Kanu as his most formidable competitor, followed by Kimani Rugendo of Ford Asili. He sailed home comfortably with a margin of 70 per cent of the votes cast. Thus began the journey of becoming the foremost Luo politician in the country after his late father, with his sights cast on bringing many other communities in the country under his wings. But first he had Akinyi Oile, Orengo and Nyong’o, and other headaches – largely in Kanu – to subdue. He would go about this task both skillfully and mercilessly. It was a make or break political affair. It had to be done, and it was done.

Kisumu supremacy war

Oile was Raila ’s first supremacy assignment. As mayor of Kisumu on a Kanu ticket, Oile commanded a most critical constituency. This lake town was a “must have” for Raila. He who controlled Kisumu ruled the Luo. A succession of daredevil generations of young people in Kisumu determines who commands the Luo. You must have them on your side to call the shots in the Kenyan Luo world. The credo remains true today as it has always been. If you don’t have them, you don’t have the soul of the Kenyan Luo nation. Even as older crops of the militias wither into the sunset of life, succumbing to sundry strands of natural attrition, replacements crop up from the rookeries of the city, to take over. In their agitated element, whatever their fuel may be, these young people can walk into anything, no matter how lethal, to achieve their commander’s goal.

This was what President Jomo Kenyatta discovered, to his dismay, when in October 1969 he visited Kisumu – barely three months after the Tom Mboya assassination, to test the waters of Luo comportment, further to the July-August riots against the slaying of Mboya on 5 July of that year. The bloody ending of the ceremony to officially open the New Nyanza Provincial General Hospital (Russia) was only the start of political bloodletting in Kisumu.

 It was amidst later day kindred riots that Raila crowned himself the king of the Luo after his father. The youth were divided into two mutually hostile camps, variously calling themselves the Baghdad Boys and the Talibans, the latter who later spread all the way to Nairobi slums.  Almost as if it was a ritual, every Friday, without fail, the two mobs fought bloody wars in the streets of Kisumu, as Raila’s and Oile’s proxies. In the end, Raila outmaneuvered Oile. Oile died two years after the 1997 elections, leaving Kisumu Raila’s undisputed garrison. 

 After the defeat of Oile ahead of the 1997 elections, his fellow Kanu politicians had the option of either joining Raila, or melting into the shadows. Those in the opposition could either join him, or go into oblivion. They each made their choice, with consequences. The moment of truth came in 1997. Raila offered himself as a presidential candidate on the NDP ticket. Wamalwa, now decidedly an arch rival, also ran, on the Ford Kenya ticket. But the race was considered largely as a contest between President Moi and his former first Vice President, Mwai Kibaki, who was running on the DP ticket for the second time. Another candidate of note was Charity Ngilu, of the Social Democratic Party (SDP).

Moi easily beat a divided opposition, garnering over 40 per cent. Kibaki came second with 31 per cent, while Raila was a distant third with Wamalwa and Ngilu in tow, in that order. 

While Raila lost the presidential race, however, he was victorious in other ways. First, his party swept the boards in Luo Nyanza, with the exception of the Ugenya seat, which Orengo took on the SDP ticket. Nyong’o, who was Ngilu’s other ideologue besides Orengo, lost the Kisumu Rural seat to Joab Omino of NDP. All Kanu candidates lost to NDP, sustaining a trend that Jaramogi had set when he ran for President in 1992. From now on the message was clear. Raila was the political node in Luo Nyanza. All other stars would have to orbit around him or lose their stardom. It was a fact that would become even more evident in the 2002 elections, in which Raila was now the kingmaker not just in Luoland, but at the national level too. Here, his “Kibaki Tosha” call led the country to vote overwhelmingly for Mwai Kibaki and the National Rainbow Coalition (Narc), which had blossomed overnight into a full-blown party that ended Kanu’s 40 years of dominance in the country.

House arrest

To get here, Raila had had to bury an old hatchet with the independence party that had been the bane of the Odinga family. Kanu had detained the father once, and put him older Odinga under house arrest a couple of times. Father and son, in quick succession, had learnt that they might have to do business with Kanu if they hoped for upward mobility. Odinga died when he had begun a cooperation agenda with President Moi and Kanu. It was a role Raila would carry on with after rallying Luoland around himself. He had hoped that Moi would reciprocate by giving him the chance to be Kanu’s presidential flag bearer in 2002, following the merging of NDP and Kanu. But this did not happen. For, Moi had his own ideas. Uhuru Kenyatta was his choice for 2002, a factor that drove Raila to lead former NDP MPs and a swathe of hitherto Moi loyalists out of Kanu, to find fellowship with Kibaki, Wamalwa and Ngilu. They put together a powerful election machine called Narc and left Kanu staggering and gasping for political breath, for three decades at the time of this writing. 

Yet, there were those who thought that they could use Raila for their own selfish ends and abandon him, once their goals were met. In any event, it looked like that was what the people around President Kibaki thought, if not the President himself. Kibaki reneged on everything he would seem to have agreed on with Raila ahead of the sterling December 2002 election. Raila and his colleagues in the recently reestablished Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in Narc felt cheated in the appointments that Kibaki was making. Raila expected to be named Prime Minister. He was instead only given the Roads docket. Nor did the rest of the portfolios to his wing come. To make matters worse, Kibaki now behaved as if he did not wish to review the Constitution campaign. To add insult to injury, Kibaki reshuffled the Cabinet in June 2004 and brought on board Kanu and Ford People MPs. 

To crown it all, Kibaki and his people brought up for referendum a grossly watered down draft constitution in November 2005. The battle lines were drawn, the goose cooked. Raila led the No campaign that gave the Kibaki side a thorough drubbing. Kibaki replied by sacking Raila from the Cabinet, together with his cronies Kalonzo Musyoka, William Ole Ntimama, Najib Balala, and Joseph Nyagah, among others. The die was cast. It was at this point that the formation around Raila began transforming itself into the powerful electoral machine of 2007. The stars looked ever so bright. And yet December 2007 was only a false dawn. It did not transform into a morning of fulfillment. Kenya paid in the coins of fire, blood and death. She ended up before the International Criminal Court. For his part, Raila went on trying to be the president of Kenya, every five years. He cobbled new alliances, but with nothing to mirror his December 2007 hour of hope. And now a new dawn has come. Will it mature into a wholesome morning? 

To get to the present moment, Raila has had to step down from his high horse and play ball with his nemesis from the Kenyatta family, President Uhuru. In a surprise move barely a month after he controversially swore himself into the non-existent position of the people’s president, Raila shook hands in public with Uhuru. Raila had claimed that his election as President was stolen in August 2017. He refused to participate in the repeat election in October, accusing Uhuru and the electoral commission of pre-rigging the election. He would not recognise Uhuru, he said.  He, however, opened up a new chapter with the handshake. This has seen him either look away in the face of questionable happenings in the Uhuru government or, alternatively, apologize for Uhuru. He gave a clean bill of health to the failed Galana-Kulalu irrigation experiment in which billions were sunk. He went mum on the Eurobond and National Youth Service scams, and has said nothing on the billions that were lost through KEMSA in what is called the Covid-19 billionaires scandal. 

Raila enters this race as the official state candidate. President Uhuru has expressly told the country that this is his preferred candidate, in a move that is partly designed to disdain his deputy, Ruto, with whom there is a complete fallout. Uhuru’s close allies in Cabinet openly campaign for Raila and four senior cabinet secretaries and a principal secretary have openly declared that he is going to decisively beat his new nemesis, Ruto, with a landslide. What is even more interesting is that they cite state spy agencies as their sources of confidence. Less self-restraining members of the Raila team have often forgotten themselves and bragged that they have the deep state and the system and that this matrix is unbeatable. Fair or square, the test of this pudding will be in the voting, the counting, tallying and the announcing.