Obviously the article by
Amir Ibrahim has solicited a lot of responses and debate. That is always a good thing. Of course we have the usual suspects, may be people like me and others with very predictable responses, and I think some of the comments need a response.
My approach would be to put my piece together and address issues raised as opposed to responding to individual contributors, but I find it hard to escape some views directed at my contribution. Take this one for example, from
emmo opoti "However there has been a very loud and violent war on Kalonzo. One which is continued here both in your response and Honey's"I don't know what I said in my response to Ibrahim's piece that can be construed as a
"loud and violent war on Kalonzo". As a matter of fact I barely talked about Kalonzo, other than saying that if he is the ODM nominee, I personally would weigh my chances on whether to support him or not. Is that what Emmo calls a
"violent war on Kalonzo". Please.
Emmo continues to make the following remarks in response to my piece which I find not just perplexing but also dishonest.
"I really don't get why the responses are opposed to this article. Seems to me it is actually in support of everything you have written, except that it is not willing to make a saint of Raila and continue the demonisation of Kalonzo in his piece."It would be nice if Emmo or anybody else could point out where in my article I suggest Raila is a saint. As a matter of fact I raise issues in areas where I think Raila has been wrong. I thought saints never make mistakes, but then again I am not a religious person, so may be they do. And the idea that I am demonizing Kalonzo? Where is that paranoia coming from. I will leave it there and ask my friend Alex to pass my piece to the kenyaimagine forum so emmo can at least explain himself. I am having difficulties with some of the things he has said.
The other thing I want to respond to very quickly before I put everybody to sleep is what Amir Ibrahim himself said and I quote.
"In fact I can see nothing at all in the article that can be seen as an attack on Mr Odinga. For a fact the vicious way in which Kalonzo was handled turned many people away from Raila and ODM-K, for a fact the NDP crowd need to let ODM-K take on a national outlook. The more the likes of Kamotho, Musila, Magara, Kerrow etc are seen to are seen to represent ODM-K, the less likely attempts to brand ODM-K as a Luo party are to succeed."This is quite telling. Amir says his article is not about attacking Raila and his "mob" but what he says above speaks for itself.
Where are the facts about the "
vicious way in which Kalonzo was handled"? By the way where was Kalonzo viciously handled and when and by who? You cannot take innuendos, romours and street gossip and pronounce them as facts just because you said so. That is not just bad journalism, it is bad propaganda and if you publish it, folks like Adongo Ogony will tell you exactly what they think about it. Freedom of speech; remember.
And who were the people who were turned away from Raila and ODM K? How has that data been determined or is it another romour?
As for Kamotho, Magara, Kerrow being visibly seen as leaders in ODM-K, the last time I checked Henry Kosgey is the acting ODM K chairman with Mutula Kilonzo is his co-chair and Prof. Ayang' Nyong'o as the SG.
Omingo Magara is the man in charge of the Treasury. It looks good to me. And by the way, I think Kenyans respect these individuals. They have earned their stripes in the Orange Movement. Very calm and very meticulous. We need that with friends and foes because we all belong in the same country.
One thing though, I have major problems with, is the lack of representation of women in the ODM leadership structures.
In fact I am not the only one who expressed outrage when ODM leaders traveled to talk to Kenyans here in Canada late last year ( Nov 2006) with no women in their contingent. Many women in the Audience expressed the same concern.
I don't know how people inside the country feel. But I know one thing, without equitable women representation in the leadership and in mass mobilizing, the ODM is going nowhere
Having said all that I have a few observations on this debate, and it is a good debate because if people like Raila or Kalonzo want to lead the country we have a right to scrutinize them, and we will do so relentlessly and even "viciously", but I digress, again.
What I want to say probably starts with the comments from our very good friend
Ndugu Kamale, whose premises is that Raila has been packaged kindly and generously by the ( Kenyan) media.
Kamale has been around for a while and I suspect he probably knows that Raila has been the "devil next door" in the media for almost a decade and a half before his union with Moi gave him a break and then he became the media darling when he led Narc to victory in 2002 even as the soon to be president was medically incapacitated.
This is why I always insist on putting things in historical perspective and if that irritates some people, it is their problem.
So why has Raila been a "devil" in the media?
You have to go back to when Raila hit the national scene. It was in August 1982 after the abortive coup attempt. Raila was arrested, accused of being one of coup plotters and later detained.
Now if you want bad media, being accused as a ring leader in a failed coup attempt will give you one, particularly in a Kenya with timid journalists trying to impress the government which has almost just been violently overthrown.
The image the media, which was then under a tight government control, projected of Raila, was that of a "violent" and "reckless" man who wanted power at the cost of killing Kenyans.
Is it any wonder that those same words "violent" "power hungry" etc have become the regular menu for those writing/commenting on Raila and his political life.
Moi finally brought Raila out to help him with the Njonjo Inquiry, which incidentally had a lot to do with the coup attempt of 1982.
After something like six years, I have to check that, Raila was released. The hope of the government was that they had tamed him. They thought he would put his tail between his legs and go back to work at Spectre in the Odinga family enterprise. They were wrong.
Not long after he left the detention cells, Raila joined the organized Kenya underground movements that were teaming with activity at that time. I am talking about mid to late eighties. These are facts, not romours and conjecture by the way.
The short end of it is that Raila was soon back in the detention cells after Moi alleged he was one of the leaders of the underground movements that were training and arming guerrillas to fight his government.
What kind of good media would Raila possibly get from this. Zilch. He was now an official pariah in the media. He was unreformed fool and nincompoop according to the media. Moi had released him and instead of being nice and keeping away from trouble, here he was again, up to his "violent" ways.
I remember I used to share a laugh with my mother as she told me stories of what Moi said about us when we were in jail. She told me Moi had been telling the country that we, troublemakers opposed to his government, were like pigs. He (Moi) would wash us clean and set us free and as soon as he did that, we would run right back into the filthy mud again. That is the way the media portrayed not just Raila but all of us who refused to just get along with repression.
My point here is that if there is one man whom the media has held decades of vendetta and disinformation against, that man is Raila Odinga.
Now let's fast forward to the great battles of the 1990's to end the one party rule. These were titanic battles and the Kenyan youth paid the heaviest price, in terms of lives.
We are talking about the saba saba massacres of 1990 and on and on. Once again the government controlled and other timid "independent" media often accused FORD and the so called Young Turks ( James Orengo, Paul Muite, Raila Odinga, Mukhisa Kituyi etc) as promoters of violence and anarchy in the country to explain the tide of mass unrest and civil discontent in the country.
Raila of course with his track record was seen as one of the masterminds of the "violence" that was destroying people's property etc.
Of course the Moi government never talked about the violence of killing young protesters whose only crime was to demand multi-party politics in Kenya.
One can take this developments to the post 1992 elections when Moi "won" by 36% votes because of reasons we all know.
After 1992, Ford K under Jaramogi Oginga Odinga becomes the official leader of the opposition. Sadly, Jaramogi passes away in 1994. This is when a new battle for leadership in Ford Kenya erupts between Raila and Wamalwa.
Now this is when things got pretty rough in Ford Kenya with the emergence of groups like Baghdad Boys allegedly allied to Raila. Incidentally I happened to have been in Kenya at this time and very much involved in politics as usual. The funny thing here for me is that Amir's article seems to take this period as the beginning of Raila involvement in politics. I quote.
"Born in the heady days of the campaigns for multi-party politics and political repression, honed in running battles with the police, or in stone-throwing matches with the Baghdad boys, the core ethic of this group has been its proud self-assertion, its brash, unyielding nature, its unquestioning loyalty to its leader and its eternal war-footing constantly spoiling for a fight. As the nation has walked through time, and as its political opponents have evolved to cope with its efficiencies, these traits of Raila's core support group far from endearing it to people beyond its borders, begin to threaten them and work against the advancement of Raila's causes"
My problem here is that this is a very distorted version of history, at least on Raila and his participation in the battles for democracy in Kenya. To take this as the encyclopedia of understanding Raila's political life, is too narrow for me and I apologize to those who demand I do so.
And then to twist all these to explain Kalonzo's drop in popularity in ODM K, smirks of intellectual dishonesty.
Getting back to the story. After Raila and Wamalwa fought to a near stand still for FORD K leadership, Raila lost and Wamalwa won. Conventional wisdom is that Raila should have supported the winner, Wamalwa and stayed in Ford K. Instead he (Raila) decided to quit Ford K and picked up a party called NDP which nobody knew about at the time.
I think it is up to Raila and his colleagues to explain why they took that move instead of staying in Ford K. Kalonzo supporters can say the same. If they loose at the ODM elections, why shouldn't Kalonzo quit ODM K and form another party. My opinion is that, it is Kalonzo's choice to make.
Let's be honest and say this was a very tense and progressive period ( 1995-1997) in Kenyan politics. The civil society groups under the unwavering leadership of NCEC with people like Rev. Timothy Njoya, Prof. Kivutha Kibwana and Dr. Willy Mutunga at the helm were driving the Moi government nuts over demands for a new constitution.
Civic education of the masses on constitutional demands had become the order of the day. All those seeds planted then, are bearing tons of fruits today. May be not so many bananas, but there I go again, digressing.
During the turbulent 1995- 1997 period, the NDP under the leadership of Raila was one of the rock steady supporters of the NCEC and never hesitated to bring their supporters to the streets to demand greater democracy and a new constitution in Kenya. In fact, the NDP was the only mainstream party to reject the very timid IPPG reforms in 1997 and stand with the NCEC.
In other words there is more to the NDP than the Baghdad boys' stories. Those are just historical facts which should be a good part of any analysis on Raila and his political growth to be a national leader in Kenya.
I will cut this story short for two reasons. One I have to go to work in another 8 or so hours. Second, I believe this is just the beginning of a long discussion. There will be time and place for everything.
The first time Raila got the so-called favourable media was when he joined Moi after the 1997 elections. It was a mixed blessing, of course. By this time the Kenyan media was fairly independent and some of it quite supportive of the opposition.
I personally never supported Raila's liaison with Moi. The records will show that we had a few public skirmishes over the matter. But I also talked privately with him over the matter and expressed my opinion about it. He gave his part of the story and I respect that.
The biggest development in the infamous Raila-Moi union is putting the constitutional reform process in first gear.
Let's be serious. Moi didn't want to hear the words " constitutional reforms". A "people driven constitutional reform?!!". Scandalous.
When they told him (Moi) that the masses of Kenyan people could determine the constitution they want, he mocked them with the now famous, but according to him ignorant
"Wanjiku". Moi's message was that Wanjiku should be content with taking the mboga to the market and leave constitutional matters to the big heads in his government.
How ironical is it that the same people (Kibwana, Murungi, Karua etc) who mocked Moi for being a relic in his thinking about constitution making embraced exactly the same ideology when power came knocking at their doors. Talk about contradictions.
Let's move up a bit. In my view despite its shortfalls the NDP/KANU liaison after the 1997 General Elections opened new horizons for Kenyan political dispensations, and they paid wholesomely.
With stiff battles from the Ufungamano Group in which outstanding activists like triple O, Oki Ooko Ombaka and groups like the DP party, NCCK, NCEC stood firm to demand a people driven constitutional reform process, the New Kanu with Raila's initiative formed the CKRC and brought in Prof. Yash Pal Ghai who courageously spear headed the Bomas process.
Let's not forget that Moi couldn't stand Ghai, in fact he said he was a foreigner. Moi couldn't stand the Bomas process either. In fact he killed it as soon as he could, in 2002 after he lost Raila and co to the opposition.
Yet without the Bomas process which the Kibaki government pretended they will endorse to get elected, but later tried to kill, the dreams of Kenyans for a new constitution would be dead.
How did we get Bomas and how did the nation defend it? I think it is fair to ask those questions. Like this Kenyan is doing.
www.timesnews.co.ke/06april07/nwsstory/opinion1.htmlWhen people like Kamale talk about Raila as the media darling, it is important in my view to put it in historical perspective.
One thing both supporters and foes of Raila have said is that Raila joined Kanu to wreck it from within. That is not true.
Raila joining Kanu with the NDP was a genuine move in the hope that they could democratize Kanu and bring reconciliation and change in the country. I will leave it to history and historians to judge that ill-fated union.
The reality of the matter is that for the first time, the image of Raila the "radical", the "power hungry maniac", "violent", "vengeful", "outcast" began to take a beating.
Kenyans found it hard to reconcile the patented Raila images they had been fed by the media and the state with the reality that was unfolding before their very eyes. The rest pretty much explains itself.
Then in late 2002, Raila and a group of high profile Kanu leaders including Kalonzo Musyoka, George Saitoti, Musalia Mudavadi, Moody Awori walked out of Kanu and formed a group known as the Rainbow Coalition. Very powerful, very grassroots oriented. Loved and adored by the masses of the Kenyan people.
The Rainbow coalition soon started giving Moi nightmares. This is really when Raila, considered the chief conspirator in the group, became truly a darling of the Kenyan media.
And when the Rainbow group teamed up with the NAK team of Kibaki, Wamalwa and Ngilu after the "Kibaki Tosha" declaration at Uhuru Park, Raila became a national sensation and the media loved every piece of him.
The love affair between Raila and the Kenyan media took a frenzy turn when Raila became the voice of Narc after Kibaki was hospitalized during the 2002 campaign. Raila had helped secure the Narc victory in 2002 against the powerful Moi regime and all its machineries.
Everything worked fine until Kibaki was elected as the third president of the republic of Kenya and soon turned to his tribal handlers to help him govern and also turned his back on Raila and others who fought soldier to soldier with him to defeat the Moi jargonout.
This is a very important period to analyze. At first the media turned very negative on Raila when he and his crew started talking of the now famous aborted MOU between LDP and NAK.
The Kenyan media was very negative on Raila and his team. I was actually in the country at the time and kept asking my friends in the human rights movement what the heck was going on.
When Raila and his team started complaining about the MOU most media pundits dismissed them as whiners, up to no good for the country. Selfish etc.
They said the MOU was a secret document that meant nothing to Kenyans. The media heavyweights in the Nation Newspaper, particularly told Raila to shut up and accept whatever his team got.
They said Kibaki was now the president of Kenya and he was free to do whatever he felt was good for the country, notwithstanding any deals he made in some useless MOU.
This looked like the trend and I must say things looked very gloomy for Raila and company at that time.
It could have worked very well, except Kibaki and his team became a menace.
Naked and obvious tribalism became state religion. Then the Bomas fiasco where Kibaki and company opposed everything they had proposed to the CKRC.
Kenyans were shocked, but very alert. They still are.
Then the Anglo thieves' stories coupled with the infamous Artur brothers ( they are back again;
www.eastandard.net/archives/cl/hm_news/news.php?articleid=1143966945&date=5/4/2007),
Add the Lucy Dramatics at KTN, the hooded raids and arson at the Standard Newspaper, the Githongo escape and tapes, not to mention the humiliating defeat at the referendum which pretty much put Kibaki in a five day shock therapy ending with Kibaki's reunion with Moi.
All the above provided excellent positive media opportunities for Raila and the ODM which was seen by Kenyans as the anecdote to the Kibaki madness.
What I am saying is that, to the extent that Raila and the ODM has gotten positive media coverage in the last four years, it is because we have had disastrous developments with Kibaki and his regime.
Raila has not been a media package for glory at any time in our history. He may be just a beneficiary to failed "statesmen" who wanted him to be the fall guy. Tough luck.
Conclusion.The best gift to Raila and the ODM Kenya has been given, is from the arrogant fumblers who own the Kibaki government.
But that is not enough for them to claim the leadership of the nation.
Kenyans like me want to know; what is it that the ODM as a team, forget Raila, can offer our country to make us better as a nation.
The last thing I want to mention is this notion of making ODM top picks national leaders as opposed to tribal chauvinists.
It is a fair demand from Kenyans. But to me it is like telling me; Adongo to write an article to show people that that I am a progressive writer and write it in less than 500 words, today. Now.
That is crap. You know why? Because to judge me, you have to look at my body of work and decide whether I am progressive or just another reactionary mouthpiece.
The same applies to our politicians. We cannot possibly judge them from a single act. Being a nationalist cannot be a pretense or a mere image making procedure to dupe Kenyans. It can't work in this day and age.
We as Kenyans, have a duty to judge the nationalist credentials of our leaders from their body of work; namely their political history and public record.
Is that too much to ask? I think not.
Thank you.
Adongo
