An interesting nexus emerges as Raila haters lose UDA nominations in Mt Kenya and Rift Valley regions
By Dr Vincent Ongore
Many Kenyans are beginning to accept that it's highly probable that HE Rt Hon Eng Raila Amolo Odinga will be elected the 5th President of the Republic of Kenya at the August 9, 2022, presidential polls. This doesn't mean that his worthy competitor HE Hon Dr William Samoei Ruto cannot be elected to the same position. The only thing that isn't possible is that both of them will be elected to the same position at the same time.
It is a very sad thing for supporters of either of the gentlemen to imagine that their candidate will not be elected to the most coveted office in the land at the polls slated for August. That's a bad feeling. However, realities and feelings are not siamese twins.
That brings me to the ongoing political party primaries. I will concentrate on the UDA primaries because, so far, they are the most interesting and telling. But first, some revelations and hilarious anecdotes.
I attended school in the Rift Valley, and enjoy friendships and close ties with many members of the Kalenjin community. Many Kenyans have cut their political teeth through Raila bashing. In some regions of this country, all what budding politicians need to do is tell their people that upon election, they will proceed to Nairobi to protect the community against the Raila onslaught.
I am told nobody questions the nature and form of this onslaught that Raila is supposed to visit upon the community. Once Raila's name is invoked, adults instantly lose appetite for food and all other things that require appetite. This is particularly true in the Mount Kenya region where Raila phobia is so strong that truant and troublesome children are made to conform at the sheer invocation of the name Raila (commonly mispronounced as Raira).
[caption id="attachment_12933" align="alignnone" width="1280"]
File image of ODM leader Raila Odinga. |Photo| Courtesy|[/caption]
I have previously dedicated acres of pages to the genesis of this hatred. For today, I will just mention in passing that Raila is a very magnanimous man who always seeks to uplift young people from that region despite the hostility that has been shown towards him.
Kenyans will remember that Raila unilaterally nominated Isaac Mwaura and Rachel Shebbesh to the National Assembly, only for the duo to turn against him in favour of their tribal political outfits and kingpins. Both of them consequently won further nominations to various positions on the basis of their unceasing Raila bashing.
Raila prevailed upon his Nairobi support base to stand with Bishop Margaret Wanjiru and later, her own son, to become members of the National Assembly. They both later bad-mouthed Raila as a way of gaining acceptance 'back home.' Is it a case of biting the hand that feeds you? The moment Raila's support was withdrawn, they lost favour with Nairobians.
Raila didn't stop there. He has continued to pay school fees and extend other forms of support to disadvantaged children and families from the region without publicizing it. His opponents have never missed an opportunity to portray him as a miser who rarely, if at all, responds to plights of less privileged members of our society.
Pundits have opined that the meteoric growth of UDA party in Central Kenya had almost everything to do with Raila. They saw it as an opportunity to block Raila from ascending to the presidency after President Uhuru Kenyatta's constitutionally sanctioned second term comes to an end later this year.
As an excellent student of Daniel Moi's divisive politics, WS Ruto took advantage of Raila phobia in Central Kenya to go into a political overdrive, always ensuring that if he's not personally castigating 'Mganga' or 'Mtu wa Vitendawili', his side-kicks in the region, Cate Waruguru, Ndindi Nyoro or Alice Wahome are doing it on a sustainable manner.
The strategy is to ensure that the region gets no opportunity to think of any positive attribute of Raila's. This strategy appears to be succeeding, with opinion polls showing that Ruto controls over 70 per cent of the eligible votes in the region. For the Raila side, this 'poor' showing in the region is actually what they are looking for, so that he can become a president without baggage.
For starters, the region has never voted for Raila. In fact, the presence of Raila's name on the ballot motivates the region to turn out in large numbers to stop him from becoming the President. In the last two presidential polls, Raila's total votes in the region have consistently fallen below 15 per cent. This is evidenced by the voter turnout for the 2017 presidential polls in which the region recorded close to 80 percent on average.
However, when the presidential election was nullified by the Supreme Court of Kenya, and repeat polls called, the turnout from the region was less than 40 percent. The poor turnout was attributed to the fact that Raila didn't participate in the repeat presidential election, and there was, therefore, no existential threat to the community. So, the Raila phobia has propped up people who have no substance between their ears except their ability to hurl unprintables at Raila.
For the Kalenjin Rift Valley, the dynamics are a little different. There's evidence that they have once voted for Raila overwhelmingly in 2007, and fervently fought for him to be sworn in as president, a position for which he convincingly defeated Mwai Kibaki, the sitting president. To retain the presidency, Kibaki unleashed security forces on demonstrating citizens, killing more than 1000 of them, maiming many more, and creating a humanitarian crisis in the country, with hundreds of thousands of citizens driven from their homes to become internally displaced citizens.
Raila ended up being a Prime Minister without much power following an internationally brokered peace deal whose negotiations were led by the former UN Secretary-General, HE Kofi Anan. Since then, the Kalenjin nation has never given Raila peace, often reminding him that they made him Prime Minister. For the sake of harmony, Raila has remained magnanimous to the Kalenjin, always looking out for friendships and extending whatever little support that he could afford to extend to them.
In the last election cycle, he doled out nomination opportunities for parliament and county assemblies to a number of Kalenjin people including former KNUT Secretary General Wilson Sossion and a little known 24-year old lady who joined parliament courtesy of ODM. Sossion has since defected to join UDA.
Keen observers have discerned the motive behind the massive Kalenjin support of Raila in 2007. Their most prominent son then, Daniel Moi, had just retired as president in 2002 after 24 years of disastrous management of the country. In fact, Moi's dismal handling of the affairs of the state and government led the country to huge opportunity costs. He had inherited a thriving economy from his predecessor, the late Jomo Kenyatta, and rather than continue in that trajectory, drove the country's fortunes to the south at a time when other countries were transforming their societies into middle-level income economies.
So, after Moi, nobody wanted to touch a Kalenjin, not even with a ten-foot wooden rod. Raila's emergence as a formidable presidential candidate gave the Kalenjin nation a golden opportunity for a political comeback. They jumped onto it.
Meanwhile, they soon started scheming on how to portray Raila as an unreliable partner to the Kalenjin people. They wanted one of their own to lead them. Ruto himself is on record as saying that every community was being led by their own people and that the proud Kalenjin people couldn't countenance being led by an outsider.
An opportunity presented itself when Raila was nominated to lead the government initiative to rehabilitate the Mau forest. The process entailed relocating those who were living within the forest to give room for the preservation of the Mau water tower. The government deliberately delayed the release of funds meant for the relocation of the evicted people who were mainly Kalenjin and Ogiek.
The Kalenjin leaders, who were part of the scheme, started screaming at the top of their voices that Raila was exposing their people to devastation and death in hostile weather. They succeeded in driving Raila out of the hearts and minds of the Kalenjin people and installed Ruto as their bona fide community leader.
Ruto's evident hostility towards Raila is meant to keep the ODM supremo off the Kalenjin affairs. With that background, we can now direct our lenses to the current political landscape, especially the ongoing UDA nominations in Central Kenya and Kalenjin Rift Valley regions where the party enjoys a massive following.
Sunday night, I stayed up until late, and so, was able to get a glimpse of the bare essentials of the Saturday Nation before retiring to bed. 'Giants fall in the UDA elections', screamed the headline. Portraits of kingpins, political heavyweights and vocal politicians are all over the first page. So, I developed a keen interest to try and isolate the threads that connect all these fellows who lost in the UDA nominations. I ensured that the nexuses (nexi) were clear to me before I hopped between my bedsheets. I now present them.
In the Central region, and particularly the Kikuyu nation, the abrasive, unsophisticated Raila bashers were punished. In this category, one finds the notorious and unrelenting Catherine Waruguru, Isaac Mwaura, and Jane Kihara among others. Their ilk in Nairobi, including Jaguar, were shown the door.
In many parts of the Kalenjin Rift Valley, the electorate punished two factors: loyalty to Ruto and a sense of entitlement. Some of the absentees who believed the seats were theirs for the taking by virtue of their loyalty to Ruto, including former cabinet secretary Charles Keter, former Inspector General of Police, Joseph Bonnet and former KNUT Secretary General, Wilson Sossion, were embarrassed at the hands of the unforgiving electorate. One of the chief Ruto loyalists and Raila basher, Caleb Kositany, saw a very long day.
The message has been sent so succinctly, and what remains is to see what Ruto will do about his loyalists who were not so lucky. It's clear to observers that, although some of the platitudes spewed by politicians may have been in vogue in the past, the current generation is looking for service delivery and messages that resonate with them.
Young people who are voting for the first time this August may not understand why their parents and grandparents hate Raila so much yet the man looks harmless. In fact, many of the young people I regularly interact with tell me that their only misgiving is Raila's age. Beyond that, they are not sure if those who constantly bash Raila are any better than him.
This feeling is being demonstrated at the ballot during the ongoing UDA primaries. The results of the UDA nomination exercise in Central Kenya and Kalenjin areas should act as a wake-up call to the uncritical, hollow minded Raila bashers that the young electorate is tired of non-issue based politics that has characterized Kenya's political landscape for decades. It's a call to the UDA - affiliated politicians to go back to the drawing board and give us clear leadership agenda. Certainly, Raila cannot be the agenda. Hiding behind the handshake with Uhuru to needlessly attack Raila will not help either.
Going forward, between now and August, politicians must be cautioned against making unsubstantiated statements. Politicians can do better. Otherwise, they will be punished at the ballot.
Raila's ODM must have noticed the voters' resentment towards incumbency and advanced age and opted for direct nominations in areas where they didn't want to lose party stalwarts. It's just a matter of time before the electorate catches up with those beneficiaries of shortcuts.
The author is a senior lecturer at the Technical University of Kenya (TUK).
File image of ODM leader Raila Odinga. |Photo| Courtesy|[/caption]
I have previously dedicated acres of pages to the genesis of this hatred. For today, I will just mention in passing that Raila is a very magnanimous man who always seeks to uplift young people from that region despite the hostility that has been shown towards him.
Kenyans will remember that Raila unilaterally nominated Isaac Mwaura and Rachel Shebbesh to the National Assembly, only for the duo to turn against him in favour of their tribal political outfits and kingpins. Both of them consequently won further nominations to various positions on the basis of their unceasing Raila bashing.
Raila prevailed upon his Nairobi support base to stand with Bishop Margaret Wanjiru and later, her own son, to become members of the National Assembly. They both later bad-mouthed Raila as a way of gaining acceptance 'back home.' Is it a case of biting the hand that feeds you? The moment Raila's support was withdrawn, they lost favour with Nairobians.
Raila didn't stop there. He has continued to pay school fees and extend other forms of support to disadvantaged children and families from the region without publicizing it. His opponents have never missed an opportunity to portray him as a miser who rarely, if at all, responds to plights of less privileged members of our society.
Pundits have opined that the meteoric growth of UDA party in Central Kenya had almost everything to do with Raila. They saw it as an opportunity to block Raila from ascending to the presidency after President Uhuru Kenyatta's constitutionally sanctioned second term comes to an end later this year.
As an excellent student of Daniel Moi's divisive politics, WS Ruto took advantage of Raila phobia in Central Kenya to go into a political overdrive, always ensuring that if he's not personally castigating 'Mganga' or 'Mtu wa Vitendawili', his side-kicks in the region, Cate Waruguru, Ndindi Nyoro or Alice Wahome are doing it on a sustainable manner.
The strategy is to ensure that the region gets no opportunity to think of any positive attribute of Raila's. This strategy appears to be succeeding, with opinion polls showing that Ruto controls over 70 per cent of the eligible votes in the region. For the Raila side, this 'poor' showing in the region is actually what they are looking for, so that he can become a president without baggage.
For starters, the region has never voted for Raila. In fact, the presence of Raila's name on the ballot motivates the region to turn out in large numbers to stop him from becoming the President. In the last two presidential polls, Raila's total votes in the region have consistently fallen below 15 per cent. This is evidenced by the voter turnout for the 2017 presidential polls in which the region recorded close to 80 percent on average.
However, when the presidential election was nullified by the Supreme Court of Kenya, and repeat polls called, the turnout from the region was less than 40 percent. The poor turnout was attributed to the fact that Raila didn't participate in the repeat presidential election, and there was, therefore, no existential threat to the community. So, the Raila phobia has propped up people who have no substance between their ears except their ability to hurl unprintables at Raila.
For the Kalenjin Rift Valley, the dynamics are a little different. There's evidence that they have once voted for Raila overwhelmingly in 2007, and fervently fought for him to be sworn in as president, a position for which he convincingly defeated Mwai Kibaki, the sitting president. To retain the presidency, Kibaki unleashed security forces on demonstrating citizens, killing more than 1000 of them, maiming many more, and creating a humanitarian crisis in the country, with hundreds of thousands of citizens driven from their homes to become internally displaced citizens.
Raila ended up being a Prime Minister without much power following an internationally brokered peace deal whose negotiations were led by the former UN Secretary-General, HE Kofi Anan. Since then, the Kalenjin nation has never given Raila peace, often reminding him that they made him Prime Minister. For the sake of harmony, Raila has remained magnanimous to the Kalenjin, always looking out for friendships and extending whatever little support that he could afford to extend to them.
In the last election cycle, he doled out nomination opportunities for parliament and county assemblies to a number of Kalenjin people including former KNUT Secretary General Wilson Sossion and a little known 24-year old lady who joined parliament courtesy of ODM. Sossion has since defected to join UDA.
Keen observers have discerned the motive behind the massive Kalenjin support of Raila in 2007. Their most prominent son then, Daniel Moi, had just retired as president in 2002 after 24 years of disastrous management of the country. In fact, Moi's dismal handling of the affairs of the state and government led the country to huge opportunity costs. He had inherited a thriving economy from his predecessor, the late Jomo Kenyatta, and rather than continue in that trajectory, drove the country's fortunes to the south at a time when other countries were transforming their societies into middle-level income economies.
So, after Moi, nobody wanted to touch a Kalenjin, not even with a ten-foot wooden rod. Raila's emergence as a formidable presidential candidate gave the Kalenjin nation a golden opportunity for a political comeback. They jumped onto it.
Meanwhile, they soon started scheming on how to portray Raila as an unreliable partner to the Kalenjin people. They wanted one of their own to lead them. Ruto himself is on record as saying that every community was being led by their own people and that the proud Kalenjin people couldn't countenance being led by an outsider.
An opportunity presented itself when Raila was nominated to lead the government initiative to rehabilitate the Mau forest. The process entailed relocating those who were living within the forest to give room for the preservation of the Mau water tower. The government deliberately delayed the release of funds meant for the relocation of the evicted people who were mainly Kalenjin and Ogiek.
The Kalenjin leaders, who were part of the scheme, started screaming at the top of their voices that Raila was exposing their people to devastation and death in hostile weather. They succeeded in driving Raila out of the hearts and minds of the Kalenjin people and installed Ruto as their bona fide community leader.
Ruto's evident hostility towards Raila is meant to keep the ODM supremo off the Kalenjin affairs. With that background, we can now direct our lenses to the current political landscape, especially the ongoing UDA nominations in Central Kenya and Kalenjin Rift Valley regions where the party enjoys a massive following.
Sunday night, I stayed up until late, and so, was able to get a glimpse of the bare essentials of the Saturday Nation before retiring to bed. 'Giants fall in the UDA elections', screamed the headline. Portraits of kingpins, political heavyweights and vocal politicians are all over the first page. So, I developed a keen interest to try and isolate the threads that connect all these fellows who lost in the UDA nominations. I ensured that the nexuses (nexi) were clear to me before I hopped between my bedsheets. I now present them.
In the Central region, and particularly the Kikuyu nation, the abrasive, unsophisticated Raila bashers were punished. In this category, one finds the notorious and unrelenting Catherine Waruguru, Isaac Mwaura, and Jane Kihara among others. Their ilk in Nairobi, including Jaguar, were shown the door.
In many parts of the Kalenjin Rift Valley, the electorate punished two factors: loyalty to Ruto and a sense of entitlement. Some of the absentees who believed the seats were theirs for the taking by virtue of their loyalty to Ruto, including former cabinet secretary Charles Keter, former Inspector General of Police, Joseph Bonnet and former KNUT Secretary General, Wilson Sossion, were embarrassed at the hands of the unforgiving electorate. One of the chief Ruto loyalists and Raila basher, Caleb Kositany, saw a very long day.
The message has been sent so succinctly, and what remains is to see what Ruto will do about his loyalists who were not so lucky. It's clear to observers that, although some of the platitudes spewed by politicians may have been in vogue in the past, the current generation is looking for service delivery and messages that resonate with them.
Young people who are voting for the first time this August may not understand why their parents and grandparents hate Raila so much yet the man looks harmless. In fact, many of the young people I regularly interact with tell me that their only misgiving is Raila's age. Beyond that, they are not sure if those who constantly bash Raila are any better than him.
This feeling is being demonstrated at the ballot during the ongoing UDA primaries. The results of the UDA nomination exercise in Central Kenya and Kalenjin areas should act as a wake-up call to the uncritical, hollow minded Raila bashers that the young electorate is tired of non-issue based politics that has characterized Kenya's political landscape for decades. It's a call to the UDA - affiliated politicians to go back to the drawing board and give us clear leadership agenda. Certainly, Raila cannot be the agenda. Hiding behind the handshake with Uhuru to needlessly attack Raila will not help either.
Going forward, between now and August, politicians must be cautioned against making unsubstantiated statements. Politicians can do better. Otherwise, they will be punished at the ballot.
Raila's ODM must have noticed the voters' resentment towards incumbency and advanced age and opted for direct nominations in areas where they didn't want to lose party stalwarts. It's just a matter of time before the electorate catches up with those beneficiaries of shortcuts.
The author is a senior lecturer at the Technical University of Kenya (TUK). What's Your Reaction?
