ODM capture: Why President Ruto moved with speed to install Raila Odinga’s elder brother acting leader of Kenya’s main opposition party

ODM capture: Why President Ruto moved with speed to install Raila Odinga’s elder brother acting leader of Kenya’s main opposition party

0

When James Orengo received news that Raila Odinga had died, he fainted and was assisted back to consciousness by people who were near him. So much was at stake. Top on the list was the future of the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) party.

Back on his feet, Orengo later started making calls to relevant party officials drawing their attention to party stability and leadership. The state intelligence informed President William Ruto of Orengo’s moves.

Ruto instructed his point-men in the party (the ones who have been shouting the loudest and lavishing Ruto with praise) to install Oburu Odinga as acting party leader immediately to deny the internal party machinery a chance to respond to the situation guided by their institutional logic. Secretary General Edwin Sifuna was not invited to the meeting that appointed Oburu.

Of cause this is not the only fast thing Ruto did as we now know. He signed crazy bills over Raila’s dead body. That fast! Talk of thoroughness!

Contest over party leadership is not new. When Raila and Michael Wamalwa Kijana fought over the leadership of Ford Kenya, Raila invited me for a drink in Makuti Club in South B, Nairobi. On this day, Kenya Breweries had just introduced the Guinness Kubwa brand in the market.

“They have introduced the big one? Niletee Guinness Kubwa pia (Give me Guinness lager too),” Raila ordered as he settled down. Well, he later switched to “porridge” in Uhuru coded language of whisky.

He asked me what I thought about the leadership tussle in Ford Kenya. At the time I considered him the representative of the left within Ford Kenya. Their division then is comparable to the current situation in ODM: the pro-government and pro-change factions tussling over control of the party.

The factions in ODM seem to be trying to answer the question: which Raila is authentic? The one who fought for change in Kenya or the one who propped up Ruto’s falling regime?

During our meeting in South B, I told Raila that he would lose the contest to Wamalwa Kijana. Wamalwa was a last minute defector to Ford in 1992, therefore he enjoyed the sympathy of the system then.

“The fight will consume our energies but the eventual winner will be chosen by the system. I think it is cheaper for us to register our own party rather than engage in a bruising losing battle,” I advised him.

After a bruising contest that climaxed in Thika, Raila acquired NDP (National Development Party) from its founder Stephen Wilfred Omondi Oludhe and began his match to the top of Kenyan politics.

Similarly, his father Jaramogi Oginga Odinga also walked out of Jomo Kenyatta’s Kenya African National Union (KANU) party in 1966 and formed Kenya People’s Union (KPU).

Times may have changed, but what must be acknowledged is that in Ruto, we have Moi multiplied times four. Kenya’s constitutional, economic, social and ethnic contests have quadrupled. From a promising beacon of democracy in Africa, we are now on course to borrowing a leaf from Haiti! A failed state.

After spending decades referring to Raila Odinga as the Lord of Poverty’, Demon, Witchdoctor, Riddles Master, then, “Voila!” Out of the blues, Ruto gifts Nyanza – a people and region that have endured extreme poverty through marginalisation and subjugation – development in the form of a state funeral for a revolutionary leader he vilified for over 40 years.

To trust that Ruto and his Kalenjin kinsmen mourned Raila Odinga – and even awarded him state commendation posthumously – is equivalent to believing that a hound can mourn an antelope. The Kalenjin and other wielders of power are rejoicing. No one else can stand up against him with the kind of robustness baba had.

Only James Orengo seemed to s though this lie of “state funeral.” It may not be far off the truth to believe that the state “assisted Raila to die.” After all Baba was indisposed and a devious mind may have seen an opportunity and seized it. How else does one explain the sudden state enthusiasm in Raila’s funeral arrangements? Not for a man long treated as a pariah.

I can tell you with near certainty that trust Governor James Orengo’s instincts. Orengo has all his life been a harbinger! His warning to the state not bastardise political parties is informed by the past and unless Kenyans take heed, the country is on the backfoot.

Remember, Ruto buys support, builds churches alone, ignores court orders and ‘shoots the legs of people.’ I am worried that the battle for ODM may give us corpses.

How about abandoning the ship like Raila did after all the credibility of the unwanted is strong enough to be a basis for the formation of another party. Ruto said he will build ODM. How? Why? ODM church!

I am just concerned as a co-founder of ODM.

  • A Tell Media report / By Wafula Buke, a former political detainee
About author

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *