Raila should stretch his selflessness and endorse another person

Forty years is a long time to be leading people in the wilderness of opposition politics, and that watermark is the usual sign for a leader to leave.

A casual reading of the Bible shows that Moses, a stammerer who had lost the children of Israel in the desert for 40 years trying to find Canaan, laid down the sceptre of leadership, appointed a successor and placed him in command.

Save for the decade when Mr Raila Odinga was Cabinet minister, for two years in charge of Energy under Daniel arap Moi, three as Roads and Housing boss under Mwai Kibaki and five years as prime minister, his followers have been in the political wilderness for over 40 years.

He has thrice unsuccessfully contested the presidency and should thus be out. Yet, such is Mr Odinga’s political influence with Kenyan voters that were he to endorse a little-known chicken for the presidency, Kenya would be cuckoo by midday.

Over the years, Mr Odinga’s words and thoughts have acquired the weight of inevitability only due to a prophet. When the constitutional review was stuck in the rut of ethnic politics, it was Mr Odinga that invited Prof Yash Pal Ghai to unify the country behind a singular reform process.

Again, it was Mr Odinga’s declaration of Mr Kibaki’s suitability for the presidency that won him over 60 per cent of the votes in 2002. And it was his reading of the faulty draft constitution of 2005 that dealt the government a crushing political blow in the referendum and created the political juggernaut that was the Orange Democratic Movement.

ASSASINATE LEADERS

When he warned that foreign mercenaries had the country to assassinate leaders, he would be proved right when Armenians Artur Margaryan and Artur Sargasyan were found by a government inquiry to have been appointed as assistant commissioners of police, no less.

Mr Odinga’s rejection of the presidential election results in 2007 catapulted the country into a season of reform in which a new constitution would be promulgated, complete with a new system of governance.

Recently, Mr Odinga claimed that the list of shame the oresident had released to expose corruption had been doctored and big names such as that of then Devolution and Panning Cabinet Secretary Anne Waiguru were missing from it. Ms Waiguru later resigned on health grounds and was sensationally named in damning witness statements on the loss of money in the National Youth Service. Strenuous denials over the loss of money borrowed from international markets through the Eurobond are now the subject of an official inquiry. Since then, the country has concluded that if Mr Odinga tells you that your girlfriend is pregnant, you start buying diapers.

Every time Mr Odinga has spoken or taken selfless actions for the country, he has always been right. It is only when he selfishly seeks the presidency for himself that Kenyans revolt in large numbers and humiliate him at the ballot. His public rallies draw large crowds hungry for entertainment delivered through dramatic skits, football commentary, riddles, ballads and proverbs.

Mr Odinga’s greatest error has been to see the curious onlookers hooked onto his singing and football commentary as voters capable of giving him the most serious job in Kenya. Although people trust Mr Odinga, electing him president is another matter altogether. So unelectable is Mr Odinga that the governing Jubilee coalition has all but gone to sleep in the knowledge that he will be the opponent to beat. This is why, were Mr Odinga to accept that he is trustworthy and unelectable, and abandon his selfish pursuit of the presidency by endorsing somebody, anybody, the election would be over before it begins.

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