Why Government Apologies to Raila Are Becoming Annoyingly Unbearable!

Peoples Opinions: By Disembe Dikembe

Reports that the Jubilee government has apologized after the reckless mistreatment of Prime Minister Raila Odinga at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport flies in the face after repeated denials, lies and arrogance of some of the government functionaries who have commented on the issue since this unfortunate saga begun to unfold.

That Raila Odinga left the airport facility and had to change in a nearby hotel speaks volumes on the simplicity of the man, and the respect with which ‘common people’ have for the man.

Kikuyu's Are The Most Democratic Tribe In Kenya - A New Study Reports

Kenyan President: Uhuru Kenyatta

According to a report released by an independent body dubbed Kenya Yetu, members of the Kikuyu community are the most democratic people in the country.

 

The report which was released on Friday last week said members of the Kikuyu community allow different leaders from their community to contest for the same seat but eventually choose the “best” among the contestants.

 

The report gave an example of the last General Election where four members of the Kikuyu community vied for the Presidency but only one who was chosen by the community.

The four members from the Kikuyu community, who vied for Presidency include President
Uhuru Kenyatta, Peter Kenneth, Martha Karua and Paul Muite. President Uhuru Kenyatta was elected because he beat the other three in terms of credibility and popularity.

 

The report further says that it will take another 50 years for other communities to start practicing democracy as the Kikuyus do.

The report was commissioned and financed by USAID

A Stolen Election- A Country At War With Itself ( By John Githongo)

Full Article - Courtesy of John Githongo

John Githongo

An Arab friend once told me in reference to the perpetual struggle with Israel that, “We shall fight until the last Egyptian!” Egypt remains the most populous Arab country and most central to the politics of the Middle East in many ways…

WAITING FOR ODINGA

I remember showing up for a ‘change-the-constitution’ rally in the mid-1990s at Uhuru Park only to find it had not started. I ended up hanging around with a pack of local and international journalists under a tree waiting for things to start. The police had already shown up in force.

There were the beginnings of a crowd albeit dispersed into small groups chatting. The question everyone was asking was whether and when Raila Odinga would show up. If he failed too then it was implicit the event would not lift off. For it was Raila who galvanised the crowds; it was he who showed up with throngs of young mainly Luo men willing to be on the frontline once the tear gas started being lobbed about.

Only Kenneth Matiba was able to mobilise youth (mainly Gikuyu for his part) in a similar way that got under the skin of the Moi administration. In those days, these loyal troops were essential to any self-respecting attempt at a demonstration.

Once they showed up and ‘Tinga’ or Matiba arrived ,the show was on the road. It meant the journalists would have something to report and nice action-packed photographs and stories about Kenyans’ struggle for a new katiba would be beamed across the planet.

Since the 1960s when Raila’s father, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga fell out with then President Kenyatta, the political competition between these two families and their respective supporters (especially those from their tribes) formed the beating heart of the most tectonic political contest that has rocked Kenya’s politics. Odinga, who recently accepted defeat in the just concluded polls to Uhuru Kenyatta, was the controversial centre of gravity of Kenyan politics. He made the bold moves that shaped much of opposition politics.

The controversy was also partly fed by an instinctive political restlessness, razor-sharp intuition and, among other things, his alleged role in the attempted coup of 1982 that saw him returned to detention and from which he emerged eventually as the most detained politician in Kenyan history. He decamped from Ford and formed the NDP.

He then took the NDP into a cooperation agreement with Kanu (then the mortal enemy of all ‘reformers’ and oppositionists) causing howls of outrage that reverberated across the country for months. In 2002, as the first Project Uhuru was rolled out by the then retiring Moi, it was Odinga’s “Kibaki tosha!" endorsement while dumping Kanu that united the opposition and routed the ruling party after 24 years. Again, it was effective because it was an accepted political fact that Odinga brought with him a solid Luo voting bloc. It also helped that at that moment, Kibaki was not seen so much as a Gikuyu candidate but the leader of a coalition that could crush Kanu.

This article is not an ode to Odinga. He is a man of many flaws and strengths alike that shall doubtlessly be dissected in detail over the coming months.

Rather, I have been speaking to friends in past weeks and as the results of the elections sink in and narrative of ‘we must forget and move on’ is rolled relentlessly out, the place of the Luo in our tribalised politics remains the subject of particular fascination to me.

Though the nuances are many, it is clear that when one looks back at the past five decades, the highly politicised Luo community (Kenya’s fourth largest), and its leaders, have come to occupy a disproportionate space in our political story; punching way above their tribal numeric weight or commercial strength.

As a result their politicians have been unevenly assassinated, detained, jailed and harassed since the mid 1960s. Luo academics too have borne the brunt of state efforts to manage what Kenyans think politically.

In every sphere of life, the post-colonial State in Kenya has been perceived to apply an aggressive political and economic containment strategy with regard to that community’s leadership.

Ironically, Barack Hussein Obama Snr, father of the current American President, suffered his greatest trauma as a result of this. He never really recovered.

THE LUO AS THE INFANTRY OF KENYA’S DEMOCRACY

For in our politics tribe trumps everything else. Our patronage-based political economy gives us a big man who carries his tribe around in his pocket as a voting bloc that allows him to negotiate with other tribal kingpins for a place at the table.

For a long time it has held our political imagination hostage and it often carries the aspirations of a community plus the promise of patronage, security and access to justice.

It is politically incorrect to admit: there is a powerful perception, fostering a deep collective resentment and sense of victimhood among the Luo, because they have been at the forefront of Kenya’s most important democratic struggles since independence regardless of opinions regarding their leader - hostile or otherwise. There is therefore the feeling among their elite especially that they as a community have served as the infantry in the struggle for the freedoms Kenya now enjoys. The reward for this has too often been seen as denigration, mistrust, betrayal and violence (both soft and hard) meted out against their leaders for 50 years.

Thus the narrative: if you are struggling for freedoms, send out the Luo grunts ready to face the state, they’ll be outspoken and courageous in battle but the ‘victory’ has always been ‘stolen’ from them.

The stereotypical counter argument is that their leaders, Raila Odinga in particular, is not a safe pair of hands in which to place the nation’s fate.

His supporters are too noisy, too violent, too reckless, given to bombast and an abhorrence of pragmatism. It was perhaps thus that media stations rushed their top journalists to Kisumu during primaries that preceded the election, the election itself and then after the Supreme Court ruling.

I’m not trying to romanticise anything here. Indeed, there is no guarantee that the Luo elite would not have behaved exactly as Kibaki’s Mt Kenya mafia had the ascended to power.

THE COLLATERAL LUO

When the Supreme Court released its judgement with regard to the disputed March 4 election at the end of last month, skirmishes between the police and Mr Odinga’s disappointed and disbelieving supporters broke out.

What has struck me is that killing young Luo men has become normalised now. This is much in the same way we always expect steady violence in Northern Kenya.

Like the IDPs languishing in IDP camps within our own country, it is almost as if these citizens are no longer Kenyan. A similar fate befell many young Gikuyu men accused of belonging to Mungiki in 2007. There is a pattern here. It was best articulated by leading young Kisumu lawyer, Issac Okero when giving evidence to the Waki Commission in August 2008:

“There is a perception that where there is need to contain demonstrations, the use of lethal force is an option that rapidly comes to fore and that is very very worrying and speaking as a resident of Kisumu, my own experience is that in the 16 years that I have been here, every occasion on which there has been demonstrations particularly in the election years, there has been the deployment of live rounds which has resulted in the deaths of residents of Kisumu and that is a very, very unfortunate statistic."

A colleague who recently returned from the Western part of Kenya was emphatic that the ‘peace’ that’s holding thus far is fragile. In several areas, he told me, Gikuyu traders are facing a silent boycott.

This is apparently being reciprocated in parts of Central Province and Nairobi. “Many people here don’t yet believe Uhuru is President. They are dazed like a football player suffering a concussion”, another colleague explained, “and the issue is not only that their candidate

Odinga lost the election its that they believe the poll was stolen ‘by the Gikuyu’ once again. So everywhere you hear people saying there no reason to vote ever again as the process will be rigged and no one has confidence in the Supreme Court any more.”

As head of state, Uhuru faces a daunting nation building and reconciliation exercise. He won’t be able to securitize this existential disconnect across the entire nation bang it over the head and kill it.

And if he is wise he’ll have to start among the Luo and be prepared to work extremely hard at it for the fury there is unmitigated. He demonstrated this political wit by attending a funeral there last weekend. No piddling committee will resolve things though, leadership is the key in a situation where half the electorate doubt or outright reject his legitimacy and their worst stereotypes about Gikuyus have seemingly been borne out by the facts.

There is a Coastal saying, “Corner a cat, start to beat it and it can even kill you.” We need to face up to the fact that in many respects, Kenya is a country at war with itself.

This is not yet with machetes but with words and deeds too often added to by a crass triumphalism on the part of some Jubilee supporters who don’t seem to realize that those they mock have ran out of institutional problem solving options as far as political disputes go.

However, I believe that currently, devolution and counties gives many people hope. In typical contradictory Kenyan fashion, devolution is supported not only because it promises people in the countryside their ‘turn to eat’, it is also viewed as a tool to ‘put the Gikuyus in their place’.

Salim Lone: Unforgettable Moments With Mutula Kilonzo

Salim Lone: former Prime Minister Raila Odinga’s spokesman and adviser.

When I congratulated Makueni Senator Mutula Kilonzo and asked for his daughter Kethi’s email address so that I could write to her, he replied with his inimitable chuckle that I could have it since I was “an honourable man.”

He went on to say he had been inundated with requests for Kethi’s hand in marriage, but the compliments that amused him most were from women who wanted him to father a child for them.

Mutula was easily the wittiest man I knew, and he would invariably find an instant way to capture the spirit and meaning of a moment or an idea in a few simple words – an invaluable skill for a political leader. But he could also be infuriating. His vibrancy, his intellectual ferment, his astonishing courage and deeply independent thinking would routinely unsettle friend and foe alike.

But these were the qualities, which established him as a major national figure in just the eight years he lived since he achieved major national prominence in the 2005 referendum on the draft Constitution.

For most of the time I knew Mutula, he belonged to an opposing political party. But he was such a compelling person that I became as close to him as to ODM leaders I had known for decades.

However, I was definitely not a fan when I first met him in 2005, having just returned to Kenya after two decades in exile. Still feeling my way around our fluid political labyrinths, I had one particularly strong, albeit simplistic, belief – anyone connected to Kanu and former President Moi was best kept at a long distance.

But I had to swallow that anti-Kanu stricture when I joined the Orange camp as its spokesman in the campaign in that year’s referendum, given Kanu’s important role in that struggle.

Nevertheless, I complained to former Prime Minister Raila Odinga that he should not be giving important Orange campaign statements I was writing to Mutula to read, since I believed choosing a former Moi confidante as a major face of the campaign was hurting the anti-referendum drive among the core reform community.

Intellectual depth

Raila laughed. “Don’t worry.” he replied. “You will soon see how important it is that we build Mutula. He is brilliant and is going to be a major player for reform in this country.”

This turned out to be the case in the following years. Few political leaders contributed as much as Mutula did – in intellectual depth, hard and committed work, and the most astonishing courage –to push the reform agenda, the new Constitution, and to upholding the rule of law, including fidelity to international treaties.

The Late: Hon Mutula Kilonzo

President Uhuru Kenyatta, who as Kanu leader in 2003 first brought Mutula to national prominence by nominating him to Parliament, highlighted his commitment to principles in his condolence message.

That 2005 referendum campaign was one of the most electrifying periods in our country’s political history. It crystallised – unlike the 2002 election – the issues that we needed to build consensus on: devolution, land, marginalisation and the Executive’s power. The campaign also became the crucible for the emergence of a new Kenyan leadership.

Not only Mutula but also Uhuru and Deputy President William Ruto emerged as major national players.

Orange had created a brand new national team, which overwhelmed President Kibaki’s narrowly-constituted administration by seven provinces to one margin, catapulting Raila to the country’s political front runner.

That campaign’s final impact was to be felt eight years later, when all its four leaders would contest the 2013 presidential election – Uhuru and Ruto versus Raila and Kalonzo.

Mutula was also instrumental in that campaign helping me understand the complexities of reform in Kenya.

It was in fact that campaign, which made me realise how important it was to harness all the country’s major political currents if reform was to have wide acceptance that is indispensable to its success, because it would ensure its sustainability.

Extra-judicial killings

In that regard, my involvement in that campaign turned out to be a Godsend as it brought together virtually the entire new cast of younger leaders with whom I became friends – friendships which survived the many political realignments that took place.

My friendship with Mutula gained new impetus after the 2007 election, when President Kibaki appointed him to the Kofi Annan negotiations team. Subsequently, we spent a week together in Geneva in 2009.

I was part of the Government’s delegation to the meeting of the UN Human Rights Council debating the report on extra-judicial killings by Prof Philip Alston.

There were ministers from both sides of the coalition – including Prof George Saitoti, Amos Wako, Amason Kingi and James Orengo. Current Foreign Affairs Cabinet nominee Amina Mohamed and I were to do the drafting of the statement.

Such were the dissonances in the grand coalition then that despite the official attacks on the Alston report, the Government’s formal position still had not been determined.

This was left to the ministers in Geneva under Mutula’s guidance as Minister for Justice and Constitutional Affairs. Mutula brilliantly treaded multiple fault lines on this super-sensitive issue, and with Orengo’s help, developed a consensus to accept the Alston report while challenging aspects of the rapporteur’s mandate.

Mutula began as a pro-establishment strategist and ended up as a reformer – when in fact most politicians follow the opposite trajectory.

He will live long in our hearts for contributing immensely to Kenya’s democratic development, but there is so much more he was destined to achieve had his life not been so tragically cut short. There is no doubt he was going to be a central player in determining the shape of politics in the run-up to the 2017 elections.

Salim Lone was former Prime Minister Raila Odinga’s spokesman and adviser.

Why Uhuru Kenyatta's Cabinet Secretaries May Not Perform Better Than The Previous Regime Ministers'

Koigi Wa Wamwere's Take:

 

Cabinet Secretaries of Uhuru Will Not Perform Better Than Ministers of Kibaki, Moi and Kenyatta.

President Uhuru and Deputy President Ruto have already nominated their sixteen cabinet secretaries and the country awaits the last two.

Koigi Wa Wamwere

That done, Uhuru and Ruto supporters seem to expect that the Uhuru and Ruto team will perform better than ministers of Kibaki, Moi and Kenyatta. Uhuru and Ruto supporters are optimistic because they believe in the popular propaganda that ministers who are technocrats will perform better than ministers who are politicians. Here cabinet secretaries are referred to as ministers because they will be performing exactly the same political functions as previous cabinet ministers. But popular optimism in favor of cabinet secretaries notwithstanding, I beg to differ that they will save Kenya.

It strikes me that, despite election of its president and deputy president, the government of Uhuru and Ruto will not be a government of the people, by the people and for the people. It will be a government of, by and for Uhuru and Ruto especially in extricating them from the ICC case which now hovers over their heads like the sword of Damocles. But if the government of Uhuru and Ruto is tasked first and foremost to fight the ICC case, it is unlikely that it will concentrate on anything else at all. You cannot be dying of cancer and worrying about failing an exam.

If the Uhuru and Ruto government will be less a government of the people and more of their own, it is unlikely that their cabinet will perform better than Cabinets of Kibaki, Moi and Kenyatta.

Because Uhuru and Ruto are heads of their government, performance of cabinet secretaries will depend entirely on their political leadership of it. The neck never leads the head and the slave does what the master wills.

When loyalty of cabinet secretaries was sought it was loyalty to Uhuru and Ruto, not the people. Equally, when ability to serve was considered, it was for service to Uhuru and Ruto, not the people.

Because they have high flying CVs, we are told cabinet secretaries will be more successful. But the highly educated Dream Team of Richard Leakey never worked wonders under President Moi. And when Kenyans fought for independence and later second liberation, the most educated fought the least. Political leadership always neuters the highly educated.

Cabinet secretaries are also considered better because they are younger. But the notorious YK92 was youth fighting to preserve one party dictatorship. While strong on energy, youth is weak on wisdom.

Though histories of most nominated cabinet secretaries are not known to the public, those whose histories are known to a few speak of involvement in outright corruption, impunity, malpractices at work and benefiting from ethnicity. Were these cabinet secretaries nominated without due diligence or were their dark histories simply ignored?

Kenya will not be lead into the First World by people of questionable characters however glittering their educational CVs, recruited from a failed civil service and recommended into government by equally questionable political connections.

If Kenya has people like Professor Micere Mugo, Dr. Patrice Lumumba, Dr. Kilemi Mwiria and Mrs. Jecintah Mwatela, why nominate persons of questionable character as cabinet secretaries?

When former acting governor of Central Bank Jecinta Mwatela was saying no to a corrupt contract that would lose the country billions of shillings, another technocrat, Attorney General Githu Muigai was writing a legal opinion for Long Horn Publishers against publication of my book “Towards Genocide in Kenya: The Curse of Negative Ethnicity” educating Kenyans against negative ethnicity. Yet Uhuru will pick Githu Muigai and skip Jecintah Mwatela!

Cabinet secretaries will not save this country into the First World without values. They must have patriotism to put national interests before those of leaders and self, courage not to perpetrate corruption scandals like Goldenberg and Anglo-Leasing when instructed, nationalism to serve Kenyans equally, and integrity to resist temptations of graft.

When Africa was fighting apartheid, I asked a friend why she worked for Barclays Bank that did business in South Africa. When she told me she did not care where the bank did business as long as it gave her a job and a salary, I knew educated Africans are mercenaries that will serve anyone however evil.

Lastly, we are told cabinet secretaries will save Kenya because they have been successful CEOs in their companies and banks whose success is their fabulous profits that are earned through milking same people they are now tasked to rescue. But only recently, excessive greed of Western CEOs collapsed their corporations and national economies only to be rescued by public funding and austerity measures. Kenya will not be saved by bank Shylocks but cabinet secretaries who will walk in the path of Jesus, Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jnr., Thomas Sankara, Julius Nyerere, Patrice Lumumba and Fidel Castro.

To reassure the public, cabinet secretaries are about to be vetted by same Parliament that itself avoided vetting by sidestepping Chapter six of the Constitution. Having compromised themselves morally, MPs cannot now deny cabinet secretaries work for sins they are themselves guilty of? Indeed, they have no moral authority or the will to vet cabinet secretaries. Their vetting exercise is nothing but whitewash to hoodwink Kenyans that sterile cabinet secretaries will fight graft, negative ethnicity, impunity, marginalization and dictatorship and lead Kenya into the First World.

 

Miguna Miguna: Why Raila Odinga Lost The Election and The Petition

Miguna Miguna Picture

It’s two months after the March 4th, 2013 elections in Kenya. It’s about sixty nine days since the Independent Electoral and Boundaries’ Commission (the IEBC) declared both Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto duly elected president and deputy president, respectively. Fourteen days after that, the Supreme Court of Kenya confirmed the IEBC’s declaration in a unanimous verdict that sent the principal petitioner and Uhuru’s main challenger in the presidential election, Raila Odinga, into a psychological spin whose reverberations are still being felt to this day. 

Will Odinga finally accept the democratic will of the Kenyan people? 

Apparently not. In numerous incoherent, inconsistent and contradictory utterances since the Supreme Courts decision, Mr. Odinga has blown hot and cold. Prior to the elections, Odinga and other presidential contenders displayed unprecedented unity, patriotism, humility and statesmanship by publicly stating that they would accept the results of the elections no matter how it turned out. They undertook, together, on live TV broadcasts, to be peaceful and to seek any redress in court should they lose. They promised, fervently, to respect the Supreme Court’s decision in any subsequent petition(s). “There will be no mass action,” they solemnly swore before Rev. David Owuor, as millions of Kenyans watched.

However, on March 9th, barely fifteen minutes after the IEBC declared Uhuru duly elected, Odinga swiftly held a press conference to denounce the results. There were no statesman-like congratulatory telephone calls from Odinga to the president-elect. This is what happens in mature democracies like the US even when one isn’t happy with the results. It doesn’t and wouldn’t have prevented Odinga from disputing the results in Court. But Odinga not only rejected the results announced by the IEBC, he also threatened a legal tsunami. He listed, publicly, before filing his petition, a litany of accusations against the IEBC, Uhuru’s Jubilee Alliance, the National Security Intelligence, and un-named “dark forces and bureaucrats” who had allegedly “stolen” his victory “one more time.” 

He claimed that the IEBC had taken 1.8 million votes from him and given them to Uhuru. He termed it daylight electoral robbery. He threatened unspecified “consequences” to the “electoral thieves.” He paraded more than a dozen lawyers, including sitting members of parliament, and confidently stated that he would prevail at the Supreme Court. He promised his supporters swift and an unequivocal“justice from the Supreme Court.”

All reasonable people expected that Odinga would present unimpeachable evidence before the Court and prove each and every allegation made; that he would expose the concluded elections and the IEBC as frauds; and that ultimately, the Court would vindicate his allegations. Odinga’s supporters subsequently inundated the airwaves, suffocated the print and electronic media and saturated the social media with salacious stories of stuffed ballot boxes, fake voters’ registers, dead voters and remote hacking of the IEBC computer systems that “had transferred millions of votes belonging to Raila, which had then been fraudulently tallied and declared in favour of Uhuru.” Unauthenticated video clips showing unidentified people making contradictory announcements of “results” mysteriously emerged and started circulating in the Internet. These were accompanied by a crescendo of ethnic jingoism and hate-filled propaganda. Viewers were later entertained to their dramatic presentation in Court by AfriCOG’s lawyer,Kethi Kilonzo.“Be patient and wait for the Supreme Court’s verdict,” Odinga kept exhorting the country. It looked like it was only a matter of hours before the Court “returned Raila’s stolen victory.” Yet after the Supreme Court tossed out his petition on April 9, 2013, Odinga not only rejected that decision, he went ahead and implied that the Court had been ‘compromised.’ He didn’t specify how this had happened. However, it didn’t take long before Odinga’s supporters started spreading unsubstantiated propaganda that the Supreme Court justices had been paid Ksh300 million (approximately $3.6 million) for each supreme court justice by the Jubilee team. A few dozen Odinga supporters demonstrated in Nairobi and Kisumu with two even committing suicide in Migori town and the Kibera slums in Nairobi. 

Most Odinga supporters, particularly from his Luo ethnic group, were in deep mourning. They refused to believe that their man had lost fairly to Uhuru Kenyatta. To Odinga and his supporters, the results had been cooked by the Kikuyu elites, working in cahoots with the IEBC. There wasn’t any need for proof. Addressing his supporters in Mombasa and Kisumu a few days after the court’s verdict, Odinga stirred fresh embers and rekindled the memories of the 2007 post-election conflict by charging the IEBC of planned, orchestrated, massive rigging. With a black Bible held in his right hand, he rounded it off by comparing his circumstances to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. “Unlike Jesus, I’ve resurrected without being  buried…”Odinga thundered. He subsequently took off to a South African zoo with his running mate Kalonzo Musyoka and a recently-acquired side-kick, Moses Wetangula, effectively boycotting the inauguration of Uhuru and Ruto, which occurred on April 12th. 

Odinga also urged elected members of his CORD alliance to boycott the event as well – and many complied. Since then, Odinga has continued to publicly condemn the IEBC, the Supreme Court, and an assortment of high-ranking public figures and institutions, accusing them of conspiracy to deny him the country’s leadership. He has recently agitated for a constitutional amendment so that the country can become a parliamentary system. As well, he continues to call for the disbandment of the IEBC, claiming that in its present form, it cannot preside over fair and democratic elections. Unfortunately, these are arguments that Odinga should have made more than three years ago. During the constitutional review process – and as I narrate at pages 370-80 of my memoirs, Peeling Back the Mask – Odinga is the one who proposed the current pure presidential system. Odinga shouted at me when I reminded him that a parliamentary system is best suited for a multi-ethnic society with demographic, power and economic imbalances. At the time, he rudely told me that I didn’t appreciate “the benefits of a presidential system” and [referring to a classic parliamentary system I had drafted for consideration] that I couldn’t take all power from “an elected president and give it to an un-elected prime minister.” Then, Odinga’s main focus was the acquisition of undiluted power so that he could use it to make more money and pamper his family, relatives and acolytes.

Not surprisingly, Odinga has suddenly realized that a parliamentary system is best suited for multicultural societies. It enhances cohesion by decentralizing and decongesting power. The question, however, is why Odinga is behaving as if he has just discovered these redeeming qualities in a parliamentary system. Isn’t he the same man who recently traversed the country claiming to be the best person whom Kenyans could trust with the implementation of the Constitution of Kenya 2010? Has he had a change of heart about the constitution he deemed “the best in Africa” just two months ago? Why was he happy with a system he claims perpetuates the big man syndrome only a few weeks ago? For those who know Odinga very well like I do, it’s obvious that his current campaign is motivated by one thing only (though he tries to conceal it): his greed and blinding drive for power. He is clever enough to know that most Kenyans actually prefer a parliamentary system of government. It’s the only means the majority of Kenyan ethnic communities can hope to share power and resources with their bigger kinsmen like theGikuyu, Kalenjin, Luhya, Luo and Kamba. On his part, Odinga wants to ride on these people’s backs – become their champion – all the way to victory in 2017. To do that, he needs a uniting message – a clarion call. But more immediately, he is seeking a reason (no matter how dubious) to return to parliament. Otherwise, the insurrection Odinga is busy fermenting over the system of government and the just-concluded elections are ruses for his “Change the
Constitution Movement.” Whatever group he constructs – and he will come up with one – will be his vehicle for power in 2017.

Forget about the still-born CORD! In July 2011, Odinga suspended me through the media for daring to publish a column in the Star newspaper in which I criticized the management and alleged corruption and nepotistic practices of one Issack Hassan and the precursor to the IEBC – the Interim Independent Electoral Commission. Odinga, James Orengo, Peter Anyang’ Nyong’o, Gerald Otieno Kajwang’, Jakoyo Midiwo and Oburu Odinga told anyone who wanted to hear that Mr Issack Hassan was the best electoral manager in Kenya. Odinga and his cohorts accused me of “attempting to interfere with the running of the electoral commission.” Yet less than three years later, these hypocrites are now making the same arguments I made in 2011!

Whereas we can let Odinga mourn and live in denial unmolested over his “stolen victory,” it’s imperative that we remind him of some of the most blatant falsehoods he is trying to propagate. Before the Supreme Court rendered its decision, virtually all the mourners were ‘convinced’ that the Court would grant Odinga’s petition and overturn Uhuru’s victory. They yelled and shouted for people to wait for the SC’s decision. Some of us obliged them – patiently. Yet no sooner had the SC rendered its decision did the same people start shouting again; this time condemning the Court. This means they couldn’t accept any other decision but an Odinga win. That’s not reasonable. It’s also disrespectful of democratic principles, the rule of law and our institutions. Democracy cannot grow and thrive unless we show reasonable deference to our institutions of governance.
 

Before the March 4th elections, the media and most opinion poll firms considered Odinga to be “the leading presidential candidate.” Members of CORD [coalition for reforms and democracy], many of them dyed-in-the-wool Kanu Orphans like Kalonzo Musyoka, Henry Kosgey, Dalmas Otieno, William Ole Ntimama, Franklin Bett, Cyrus Jirongo, Moses Wetangula, Amos Wako and Fred Gumo, were suddenly portrayed as “reformers” and “agents of change.” It seemed like supporting Odinga was all one required to become a reformer.
 

As we went to the polls, Odinga had been prime minister of Kenya for 5 long years. His running-mate, Kalonzo Musyoka, had been Vice-President for 5 years as well. Wako had been the longest serving Attorney General in the Commonwealth, having served a total of 21 years in Daniel arap Moi’s tyrannical regime and Mwai Kibaki’s lackluster administration. In other words, going into the March 4th elections, CORD was the establishment group in name and substance. They had (or ought to have had) both party and presidential agents in all polling, constituency, county and national tallying centre(s). The IEBC gave these agents forms 34, 35 and 36 on which the county, constituency and presidential results were announced. They signed the forms 34 and 35 at the constituency tallying centres, and form 36 at the national tallying centre in Nairobi.
 

They presumably relayed these results to their party headquarters and leaders long before the same results reached the national tallying centre in Nairobi, and very long before they were added up and final results were declared by the Chairman of the IEBC. These are the forms Odinga should have used as evidence in his Petition before the Supreme Court. He should have had them on March 9th when Uhuru was declared winner. Information on these forms – plus observations by his presidential agents – is what Odinga needed to use in challenging the IEBC results. If there had been serious electoral malpractices, the onus was on Odinga to present credible evidence in Court. He needed to demonstrate that had these violations not occurred, Uhuru wouldn’t have won, or at least not achieved 50% of all valid votes cast plus one vote. So, why didn’t he?

One plausible reason is that Odinga knew that he couldn’t sustain his objection to the declared results. In other words, Odinga’s bluster was nothing but theatre. He knew that he couldn’t prove any of his allegations through credible evidence. The Court to him was just another instrument for manipulation in his quest for power. More significantly, the results had not been challenged by Odinga and his cohorts (at the constituency and county tallying halls) until the final tallies at the national tallying centre showed that Uhuru had won. In addition, the same tallies had been used to declare MPs, Governors, Senators, Women Representatives, etc – results that Odinga and CORD did not seem to challenge at the Supreme Court. In all these other results, the Jubilee Team has more members (MPs, Senators and Women Representatives) than CORD. Essentially, Odinga knew Uhuru had won.

In 2007, ODM had argued, legitimately, that one of the clearest indicators that he had won the 2007 presidential election was the fact that the party on which he contested the Presidency, ODM, had more MPs than Kibaki’s PNU. However, in 2013, Uhuru’s Jubilee had more MPs, Senators and women representatives than CORD. On what basis, therefore, would Odinga and his cohorts, be arguing that he won the popular vote when clearly he has less representatives than his main opponent? Finally, Odinga’s figures simply didn’t add up. 

Uhuru beat him with more than 800,000 votes! That’s huge by any standards. Uhuru got 50.07% of the total votes cast (it should have been 53% of the valid votes) while Odinga only got 43%. Although he alleged that the IEBC robbed him of 1.8 million votes, he couldn’t prove any rigging before the Supreme Court – not one rigged vote! These are undeniable facts.

In my opinion, the reason why Odinga went to Court wasn’t because he believed he had sufficient evidence upon which Uhuru’s victory could be overturned. He wanted the Court to help him perpetrate a coup either by ruling in his favour despite the evidence or to create an environment in which he could precipitate an insurrection like the ones that happened in Cote d’Ivoire, Tunisia and Egypt. He had hoped that the West would help

Raila, Kalonzo and Wetangula

him get power. His other wish was that he could make Kenya ungovernable so as to create the need for another grand coalition arrangement with Uhuru. He had hoped that such an arrangement would ultimately result in him taking absolute power – after the ICC trials is May and July 2013. But Odinga conveniently forgot that he had alienated most of his strongest strategists, tacticians and mobilisers going into the March 4th elections. He had betrayed everyone except his relatives and sycophants. 

These wounded former allies used their talents, energies and contacts to deliver a convincing defeat to Odinga. In 2007, it was William Ruto, Moses Mudavadi, Charity Ngilu, Najib Balala and many others who generated much needed energy that helped mobilize Odinga’s support in the Rift Valley, Western, Nairobi and Coast. By 2012, those areas had moved to Uhuru’s side. On March 4th, Odinga was basically left with Luos, Kisiis, Luhyas and the Coast. He knew that there was no way he could have won a fair and democratic contest against Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto.

Moreover, Odinga’s tenure as prime minister of Kenya had been more than disappointing. For five years he presided over a moribund office where deception, lethargy, disorganization, corruption and nepotism were the greatest achievements of that office, thus exposing his hitherto concealed under belly. 

As Kenyans went to elections on March 4th, Odinga’s strongholds in Nyanza and Nairobi areas lived in pathetic conditions. Sugar cane, cotton, rice and fishing industries which provided his core supporters with a livelihood had long ceased being viable economic activities. The floods were still ravaging Kano plains and others areas in Nyanza. Schools and health centres were dilapidated. Land remained un-demarcated. Most young adults aged between eighteen and twenty-five years were not registered as voters because they had not been issued with national identity cards. These happened despite the fact that the ministers for registration of persons, lands and health services were Odinga’s cabinet appointees and known sycophants.

Even more intriguing was the sudden and massive technology failure during the elections which are said to be directly traceable to Odinga and corrupt mandarins in his former office who credible sources claim ripped off the national treasury to the tune of Sh2 billion during the BVR procurement. With forensic and criminal investigations having been ordered on the technological failure, many observers are keenly waiting to see how Odinga’s office might be implicated and what he might say after the results of the investigations are made public. It’s possible that the biggest culprits during the 2013 elections will be the twin national ailments of greed and deception. Clearly, Odinga had miscalculated. His strategies and tactics weren’t well thought-out. 

The execution of his inept strategies and tactics was also rusty. But somehow, he and his sycophants believed that God had anointed him to reign. He would automatically become president, they yelled. “Even goats and chicken in villages know that Raila will be Kenya’s fourth president,” we were reminded again and again. 

Fortunately, Kenya and the world had moved on…Had Odinga listened to me in 2009; he could probably be something right now under a parliamentary system. He wouldn’t be dangling in the air, unable to decide whether to retire or to force himself back to parliament so that he can remain politically relevant. However, with three successive loses under his belt, Odinga has to retire honourably or we will retire him.

Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga Both Lost The Last General Elections: A Poll By Two US Political Scientists Reveal

Courtesy Of Kenya Daily Express

A survey of Kenyan voters exiting polling places for the March 4 election shows a statistical tie between Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga, with both candidates receiving about 41 per cent of the vote.
 

The so-called exit poll was conducted by two US political scientists and included about 6000 Kenyan voters. The results captured on this video link were released at a Washington think-tank forum on Thursday.

The exit poll showed Mr Odinga receiving 40.9 per cent of votes and Mr Kenyatta 40.6 per cent, with support for other candidates accounting for some of the remainder. Nearly 12 per cent of the Kenyans included in the survey refused to indicate for whom they had voted in the presidential race.

The results represent "a statistical tie" between the two top vote-getters due to the survey's margin of error, the pollsters said. One of the pollsters, Harvard University vitiating professor James Long, acknowledged under sharp questioning from the audience that the margin of error could be as high as three per cent. But even taking account of various statistical uncertainties, Prof Long said, "There is no reasonable assumption that gets either candidate to 50 per cent."

For example, the contention that Mr Kenyatta benefited from a comparatively much higher turnout in Kikuyu-dominated parts of the country was shown through the exit poll to be "a myth," Prof Long declared.

He and his colleague, Prof Clark Gibson of the University of California at San Diego, declined to identify precise causes for the discrepancy between their survey's results and the outcome certified by the Independent Elections and Boundaries Commission. 

The official result showed Mr Kenyatta winning slightly more than 50 percent and thus avoiding a second-round runoff.

The pollsters have "no evidence of people stuffing ballots" or buying votes, Prof Long said.

"Why should somebody believe the results of the election are invalid?" a member of the audience asked. Prof Long suggested, "Because people broke the law when they counted votes." Prof Long said at the outset of his presentation at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies that exit polls are "immune" to ballot stuffing or technological breakdowns.

Data from the survey also indicated that both Mr Odinga and Mr Kenyatta enjoyed overwhelming support from their respective ethnic groups. Mr Kenyatta received 83 per cent of the Kikuyu vote, according to the exit poll, while Mr Odinga got 94 per cent of the Luo vote, the survey indicated. Among Kalenjin included in the poll, 74 per cent voted for Mr Kenyatta and 11 percent for Mr Odinga. 

For Kamba who took part in the survey, the breakdown was 63 per cent for Mr Odinga and 12 per cent for Mr Kenyatta.

Overall, "there seems to be some loosening of ethnic identification" with particular candidates, Prof Long suggested. In response to a survey question asking participants to name the most important issue behind their choice, most cited either the economy or employment.

Very few voters identified tribalism, land or the cases before the International Criminal Court as the most important issues in the election.