Full List: Raila Odinga's 2022 Cabinet Proposed Lineup

Breaking News Kenya

Here is Raila Odinga's proposed 2022 Cabinet Lineup:

Raila Odinga - President 

Martha Karua - DP 

Breaking News: Martha Karua It is: History is Made as Raila Picks Martha Karua as Running Mate

Raila Martha | Image Courtesy Qwetu News

With UDA-Kenya Kwanza already settled on Rigathi Gachagua to deputize William Ruto, Raila Odinga has settled on Martha Karua in what is perceived as an attempt to woo women voters across the country.

What happens to Kalonzo Musyoka? Well in, the man from

One Hidden Secret of the Handshake

Until now, many people continue to speculate about the details of the handshake deal between H.E President Uhuru Kenyatta and opposition leader Raila Odinga. Weirdly, no one can tell the actual contents of the deal, except the two.

the 'handshake' | picture courtesy

Every time the question on what’s in the deal pops up, the immediate reference is directed towards the building bridges initiative committee, whose terms of reference isn’t yet clearly known to the public.

But many can now attest that there is true calm in the country as a result of the famous handshake. Equally, there is a new zeal to tackle both impunity and corruption, a true legacy that President Kenyatta will most definitely be remembered for, in his last term in the office.

One secret of the handshake lies in the 2022 elections. Raila will present himself, again, for another fight at the Presidency. But will he receive the support of the President?

The Strength Of NASA Lies In Their Disunity

Opposition Chiefs - Kalonzo, Raila And Wetangula | Image Courtesy

Every political pundit acknowledges that it will never be a walk in the park for the opposition to get the current government out of power. 

If you've ever followed Kenyan politics closely, one fact is now evident; the opposition will remain as strong as they continue to lack a presidential candidate! Well, this may sound stranger than fiction, but it's a fact.

The longer the opposition can stay whilst figuring who their flag bearer will be, the stronger they will remain. And if they can come up with a system where all the principals are treated as equals before and after elections, then they will definately give the new Jubilee outfit a good run for their money.  

And for the opposition to win the next elections, they must learn from Matiangi , and do things differently. It should never matter who carries their flag, as long as they remain united to a common course.

But the sad truth is, wasipojipanga, watazidi kupangwa.

Former Kenya’s Prime Minister's Son, Fidel Odinga Is Dead

Fidel Odinga who is the eldest son to the Kenya’s second Prime Minister, Raila Odinga, is dead. Fidel who was aged 41 years at the time of his death, is said to have not woken up from his sleep, after returning home on Saturday night, having spent some time with his friends around Nairobi.

CORD Declines to Issue Nomination Certificates to ODM’s Homabay Defectors

ODM’s Homabay Senatorial Seat aspirants got a rude shock this week when CORD’s Deputy Party Leader, Kalonzo Musyoka, announced that the coalition’s affiliate parties will not issue nomination certificates to other contestants in the forthcoming Homabay Senatorial elections.

This, he said, was to guarantee the coalition’s chances of retaining the vacant seat which was left behind after the death of Otieno Jakwang’.

News: 'You have Now Crossed The Line' - Ole Lenku Warns Raila

Image credit: standard digital news

“You have now crossed the line and you must back off or else . . .,” that is the terse warning to CORD leader Raila Odinga from Interior Cabinet Secretary Joseph ole Lenku. 

Speaking to The Standard on Sunday in his office yesterday, Mr Lenku said the ongoing CORD rallies must be conducted within the law, and added that, “Raila would be held personally responsible for any bloodshed, loss of life or property arising from his political activities”.

Raila Odinga Receives World Class Secret Services Security Details In America

USA: Former Prime Mister, Hon Raila Odinga landed in Philadelphia and was received by the Mayor of the City, the Governor of the State of Pennsylvania, and other state government elected officials. 

After a brief meeting at the VIP Lounge at the airport, he was escorted to Hyatt Hotel in Philadelphia where he will rest and attend his daughter's (Winnie) graduation tomorrow. 

Raila is enjoying full time top notch protection of four secret service officers provided by the government.

Raila Odinga and Kalonzo Musyoka Locked Out From Accessing Parliament

Nairobi Kenya: 

It is now official, former Prime Minister, Raila Odinga and former Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka have been locked out of a possible comeback to any legislative assembly through nominations. 

A three-judge bench of the Court of Appeal declared Section 34 (9) of the Elections Act, which allowed the nomination

Raila Odinga Expected to Brief Americans and The Rest of The World From Washington DC

Raila Odinga

A Briefing by The Honorable Raila A. Odinga: African Achievements and Challenges: Learning from the Past but Looking Forward

The former Prime Minister of the Republic Kenya, The Honorable Raila A. Odinga, will discuss the past 50 years, highlighting both achievements and challenges on the continent. 

One Day You Will Remember Raila Amolo Odinga

ONE DAY KENYA WILL REMEMBER RAILA ODINGA

One day, you will remember Raila Amolo Odinga, a leader who fought for multi-partism and democracy, ...a leader who accepted the pain of torture and detention.

Without him, there would be no TNA, URP, FORD, ODM and the likes. One day you will remember Raila Amolo Odinga. The only Luo leader who endorsed a Kikuyu president and through him, the Rainbow Coalition was formed.

Kibaki, a kikuyu, became president. And when the time to return the favour came, the people from the mountains turned their faces against him. They called him a dictator and a tribalist. Yet, he had once supported one of their own.

Shock: Raila Received Full VIP Access and Honours At South African Airport

Courtesy of Capital News

Former Prime Minister Raila Odinga was received in South Africa with the full honours of a VIP, but as he departed Kenya’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport on Tuesday evening, Raila was treated as a common ‘raia’.

An aide to the former Premier told Capital FM News that Odinga was taken through a full security check, in queue with other passengers to South Africa where he even had to remove his belt and shoes as part of security screening.

Raila Odinga Rules Out Jubilee Government Job Offer

Raila Odinga

Cord leader Raila Odinga on Sunday said he was not ready to take up a job with the government because he is already engaged in various international assignments, which are keeping him busy. In an interview with the Daily Nation, Mr Odinga sought to put to rest the job debate, saying he had received no job offer in President Uhuru Kenyatta’s government.

“I have received numerous invitations from across the world. I have accepted some and declined others. This does not indicate to you I am a person who needs a government job,” he said. “There is no offer I have seen and I do not need any job to stay relevant in this country,” he said. “For avoidance of any doubt, let me state here that I will not accept any job if offered by President Uhuru Kenyatta’s government.” Mr Odinga said his “inbox” was full with international and local assignments that will keep him on his toes in coming days.

“What I told the President is that he should resist the temptations to kill the opposition the same way successive governments have done,” he said on Saturday. Mr Odinga met President Kenyatta during the funeral of Knut secretary-general David Okuta Osiany in Kisumu last month.

Our sister publication, Saturday Nation, reported at the weekend that Mr Odinga has not announced his next move because President Uhuru Kenyatta had kept him waiting over a State job. “There was a job in the diplomatic circles, yes, but the President is yet to meet Mr Odinga to firm this up,” an official close to both leaders had told the Saturday Nation. Other politicians close to the former Prime Minister said he was writing his memoirs. But at the weekend, Mr Odinga said that during his talks with the President, he had asked Mr Kenyatta to nurture the culture of opposition politics by resisting attempts to poach from those constitutionally charged with the task of checking the government.-“Accepting a job in government negates the very ideals enshrined in our Constitution,” he said and dismissed reports that he was being offered a government job as “propaganda”. There has been talk that Mr Odinga — who lost the March 4 presidential election to Mr Kenyatta — would be appointed as a special envoy. (MAKAU MUTUA: Open letter to Raila: Don’t accept ‘errand boy’ job)

Such a role would make him a peace negotiator in Africa on behalf of the government.Mr Odinga said the role he wanted to play was that of reorganising Cord to make it a strong opposition force. He said he was soon to leave for a conference in South Africa, before going to Australia and later to the US. “I still hold the view that I can lead a strong Opposition from where I stand and that position has not changed,” he said. And while speaking at the Lutheran Cathedral Church in Nairobi on Sunday where he attended a church service, Mr Odinga dismissed as rumours reports that he had been kept waiting for a job by Mr Kenyatta. “No one has kept me waiting; no one can do that any way. But let me stress here that I have not been offered a job, I have also not asked for any,” he told the congregation.

He said he was busy strengthening Cord so as to keep the Jubilee government in check. “There is danger of sliding back to the dark days, if we relax,” he warned. “We want to offer constructive opposition to the government. Of course, we will not just oppose for the sake of it; we will adopt a bipartisan approach in Parliament whereby we will support government when they are on the right track and where we feel all is not right, we oppose, but all in the interest of Kenyans.” Mr Odinga said the fact that he had lost in the presidential poll had not deterred him in the quest to offer Kenyans an alternative brand of leadership. “The process must continue and I am determined to achieve this,” he said. ....Courtesy of Misterseed.Com

Implications Of Raila's First International Ambush on Uhuru

                                                                     Courtesy Of Joe Adama

Raila Amolo Odinga: Former Prime Minister

Former Prime Minister Raila Odinga’s first overseas engagement, the Oxford Analytica /Times CEO Africa Summit in London, where he delivered a keynote speech on Tuesday evening, was not initially very well covered by both the Kenyan media and his own communications team.

Compared to Ghanaian President John Dramani Mahama, who also delivered a keynote speech to the same Summit the same day on the same theme, the coverage and availability of the full text of Raila’s controversial address were slow in coming.

In great contrast, President Mahama’s full speech and the video of his address were mounted on the Internet within minutes of delivery overnight on Tuesday/Wednesday on multiple Ghana-oriented websites, both official and not.

By Wednesday lunchtime, only Raila’s Twitter and Facebook accounts indicated that he had indeed also delivered his own speech the previous evening, but the full text was nowhere to be found and there was no video.

The Times of London, co-sponsors of the Summit alongside prestigious and authoritative global research firm Oxford Analytica, had a news report, the speech and video, but Kenyans had to subscribe to access more than the first few paragraphs of the news and Summit reports.

Raila’s choice and timing of first intercontinental engagement was a political class act like none other, in the wake of a presidential election, including a transition poll, in Kenyan history.

FOREMOST RISK ANALYSTS

The CEO Africa Summit brings together the chairpersons and chief executives of Africa’s biggest business and international investors and prospective investors as well as some of the foremost risk analysts.

No other declared loser of a presidential poll in Kenya has latched on to such a high profile global forum so soon after being outmanoeuvred at home.

In all likelihood, when they invited Raila, the organizers of the CEO Africa Summit had little doubt that he would arrive in London designated Fourth President of the Republic Kenya.

Indeed, much Oxford Analytica analysis of the run-up to and prolonged immediate aftermath of the Kenyan general election fancied Raila’s prospects over Uhuru Kenyatta’s, as did much of the rest of Britain’s mainstream media.

For instance, the Independent newspaper of London, an eminently liberal publication, carried an analysis a jump ahead of the election candidly headlined, “If Raila Odinga wins Kenya's elections, Britain's interests are secure, but if Uhuru Kenyatta wins...”. This feature had the preamble, “A new leader in Nairobi could be bad news for the UK”, and was written by one Kim Sengupta.

Across the Atlantic in America, the New York Times greeted Uhuru’s election with an editorial headlined “Awkward Choice in Kenya” and signed, remarkably, not by any one correspondent or bureau chief but by the NYT Editorial Board.

When he mounted the podium on Tuesday evening, which was bedecked with Times branding, Raila, like President Mahama in the case of his own country, was expected to handle the theme of the realities of doing business in Africa, profiling Kenya’s readiness for business and the opportunities available for partnership with this country’s private sector. He was also invited to make a few remarks on the March 4 General Election, its aftermath and the way forward.

He dealt with the prescribed themes, speaking of Kenya as an investment destination backed by its talented human resource base, particularly the youth, and the stability prevalent in the region.

And then Raila embarked on a most remarkable message to Kenya and the world from that very special time and place and audience. He declared that this country could plunge into violence again if President Uhuru Kenyatta favours his own ethnic group too much.

UHURUTO ‘UNAWARE OF DANGER’

And he said darkly: “The Supreme Court was compromised and there is a lot of tension because people feel they have been robbed. I fear it could turn into violence if the President takes a winner-takes-all position. At the moment there is little sign they are aware of the danger”.

Almost as if on cue on Thursday morning May 2, Kenyans woke up to news on the BBC World Service Amka na BBC and News Day FM radio programmes to the effect that the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission was finding it extremely difficult, if not downright impossible, to table its report with the President or his aides as required by law against a very strict reporting deadline.

The TJRC was established by an Act of Parliament in 2008, when the fires of the post-election violence were still smouldering, and tasked with interviewing witnesses, victim and victimizer survivors of historic injustices, including assassinations, torture, displacements, land grabs and grand corruption, from 1963 to 2008. It was scheduled to table its findings with President Kenyatta on Friday last week.

Quoting authoritative sources inside Kenya, most likely from within the Commission itself, the BBC claimed that as of Thursday this week the TJRC report had exactly 48 hours to be tabled before the President or his aides or it would become null and void.

Reporting that the Office of the President had refused to receive the report before being allowed to peruse an advance copy, the BBC openly speculated that the problem probably lay in the massive charges brought by multiple witnesses, victims and others against the administrations and persons of Kenya’s first two presidents – Uhuru’s Dad Jomo and Uhuru’s political benefactor Moi – as well as Mwai Kibaki.

As we went to press, it looked as if the TJRC Report, identified in these columns last week as one of the baptism-of-fire factors for the new administration, would go the way of the Kroll Report of 2006.

Global security and forensic audit experts Kroll were commissioned by the Kibaki administration to inquire into grand corruption and capital flight under the 24-year-long Moi administration, but when they tabled their report, for which the government paid millions of shillings upfront, it was promptly shelved.

Instead, copies of the sensational report were leaked on the Internet but never certified by either Kroll or the Kibaki regime as the original and genuine document, with both saying they were not in the business of issuing such certifications.

As for the fact of both President Kenyatta and Deputy President Ruto being crimes-against-humanity indictees of the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague, Raila told his international audience:

“It caused the other side to unite against the ICC. They said the ICC is a Western institution and we have to unite against it to protect our people”.

The timing of Raila’s international ambush on President Kenyatta’s still-under-construction administration has far-reaching implications, not the least of which is whether it is a one-off or the first in a series that will likely go all the way to 2017 and the end of Uhuru’s first term in office.

Raila has struck at a particularly vulnerable time for the new President. The Foreign Secretary nominee, Ambassador Amina Mohamed, a brilliant choice for the office, has yet to undergo a vetting process by both the public and Parliament that is likely to last all this month.

Kenya’s entire complement of ambassadors around the world (Asia, Africa, Europe, the Americas, Oceania and multilateral organizations) including the High Commissioner to Britain, was recently recalled awaiting redeployments, firing and, or hiring and then told to stay in place until further notice.

Foreign Affairs Permanent Secretary Mwangi Thuita is in all likelihood outward bound, but the rapid response to the damage wrought by Raila could well fall to him, or be sorted out by Amb Mohamed and other strategists behind the scenes, and be delivered in Thuita’s name and designation.

The construction site edifice of the Uhuru administration is also labouring under the long shadow of the crimes-against-humanity charges at the ICC brought three years ago, with one of the cases, Ruto’s, scheduled to start later this month.

The Uhuru administration has struggled mightily in a balancing act between the ICC indictments and the maintenance of cordial relations with the United States, Britain and the European Union, all of whom are major development and trading partners.

With his dire remarks at an investment risk global conference, Raila has suddenly made Uhuru and Ruto’s tightrope act look like they are frenetically balancing on a rope in flux – and he is the one flexing the sisal.

Raila’s remarks in London, where he assured a rapt audience of investors, prospective investors and the crème de la crème of the academic and corporate risk research and analysis community that, as long ago as the immediate aftermath of the presidential poll, “There would have been violence if I had not stepped aside,” could not have come at a worse time.

The Times headlined their report on Raila’s Summit address “Kenya President ‘must reach across the tribes’ to avert violence” on Labour Day, May 1.

Far behind closed doors in the corridors of power in Nairobi, Raila’s address has been received with something akin to road rage – and a sense of betrayal.

RAILA CRAMPS MUTUNGA’S STYLE

And this is an observation that is true also of the highest echelons of the Supreme Court. Chief Justice Willy Mutunga has long moved effortlessly and with maximum dignity in gatherings such as the Oxford Analytica/Times CEO Africa Summit, rubbing shoulders with and contending with the global elite of all sectors who are guests at such meetings. Following Raila’s unsubstantiated charges at the Africa Summit, Dr Mutunga will doubtless swim with a little less aplomb in such waters.

Interestingly, Mutunga’s tweet and press statement denying that he had ever received a bribe in his life came just a jump ahead of the Raila speech in London.

Another implication of Raila’s ambush is that it signals the tenor and flavour of his relationship with Uhuru henceforth – the Odinga/Kenyatta rivalry has just been rebooted for a new electoral cycle, and it will be cutthroat adversarial all the way.This is underlined by the fact that he chose the London event to confirm he was indeed headed back to Parliament, where he would be nothing less than leader of the opposition, a decision he indicated he would finalize over the next fortnight.

Making the announcement at a global forum, instead of at a caucus somewhere in Kenya of his Coalition for Reforms and Democracy (Cord) Alliance, is a clear signal that Raila intends his leadership of the opposition to the Jubilee government to be a very loud affair indeed, with the decibels easily reaching the international community, including strategic investors and development partners, via international media, as often as possible.

The Kenyan blogosphere, Diaspora included, will be on fire anew. How will the new administration react? The Jubilee government’s true believers are already privately reacting by viewing Raila like the proverbial fly in one’s soup and all sorts of epithets are filling the air, including talk of treason, far-fetched in this day and age as that might sound.

WHEN ‘TIMES OF LONDON’ TARGETED JOMO

Raila’s London gambit is much more than merely upping the ante internally in Kenya. Oxford Analytica and the Times of London are not just another two British institutions.

Both can give a nation and country like Kenya a seriously bad name and reputation where it really matters in the chancelleries and state houses of the West. By the same token both can be crucial to a good and proactive image in the West.

A bad press generated by the Times can be very bad news indeed. Many London-based Kenyan envoys (like the envoys of many another nation, including US ambassadors and assorted attaches) have had occasion to write a letter to the Times and the outgoing Kenyan London envoy will doubtless fire off a missive to the newspaper in the wake of the latest developments.

In the very early 1980s, Charles Mugane Njonjo, Attorney General of Kenya since 1963 and eminence grise to two consecutive presidents, Jomo Kenyatta and Daniel Moi, and, to this day, Kenya’s foremost anglophile, at 93, made it his business to invite the then editor-in-chief of the Times, William Rees-Mogg, to lunch at his Muthaiga, Nairobi, home. Rees-Mogg, like Njonjo, wore dark pin-striped suits throughout his career (he died Lord Rees-Mogg in 2012) and had a very conservative worldview.

This high-level invite was strategic; it came at a time when the Jaramogi Oginga Odinga (Raila’s father) and one-time MP George Anyona were making waves on an extended visit to London to the effect that they would launch the first opposition party in Kenya since the Kenya People’s Union (KPU), banned in November 1969, in the UK. This ruffled feathers a great deal in the then de facto one-party state.

Not long after the Odinga/Anyona London outing and Njonjo’s hosting of Rees-Mogg at Muthaiga, Moi and his AG engineered the constitutional amendment known as Section 2(a), making Kenya a de jure one-party state and ruling party Kanu the only legitimate political organization within these borders.

The second President Kenyatta has entered office without a Kenyan anglophile of Njonjo’s prestige, prescience, smarts and networks getting his back on the former colonial masters and the extended West. He has a first-class team of lawyers from Britain for his ICC predicament and had British PR wizards BTP as international campaign consultants and strategists, but he has no one within government or, just off-government, in his kitchen Cabinet, who can engage the British establishment, including the media establishment, the way Njonjo did for two presidents across two decades.

In the mid-1970s, following the JM Kariuki assassination, the Sunday Times Insight Team of investigative journalists got seriously on Mzee Kenyatta and First Lady Mama Ngina Kenyatta and their niece Beth Mugo’s case, detailing their landholdings (complete with maps) and assorted business deals in a series of articles that reportedly only stopped when Njonjo intervened at the highest board levels of the media group’s ownership.

But how times change. Paradoxically, if Njonjo consults for any Kenyan nowadays, it’s for Raila, son of his 1960s and 1970s most despised power prey the Jaramogi, not Uhuru, son of his great mentor Jomo.

Moi invited Uhuru to his Karbanet Gardens home in March, while the latter was still President-elect. Moi and Njonjo have not hobnobbed in public throughout the former president’s 11-year retirement.

Raila’s London ambush came the same week that the British High Commissioner, Dr Christian Turner, paid a courtesy call on President Kenyatta at State House, Nairobi, and expressed London’s commitment to doubling investment in Kenya and transforming this country into the region’s capital of financial services within Uhuru’s first term in office.

Above all, of course, Uhuru needs the ICC monkey off his back. As long as President Uhuru and Deputy President Ruto are ICC indictees, a nifty Raila will seem to run rings around them in the still crucial international arena of the world’s sole superpower and Western Europe.

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.

Raila Odinga For United Nations Secretary General: Kenyans Are A Funny Lot

Some 'funny' Kenyans have now resorted to Social Media to advocate for Raila Odinga as the next Secretary General to United Nations. 

They have opened a Facebook Page dubbed Raila Odinga For United Nations Secretary General, Loaded Raila Odinga's Picture and have been promptly updating the Page. Funny enough, the page has over twelve thousand followers (+12,000).

The page describes Raila as ' Internationally known,CERTIFIED & APPROVED,Agwas mambo biad.Time we go International Baba.TWENDE KAZI BABA. NA WENYE WIVU WAJINYONGE'

Whether they succeed in their cause or not, it it time to tell.

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.