For Raila, it’s not yet ‘uhuru’ after years dedicated to the struggle for reforms

He went into the March 4 presidential election as the man to beat based on opinion polls that consistently put him ahead of his main challenger Uhuru Kenyatta of the Jubilee Alliance.

In one of the surveys, many of Raila Odinga’s supporters said they will vote for him because he was experienced (49 per cent), courageous (32 per cent), intelligent (30 per cent), firm (22 per cent) and reliable (21 per cent).

Only 7 per cent thought he is a patient man.

Yet patience is perhaps the strength that this towering politician needs most now in the light of the latest twist in his quest to be Kenya’s President.

For if the petition he is preparing to file is not determined in his favour, it may be five years before he gets another chance to present himself to Kenyans.

After more than three decades in the political trenches, fighting for what he calls a just and more equitable country, many thought that March 4 could be Raila’s moment.

Although he lost some momentum mainly as a result of the shambolic primaries in his party, his lead held in most opinion polls.

Shock defeat

The shock of defeat at the hands of Kenyatta adds another twist in Odinga’s long political career.

Under the Moi regime, Mr Odinga, 68, was detained three times.

This is his third attempt at the presidency after 1997 and 2007.

Along the way, Mr Odinga has undergone a three-phase metamorphosis.

He started his political life outside detention as a lone ranger.

Many allies shunned him during the Kanu years because they did not want to get in trouble with the Moi government.

This would continue even after the advent of multi-party politics in the 1990s when he was largely restrained, operating in the shadows of his father who was the natural leader of opposition forces.

After the death of Jaramogi in 1994, Raila started asserting himself. He fought a vicious war with former Vice-President Michael Wamalwa for the control of Ford Kenya. He quit the party and took over the little known National Development Party after losing to Wamalwa.

The second phase is a career in which he built alliances with friends and foes then walked out acrimoniously.

He dissolved NDP to merge with Kanu in a short-lived marriage. With this move, Raila hoped he had put himself in a position where he could succeed Moi.

But unknown to him, Moi had other ideas. The alliance broke up in acrimony when the former President anointed Uhuru as his successor in the 2002 elections.

Mr Odinga quickly shifted to President Kibaki and played a big role in his victorious 2002 election campaign.

The Narc alliance was to break up acrimoniously again amid allegations that Kibaki had reneged on an MoU to make Raila executive Prime Minister.

With Mr Kibaki as his rival, Mr Odinga was to lead the Orange Democratic Movement in the 2007 elections.

The alliance he built for the 2007 elections was formidable, but it still ended in defeat. Raila disputed the results and chaos ensued, prompting world intervention that brought the coalition government.

Mr Odinga went into the March 4 elections in a most strange alliance with Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka, who some say he has never forgiven for playing spoiler in the 2007 vote.

Mr Odinga and his allies believe that had Mr Musyoka given way to him in ODM-Kenya, Mr Kibaki would have been beaten hands down.

Instead, Kalonzo refused to give up the party, forcing Raila to decamp to the rival ODM.

He has fought economic wars too.

The East African Spectre, a company founded by his father Jaramogi manufacturing gas cylinders for East and Central Africa, is a business empire he controls.

He fought to insulate it from debts, competition and political interference during the Moi era.

Then, he has had to ward off accusations that his company bought Kisumu Molasses, an alcohol processing plant after he had collected money from the public promising them shares.

Attempts to turn the Molasses harambee into a scandal have been unsuccessful as he always presents detailed financial accounts on how his company acquired it.

As a politician, he has also been accused of the Kennedy Syndrome in his style of influencing jobs.

(Derived from former US President John F. Kennedy, who appointed his brother Attorney-General at the insistence of his father and a law was enacted barring future Presidents to do the same.)

Mr Odinga is accused of influencing appointments of people from the immediate family and relatives in either politics or other public appointments.

He has fought to justify this by arguing that they are individuals who find themselves in those positions on their own merit.

The controversy over his brother Oburu Oginga’s quest for Siaya governor was a case in point.

His admirers credit him as a workaholic capable of being in Kakamega in the morning, Wajir in the afternoon, Mombasa in the evening and back to Nairobi for a dinner function.

Born in a political family of Kenya’s first Vice-President Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, Raila had his early education at Maranda Primary School, now Maranda High School, before being taken to the then East Germany, where he completed his education.

He left Maranda at the Standard Seven level on the eve of independence, 1962.

Mzee Oremo Oyuoro, 85, was one of Raila’s teachers at Maranda. He says young Raila had little respect for authority.

“The young man (Raila) was not a submissive pupil,” Mzee Oyuoro recalls from his Kamenga Village in Bondo.

“As his teacher, discipline was a must. I used to cane him and he (Raila) is proud of that,” he said.

Mr Oyuoro recalls that he taught Raila in Standard Five and Six.

What occasioned the caning? He would be ordered to dig in the shamba as punishment and he would resist.

Mr Oyuoro, who was his Maths teacher, was also teaching agriculture and used to punish Raila whenever he made mistakes.

Mr Oyuoro says he exhibited leadership abilities that early “and we made him a class prefect”.

He had juicy stories

“Wherever he was in the compound outside the classroom, pupils would cluster around him and one would obviously deduce he had juicy stories for them,” he recalls.

On class performance, the teacher recalls that Raila was a bright pupil always in the top five in examinations.

The teacher also recalls that Raila was an all-rounder, good in sciences, history and even sports where he played football. In his later years, he was to play for Re-Union in the Kenya Premier League.

Mr Joshua Ogendi Odero, 68, was Raila’s classmate from Standard Two to Six.

“Raila’s nickname in school was Kwame Nkrumah because he would always talk about the founding Ghanaian leader,” recalls Mr Odero.

Raila was fond of current affairs. He would talk about Harold MacMillan, the British Prime Minister of the “Wind of Change” speech fame to the South African Parliament in 1960.

He would tell them exploits of World War II — about Italy’s Benito Mussolini and the war villain Adolf Hitler.

This is why many pupils would cluster around him to hear current affairs.

“He was also a bit controversial in that he would take on his teachers on any subject,” he recalls.

Mr Odero recalls another side of Raila — generosity. “He was generous to us who came from less endowed families as he would even surrender uniforms to us and share his beddings,” he says.

When Mr Odinga went to Germany, Mr Odero went to Maseno High School, then the University of Dar es Salaam where he trained as a teacher.

Today, he lives in Bondo after retiring as High School headmaster.

Mr Joe Ager, a Nairobi company executive, who was two classes behind Raila remembers him as a protector.

“Raila would admonish pupils who bullied juniors even to the extent of beating them up,” he says.

He recalls the day Raila found one pupil by the name Osure bullying them. He made him sit down, spanked him and warned him never to repeat it again.

The juniors looked up to him and he had “something of a magnetic pull”.

“We would all form a circle around him and we would listen to every word he said.

Mr Ager says Raila played at the left wing in the school football team.

In field athletics, he remembers him as a triple jumper, then known as “Hop-Step-and-Jump”. Then, Mr Ager says he remembers vividly Wednesday afternoons as debating days.

“He was a good debater and he would argue how our school should be run and even the country,” he says.

As a politician of national stature, Raila has distinguished himself as an entertainer on the campaign trail — using vitendawili (proverbs) and football commentaries to connect with his audiences.

What is his leadership style?

Mr Odinga works with a multi-layered team of advisors, but ultimately makes his own decisions.

In his book, Peeling Back The Mask: A Quest for Justice in Kenya, Miguna Miguna, who was an aide of the PM before they fell out, paints a picture of advisers often at odds with each other.

Mr Miguna says Mr Odinga relies, above all, on a close team of relatives and political partners.

At the heart of that group is a small circle of relatives including Mr Odinga’s wife, Ida, his brother Oburu Oginga and politicians James Orengo, Jakoyo Midiwo and Anyang’ Nyong’o and his top aides, Caroli Omondi and Mohamed Isahakia.

Mr Odinga’s inner circle is advised by a “think-tank” which, Mr Miguna writes in his memoirs, involved a number of informal advisers.

Some of those Mr Miguna lists as long-term strategists of Mr Odinga include Prof Edward Oyugi, Mr Oduor Ong’wen, Mr Mugambi Imanyara, Mr Mutakha Kangu, Dr Adhu Awiti, Prof Peter Wanyande and Mr Salim Lone.

Mr Odinga does not always take their advice. Mr Miguna depicts the PM as a man who consults widely, but makes his own decision at the end.
Miguna’s book depicts Mr Odinga as a political bruiser who takes the long view in strategising how to acquire power and understands victory comes to those who are patient and adaptable.

Miguna offers this story about a meeting he held with Mr Odinga before the 2007 elections where they discussed Mr Odinga’s contest for the ODM-Kenya ticket against Mr Musyoka.

“We moved onto the tricks and tactics Kalonzo had tried to use to win the ODM-K presidential nominations (before he eventually ran away with the party). Raila had told me a memorable thing, which I should share. He said: “Ja-Nyando (Son of Nyando), in wrestling; when two people wrestle, they do everything to win.

“One may try to grab his opponent’s crotch; the other may try to trip the opponent; but in the end, the one who wins is either the one who remains standing or on top of the other.

“Politics is not any different. Everyone must do whatever he can to win. So, let Kalonzo do everything he could to win.”

Raila framed the March 4 elections as a battle between reformers and non-reformers. And so for him, the struggle continues.