Raila, Ruto street contest: Who will blink first?

Azimio leader Raila Odinga has enhanced his push-up against President William Ruto and his Kenya Kwanza administration with a declaration that he will organise mass actions on Mondays and Thursdays.

Rising cost of living and electoral theft top the list of his grievances as he takes the fight to the streets.

He says he wants to liberate Kenyans from an "illegitimate government" that has them in a chokehold courtesy of over-taxation and punitive policies like withdrawal of subsidies on food, fuel and education.

“Ruto’s greatest aspiration is to return Kenya to the old dictatorship where he is the unquestioned tyrant controlling everyone’s life,” Raila said on Tuesday, claiming there was an attempt on his life during Monday’s protests.

Ruto and Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua have sternly said they will not be blackmailed to a truce no matter how long the ODM leader holds street protests. Raila on his part says he is not interested in a handshake.

It’s too early to determine whether Ruto will maintain his hardliner stance through the agitation, but what’s clear is that Raila has dragged him to unfamiliar territory – the streets.

Whereas Raila’s reputation for agitating for change through mass action is legendary, the closest Ruto has come to this was in 2007 when he tested the wrath of the Chinkororo, an outlawed ragtag youth militia.

Months before the 2007 polls, a defiant Ruto, then supporting Raila in ODM, dared to campaign at Nyamarambe in South Mugirango constituency, the home tuff of then Gusii kingpin Simeon Nyachae who was opposed to a Raila presidency.

Ruto was aided to a standby helicopter by the then MP Omingo Magara after the youth, armed with bows and arrows, injured him on the knee after a brief episode of running battles. He lost a shoe.

With the declaration of weekly protests on one side and a tough-talking president on the other, the Raila-Ruto duel promises to be a long-drawn battle. The question is, who will blink first?

Last Sunday, Ruto said he is ready to engage with any leader in the country but within the precincts of the law. On Monday, he said allowing people to operate outside the law is tantamount to condoning impunity.

"It could end anywhere so I want to encourage us as the people of Kenya to respect the law because it's made for all of us and if there are any sections of the Constitution that we are unhappy about, there is a process for its amendment or change," Ruto said.

Ruto is up against a man history has shown the words ‘retreat’ and ‘surrender’ does not exist in his vocabulary.

Many have labelled Raila a perennial loser who has contested in five presidential elections and lost in all, but the godfather of Kenya's Opposition politics has never lost a street contest to the government. 

Raila took on the Kanu regime under the revered late President Daniel Moi and had the Constitution repealed to allow multiparty democracy.

It followed years of detentions and police brutality during protests including the infamous Saba Saba.

Mwai Kibaki came next and he too caved into pressure and birthed the grand coalition government in which Raila became prime minister after the disputed 2007 polls.

The enigma was at it again after the disputed 2017 elections when he covertly reached a deal with Ruto’s predecessor Uhuru Kenyatta on March 9, 2018, via a handshake.

It's now Ruto's turn to prove his mettle against a man whose wave his predecessors couldn't withstand.

The President has adopted a hardline stance but Raila is a man whose resilience in the face of adversity is well-documented.

No one ably puts this in context better than novelist Ngugi wa Thiong’o.

Ngugi was detained without trial between December 31, 1977, and December 12, 1978, over his Gikuyu play Ngaahika Ndeenda (I Will Marry When I Want) which Moi’s government said was promoting radicalism.

Raila was equally in detention in the same prison. Ngugi documented events of his experience on toilet paper.

In 2017 following the disputed presidential election, the multiple Nobel Peace finalist recreated the scenes in an essay after Raila boycotted the repeat election and went to the streets.

“Raila had refused to eat, he was on hunger strike, he had grown thin and pale, his right palm had become dark with clotted blood and the same arm had lots of pimples and boils as well. His left arm was twisted.

“Raila Odinga was receiving extraordinary punishment due to his stand against dictator Moi. Seven years in jail but he still kept his word, to him, Kenya needed fresh air than he needed freedom. He was willing to pay the ultimate price.”

Ngugi said Raila was later transferred to Kamiti maximum prison and kept in solitary confinement, a prison within a prison where he was served half-cooked ugali and vegetable soup daily.

He went to visit him but he was not allowed to see him. Ngugi said Raila nonetheless managed to smuggle a written note to him.

The note read, “Tell Ida to ask a doctor to prescribe for me these drugs, am slowly dying”. During the torture, the blows to his dead dazed him, Ngugi wrote.

“It’s here where his left leg got twisted and was later confirmed broken, you see how he walks? With his left leg dragging behind? His eyes were already spoilt, they were ever swollen and teary, and his voice was no more. But still, the son of Odinga refused to give in, Dictatorship had to end.”

Ngugi, Kenya’s foremost author, acknowledged Raila as the Father of Democracy saying it’s through his actions that multiparty was achieved in Kenya.

“And now Odinga is back to fight for electoral justice, he is back, Raila Odinga is back!!” Ngugi signed off.

That was over five years ago, but Raila is at it again. He said on Tuesday the decision to hold demos twice a week as opposed to Mondays only was due to public demand.

“We reiterate to our supporters and all patriotic Kenyans that this struggle is just starting. We are not looking back and we will not be intimidated. No retreat, no surrender,” he said.

Only time will tell whether Ruto will weather the storm his predecessors failed to ride out of.