Raila’s post-poll power push a litmus test for Uhuru’s legacy

After President Uhuru Kenyatta’s swearing-in for the second five-year term, Raila Odinga may have lost the electoral war. But the Nasa leader is not yet out of aces.

His post-election strategy is poised to put Kenya’s democracy, nationhood and sovereignty on the cusp of a new crisis.

Now fighting under the new banner of “electoral justice”, Odinga’s endgame is to force talks “among equals” with Kenyatta, leading to a “caretaker government” and fresh elections presided over by a reformed electoral commission. This will amount to a civilian coup, which will require willy-nilly the immediate and complete overhaul of the 88-month-old constitution.

Notably, Odinga’s chosen extra-legal pathway to power is an eclectic mix of the socialist methodology of mass struggle that ushered in the 1917 Bolshevik (Communist) Revolution in Russia and the right wing populism and defiance propelling the Trump phenomenon in the 21st century.

TREASON

Odinga has put the country on notice that he will be sworn in as president, a move Attorney-General Professor Githu Muigai has correctly described as “high treason.” He has already activated the “People’s Assembly” in some counties as the platform for his National Resistance Movement (NRM).  

Scholars and pundits are hard-pressed to make sense of what Odinga’s post-election power maze means for Kenya’s stability and Kenyatta’s legacy.

To political scientist Mutahi Ngunyi, Raila is on a Samsonian mission to go down with every Kenyan. His strategist, David Ndii, has declared “a revolutionary moment”. But the country has survived the Samsonian blues wrought by the Supreme Court’s annulment of the August presidential results and Odinga’s boycott of the October poll.

Instead, Kenyatta judiciously steered the country through the straight and narrow path of the rule of law for 123 long days in the world’s longest democratic election process that deeply worried Kenya’s neighbours and allies but proved the mettle and resilience of the country’s new democracy. 

DEMOCRACY

However, as they say, “it ain’t over till the fat lady sings”.  After the election, Odinga has upped the ante. His wonks have re-engineered his strategy template, which now sits on three broad planks. 

The first plank is the “Luo Nyanza fortress”, itself a throwback from the resistance of Raila’s father, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, between 1966 and 1989.

Outmanoeuvred in Kanu politics and forced to resign as Vice-President, Senior Odinga turned Nyanza into his fortress.  

The defeat of Jaramogi’s Kenya People’s Union (KPU) in the 1966 “Little General Election” followed by the publishing of his autobiography, Not Yet Uhuru (1969), and the pelting of Jomo Kenyatta’s motorcade in Kisumu in October 1969 effectively launched over 50 years of “low intensity resistance” in Luo Nyanza. 

While Raila is tapping into the veins of this ethnic resistance after October 26, he has  moved the game higher by effectively weaponising the Luo tribe in two ways. 

FOOT SOLDIERS

One, ahead of the August 8 election, Jubilee pundits claimed that ODM had weaved a powerful network of Luo professionals and close relatives, giving rise to the theory of the weaponisation of institutions, including the Judiciary.

Second is the increasing use of Luo youths as the foot soldiers in ODM’s “resistance movement” before and after October 26.

Apparently, the logic of ODM’s violent protests is to produce visible victims of police torture, extra-judicial killings and political prisoners as smoking-gun proof of “the return of authoritarianism” and Luo victimhood.

This plank, partly hoisted on George Aladwa’s famous statement that: “For Raila to be president, some people must die”, poses a catch-22 situation for the securocrats. How they respond to Odinga’s plan to be sworn in as president risks turning him into a martyr.

DEATHS

Moreover, evidence of deaths from “police brutality” and profiling of the Luo tribe – against the backdrop of the 1969 “Kisumu Massacre”– is likely to be instrumentally used in a robust campaign on “genocide against the Luo”. This risks drawing the sympathy of high-profile Luo personalities like former president Barack Obama and actress Lupita Nyong’o, giving the country bad publicity. Adeptly dealing with the Odinga oath will add to Kenyatta’s legacy; failure to do so will chip into it. 

The second plank is the deepening of the “Permanent Campaign” as a data-heavy and media-led strategy that ODM adopted in 2014 to delegitimise the Jubilee regime and to win future elections. 

The success so far of ODM’s media-led permanent campaign machine is not in doubt. Asked why Odinga was not campaigning at the grassroots ahead of the August poll, one of his renowned communication strategists aptly remarked: “We are putting resources to better use.” An oversize presence of ODM agenda in the media has polarised public opinion, created intense national anxiety and dampened spirits in Jubilee strongholds. 

Kenyatta’s legacy hinges on a well-oiled “permanent campaign” machine to counter Odinga’s media juggernaut. As Patrick Caddell once said, “governing with public approval requires a continuing political campaign.”

KENYAN CRISIS

The third plank is Odinga’s efforts to internationalise the “Kenyan crisis” through the media. The spider weaving his web of international media campaign is Salim Lone, the Kenyan journalist and long time ally and adviser to Odinga on strategic communications.

This week, Lone penned a media statement where he argued that “Mr Odinga’s swearing-in will be lawful”, adding that the illegal oath “will also give new impetus to the People’s Assembly”, “help prevent further polarisation” and give Kenyans hope for “electoral justice”. Welcome to the world of Kenya’s enlightened nihilists and anarchists. 

The aim is to whip up perceptions of post-election uncertainty to a fever pitch to rally international opinion behind Odinga’s push for dialogue leading to transitional power sharing.

Lone’s message is finding eager ears in corners of American diplomacy and think tanks. This week, US Ambassador Robert F. Godec pushed for dialogue.

A white knight of the Arab Spring as envoy to Tunisia (2006-2009), Godec is the the local nexus for Odinga’s American bastion in Washington think tanks propelled by the quest for relevance.

As the clock ticks to December 12, Kenyatta is a man between a rock and a hard place. Like Abraham Lincoln in the American Civil War or Olusegun Obasanjo in the Nigerian civil war (Biafra), he has to stand for the constitution.

Prof Peter Kagwanja is a former government adviser and currently chief executive of Africa Policy Institute.