Cord leaders resisted calls to lead march into State House

Hours to Cord’s Saba Saba rally last Monday, Opposition leaders were under great pressure to lead their supporters into State House.

The Sunday Nation has established that some members, mostly youthful MPs and supporters, wanted coalition principals Raila Odinga, Kalonzo Musyoka and Moses Wetangula to declare a march to State House.

This led to a protracted early morning meeting at the Capitol Hill Centre, where Cord leadership sought to dissuade proponents of the idea against such a move.

A Wiper party politician confided in Sunday Nation that the leaders rejected such calls but endorsed the idea of exerting maximum pressure on the Jubilee administration to meet their demands.

The meeting explains why the meeting began late.

INTERNAL REBELLION

The thinking behind the meeting, the politician said, was to stem an internal rebellion so that those who favoured this extreme option, would move together with the rest of the fold even after the rally.

Siaya Senator James Orengo told Sunday Nation said that they were under intense pressure to make the far-reaching announcement.

“The truth is that people were demanding change, regime change to be precise, both at the rallies and in many other forums.

There are Kenyans who still want regime change but the leadership of Cord decided that they would be guided by the Constitution,” Mr Orengo said.

He said that the country stood to gain nothing had they chose to topple the government through a popular revolt like the Arab Spring.

The Arab Spring was a series of anti-government protests and armed rebellions that spread across the Middle East in early 2011, which saw a number of presidents in North Africa like Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and Ben Ali of Tunisia ousted.

“Despite the pressure, we offered leadership because we cannot entertain a situation where the country is plunged into turmoil in pursuit of power,” he stated

According to Mr Orengo, many Cord members and supporters remain disappointed at what they call the failure of leadership to lead them topple the government of President Kenyatta.

Ugunja MP Opiyo Wandayi said that a coalition with massive following will most likely have some people who prefer extreme measures when confronted by crisis.

“You would expect a movement like Cord to have people of all walks of life. We have moderates and extremists but the leadership is there to give guidance,” he told Sunday Nation.

But political analyst Tom Mboya says that Cord leadership was alive to the reality that asking their supporters to march to State House would have marked the beginning of the end of their political career.

“The political dynamics in a multi-ethnic country like Kenya are very complex and so you hardly effect a regime change through mass action. Of course Cord was also aware of the fact that blood of the tens of thousands of people who were going to be shot dead would be on their hands,” he said.

“So perhaps they were inspired by the words of famous essayist Norman Mailer who said that “any war that requires the suspension of reason as a necessity for support is a bad war”.

PRESSURE FROM POLICE

Some Cord insiders also revealed that their was pressure from police and even Jubilee politicians for them to keep peace.

“Even as the rally was going on, senior government officials who had panicked that the meeting would degenerate into a violent mass action were calling us,” head of Cord Secretariat Norman Magaya told Sunday Nation.

National Assembly majority leader Aden Duale said last week that the Monday rally was an anti-climax because nothing earthshaking came from it.

“They promised that rather than rain it would pour, we are still waiting but as things stand, that is unlikely to happen,” Mr Duale said.

But the turn of events also told a different story about how Mr Odinga has changed over time.

The former prime minister was an astute politician who once walked out of Ford Kenya after his father died in 1994.

He had unsuccessfully sought the leadership of the party left by his father and felt aggrieved when the late vice President Michael Wamalwa Kijana trounced him.

IMPATIENCE

Throughout his life, Mr Odinga has exhibited a little impatience especially when he does not like the way business is conducted.

He was incarcerated on July 5, 1990 alongside others like Charles Rubia and Kenneth Matiba because of their agitation for pluralism, a phenomenon that eventually saw President Moi leave power in 2002.

Mr Orengo is among those synonymous with the Saba Saba movement and he also exhibits a more collected persona compared to a hot blooded activist he was in the last two decades.

Time has also sobered him up and he is said to be among those who vehemently opposed any match to State House arguing it would have led to a senseless bloodbath.

Had he been the Orengo of the 80s, nothing could have barred him from leading an onslaught to the President’s official residence.

In a past interview, Mr Orengo told Saturday Nation that as a student leader at the University of Nairobi in the 70s, he oversaw the trying of Molotov next to the old airport to register their protest at the new regime of President Daniel Moi.