Politicians come and go, politically speaking, and so does everyone talking about life in general. When the time comes, we shall all draw our last breaths.
Nearly everyone will be forgotten by most people even before the fake tears dry, except for the loved ones who will always miss and remember them.
Of the many politicians who have come and gone, both figuratively and literally, in our beloved Kenya, no one has had quite the life and impact like former Prime Minister Raila Amolo Odinga.
Few paid attention to Raila until after the 1982 coup attempt against President Daniel Arap Moi when he was placed under house arrest for suspicion of having collaborated with the plotters of the failed coup.
Raila was later charged with treason and detained without trial for six years.
What happened to Raila while in detention is a story well known but also one for another day.
Raila was released on June 12, 1989, only to be incarcerated again on July 5, 1990, together with Kenneth Matiba and Charles Rubia, both, like Raila, a thorn in Moi’s flesh in their collective leadership in efforts to end the Moi’s misrule and human rights abuses in the country.
For those of us already in the Diaspora by then, and especially given there was nothing even remotely close in news spread and consumption as there is today, what little we followed politically was through relatives and occasionally chatting up with visitors from the motherland.
What we did not believe then, and still in some way don’t believe today, is why the opposition remained so fractured such that by the time Moi was pressured by both internal and external forces to repeal Section 2A, the opposition made it so easy for Moi to remain in office in the first multiparty election after repeal of Section 2A that previously banned all parties in Kenya except Kanu—pati ya baba na mama, (your parent’s party) as Moi would later christen it.
This is a good moment to pause and imagine what Kenya would be like today were the opposition united and routed Moi out of office in 1992.
If your first thought is Kenya would be like Singapore as many often say we should be like given our historical backgrounds, you would be wrong.
Yes, Moi would have been out of power, but whoever replaced him would have come in with the same level of mediocrity, and being the tribal nation we are, it is unlikely they would have accomplished anything much to write about.
This is not an observation made in a vacuum; there is precedent for it and that precedent is 2002.
The country could not have been more excited with the defeat of Moi and his project in 2002 and couldn’t have looked ahead with any greater excitement and jubilation as to what good lay ahead, only to be marched straight into 2007-08 PEV.
No lessons learned with Moi’s rule nearly sank the nation into a civil war. Raila, of course, won the 2007 election, but argue with yourself on that if you must, and of course, we know he won the first 2017 election, which were annulled.
As I have consistently said, no one won the requisite 50%+1 in the 2013 election, but Raila performed so poorly compared to 2007; the powers that be decided to go ahead and rig PNU candidate and now retired President Uhuru Kenyatta rather than having a run-off election between him and Raila.
Did President William Ruto win the 2022 election? Give the man his chops for walloping Uhuru, Raila and the system to be sworn in as our fifth president—and that’s all that needs to be said about that.
You’re probably wondering where this is headed; it’s here: two often repeated assertions about Raila in all these times he has vied for the presidency are that he will never be president of Kenya or he is the best president of Kenya the country will never have.
Maybe, but he will be the best chairman of the African
Union Commission the commission has ever had. Doubt
not one bit that he will be.
