Raila's 'collabo' with President is for self-survival, not betrayal of youth

With hindsight, Raila Odinga did not betray Kenya’s youth when he cottoned to President William Ruto in the wake of Gen Z protests in June 2024. 

The Gen Z blitzkrieg presented him with a choice between maintaining relevance or a life in political doldrums. For a man who has consistently been handed lemons when he sought oranges, Raila has mastered the art of turning them into lemonade and selling it to the delivery men.

He did it with presidents Daniel arap Moi, Mwai Kibaki, Uhuru Kenyatta and now, Ruto. Every electoral circle, he wiggles into a position where he becomes the country’s de facto leader. This time, however, Raila appears to have come to terms with the reality that his ‘chi’ has consigned him to a life on the periphery of the presidency. 

Age and years of torture under the one party rule have started to bear. His laboured locomotion and the occasional near slurred speech say it all. Two years from now, he will be the worse for wear for the rigours of the presidency and dealing with the demands of an aggressive young generation with a completely different perspective of life. A generation not bound by traditions.

He has been in the limelight as a defender of the downtrodden for the longest time, a legacy he would like to leave behind after several stabs at the presidency failed. After his loss to Ruto in 2022, he still entertained hope of becoming president. He tried blustering with the ODM-led demos in 2023 against Ruto but failed. 

He was still devising another plan to disable Ruto’s state vehicle when Gen Z zoomed past his ODM jalopy.

It was then that he realised there was a new powerful vehicle on the dusty, torturous political highway with superior power capable of overhauling all the jalopies.

But Raila is the proverbial Phoenix, always rising from the ashes. The wisdom of our ancestors hit him; that the devil you know is better than the angel you do not know. He had no control over the youth, but he could manipulate the old guards. Why not team up with Ruto, not on principle, but for political expediency?

At the same time, Ruto was under siege by the Gen Z. He was tottering on the edge of a precipice and needed a helping hand to pull him back to level. Like a drowning man, he was ready to clutch at straw when Raila showed up. 

Even as they pretend otherwise, Kenya’s opposition and the government have together played a part in the plunder of national resources. The interface has been a complacent Parliament that kowtows to the whims of the executive in exchange for morsels that drop off the high table.

There has never been a worse enemy to Kenyans than their own elected representatives. They masquerade as loyal servants to those who elected them, but ours is the classical case of the servant dictating the pace to the master, and arrogantly so. 

When Ruto and Raila felt threatened by an adversary none of them saw coming, survival instincts kicked in. This new-found camaraderie between strange bedfellows is to protect their properties, it was never about the hoi polloi. 

French philosopher Jean Pierre Proudhon defined property as theft. The Sh2 billion that the executive acknowledges disappears daily from public coffers, but cannot stop, goes to buy a few individuals property. Massive assets acquired by some individuals in every strategic part of the country within years that one can count on the fingers of one hand cannot be anything but theft. 

Will the ‘collabo’ between ODM and Kenya Kwanza last to 2027 when its foundational base is merely convenience? Raila has lost much of his support and his dalliance with Ruto is degenerating into a tribal slugfest, and the stereotyping of a whole community on social media over two unrelated incidents in the Luo nation.

A man was caught siphoning fuel from a police vehicle to fill his motorcycle. When arrested, he was not remorseful. Instead, he wondered loudly why he was being arrested when his community was in the broad-based government. Another walked to a police station and demanded to spend the night there for the same reason. If this is reflective of the reality on the ground, it is a dangerous mentality that heralds the onset of fascism.