Raila-Ruto fallout might spur alliance between Kikuyu and Luo

To some, President Kibaki owes a debt of gratitude to Prime Minister Raila Odinga.

It was the opposition presidential candidate who calmed down more extremist elements in his party to agree to a power-sharing agreement. The deal did not only end the post-election violence, but also lent a modicum of legitimacy to a president re-elected in such contestable fashion.

After the initial clashes, President Kibaki and PM Odinga seem to have reached an understanding that confounds even their respective lieutenants.

A remarkable element about the Kibaki-Odinga understanding is that it is not just a PNU-ODM coalition, but one that might also somehow represent the long-elusive Kikuyu-Luo rapproachment.

In some circles, there is even talk that it could lead to a political alliance ahead of the 2012 elections. This is especially so with the fallout in ODM that is seeing Mr Odinga parting ways with powerful Agriculture minister William Ruto, which, in Kenyan dynamics, translates to a Luo-Kalenjin split.

Yet old suspicions die hard. To many, relationships between the two groups will always be defined by historical schisms, betrayal and mistrust. Mr Odinga’s father, Mr Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, helped Mr Jomo Kenyatta out of detention and into State House as the first president.

His reward was being thrown into political limbo for a generation. From the other side, some might see him as the ingrate entrusted with the vice-presidency, but who was too impatient to wait his turn.

Best chance

Some might go back to the 1992 successful conclusion of the multi-party campaign and Mr Oginga Odinga’s best chance to fulfil a life-long quest, only to fall flat when fellow multiparty campaigner Kenneth Matiba and new convert Mwai Kibaki, both Kikuyu, split the opposition vote and thus helped President Moi’s re-election.

There is also 2002, after Mr Raila Odinga went into Kanu, destroyed it from within, and decamped in time to ease President Kibaki’s ascent to power, only for the latter to renege on a power-sharing pact.

That Saturday, 40 years ago, stands out as a pivotal moment in Kenya’s political history that further poisoned relations between Mr Kenyatta and Mr Odinga, and by extension between the “ruling Kikuyu” and the “opposition Luo”.

In July the same year, the charismatic and brilliant Economic Planning minister and Kanu secretary-general Tom Mboya had been assassinated.

It was Mr Mboya, who, in 1966, had devised and executed the strategy that had driven his Luo rival, Mr Odinga, out of the vice-presidency and into opposition. He was seen as the most likely successor to Mr Kenyatta, and his reward for getting Mr Odinga out of the way was a bullet on a Nairobi street.

Assassination

Tensions were still high over the Mboya assassination when Mr Kenyatta made his ill-fated visit to Kisumu. At independence in 1963, Mr Kenyatta was Prime Minister and Mr Odinga his effective deputy.