Baba's towering political legacy and the void his exit leaves behind

For the past three decades, Raila Odinga was the axis around which both the Opposition and the government defined themselves. He was the person to love and to hate, both at once, depending on which side of the divide one stood. They trusted and feared him, cherished and loathed him, and praised and condemned him, all for the same reasons, in the same season. 

His demise has left them stuck. They need a new behemoth to step into the heavy boots of the departed political heavyweight. It is a massive assignment. Not even his closest allies over the years could walk into these shoes, fit in them snugly, and lift them to carry on from where he has left off. 

The government will be looking for a new political monster to demonise, the scapegoat for all its failings, while the Opposition is already groping around for a new anchor.

In both cases, the search is for a new political constant; an astute punching bag for the State, and gravitational centre for the Opposition.

For completely opposed reasons, the government and the Opposition alike have lost a favourite stumbling block that will be difficult to replace; a captain to one, and a monster to the other. 

Earlier votaries

Raila was a second-generation nonconformist who walked in the footsteps of earlier votaries of democracy in Kenya.

Top among them was his father, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga. Others were Achieng Oneko, Bildad Kaggia, Kung’u Karumba, and Pio Gama Pinto. Some of these paid the price for the struggle for liberty, both under British colonial rule and in independent Kenya. They were detained, or otherwise incarcerated by the Kenyan State, under the watch of those with whom they earlier on fought for the country’s self-determination.

Close in their footsteps was a battery of forgotten heroes of democracy, who included figures like JM Kariuki, Wasonga Sijeyo, JD Kali, Masinde Muliro, Yunis Ali, Mark Mwithaga, Peter Kibisu, Ahmed Bamariz, Francis Nthenge, Mwangi Karungaru, Waruru Kanja, and Martin Shikuku, among others. They had understudies in persons like Mashengu wa Mwachofi, George Anyona, Abuya Abuya, and Wycliffe Wasike Ndombi. 

Kenneth Matiba and Charles Rubia migrated from the establishment to occupy this space towards the end of their political careers, and paid heavily for that. Unlikely migrants to this landscape for a fleeting season were Mwai Kibaki and Michael Kijana Wamalwa.

Kibaki was the vice president who cynically scoffed at the quest for multiparty democracy with the infamous cutting of the mugumo tree with a razor blade imagery. Later, when the quest had succeeded, he resigned from Kanu and the Cabinet to form the Democratic Party. 

For his part, Wamalwa was the Kanu Parliamentary Group spokesperson, who, in the 1980s, would read out scathing group statements against dissenters after meetings that were attended by former President Daniel Moi. That was until the party stole his election in the 1988 Mlolongo elections. 

Yet, over the past three decades, Raila has been a true fusion of all these democratic voices. He has represented the collective spirit of these champions of liberty, sending him to occupy rare space in the life of the Kenyan nation and its collective democratic mind and spirit. Accordingly, he leaves behind a vacuum that not even his closest allies could easily walk into and fill. 

No matter from what angle the political space is examined, Odinga has left behind political fluidity and uncertainty. The most obvious gap resides in the Opposition where he was the king. While Azimio La Umoja One Kenya Alliance has dithered during Raila’s one-year political coquetry with President William Ruto, all doubt about anchorage in the moribund alliance is now removed.

It is difficult to point at any one individual with Raila’s commanding presence and coordination ability in the debris of Azimio. There is no historical legitimacy in the struggle for liberty in the remains of the alliance.

Martha Karua of the People’s Liberation Party and Kalonzo Musyoka of the Wiper Patriotic Front have a head start over the rest. Yet, neither of them has so far demonstrated the ability to command the kind of massive following that Raila had across the country.

Karua articulates noble ideals that, regrettably, Kenyans have been slow to wake up to and embrace. Next to that, they have failed to recognise in her the kind of principled leader that the country needs. She remains a relevant academic, an ardent legal professional, and an astute political ideologue without a critical foothold among the masses. 

Kalonzo, for his part, has allowed his biggest asset to be used against him as a weakness. His measured and diplomatic style has not impressed audiences that prefer noisy and blustery leadership.

While Raila was adept at stealthy boardroom deals and handshakes, his public image was that of a stormy and restless individual, who constantly challenged the government to duels. He would be in his element when soaking in teargas, and being bathed in toxic anti-riot waters.

Raila was unafraid of the headwinds of live State bullets that often left murderous holes in his vehicles. Despite recurrent close shaves with gunfire , Raila would bring his supporters back into the streets, time and again. His followers adored him for this. And while Kalonzo accompanied him on most of these missions over a 15-year period, the public understood that these activities belonged to Raila.

Pick up

To become the next Raila Odinga, Kalonzo will have to pick up and perfect this art. With Ruto already signing into law draconian gag-bills on cybercrime, and others on extra-legal privatisation, the days after Raila’s burial do not belong to good-man leadership. They need a marauding political field marshal. 

Is Fred Matiang’i that marshal? Matiang’i was part of the supporting cast  in the Azimio space while he served as Cabinet Secretary for Interior in the Uhuru Kenyatta government. He is a forceful individual, gifted with a commanding heavy voice and significant presence at public rallies. He sounds convinced about the things he says. Yet, he lacks a constituency of followers across the country. Like former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua, who has found refuge and comfort in the Azimio space, only after being jettisoned out of his more familiar space near President Ruto, Matiang’i is a general without an army. Like Gachagua, he is a new sheriff without a posse, a commander without a commando squad. 

Both Matiang’i and Gachagua have the anger and the visibility. But they lack the moral respect and acceptance that Raila enjoyed across diverse ethnic landscapes.

They do not have the stature of true national figures. Nor do they even have regional vassals to count upon as zonal gadflies.

Both crave Uhuru’s support and anchorage. Being conscious of this craving, they have tended to approach each other with suspicion. Their mutual ill-will often bursts into the public space, with fairly open criticism of each other. As they sort out their challenges, the scope for them to become the new Raila in town diminishes.

In their quest for partnership, they remind the audience of the relationship between the horse and its rider. Each looks at himself as a horse rider, and the other as a good horse. 

Moreover, Gachagua seems content to remain a local village sheriff in the Mt Kenya region. He has never ventured out of the Mountain on his own. He still merchandises for the Mt Kenya region, to the exclusion of the rest of the Kenyan nation. 

Can Uhuru unify Azimio leaders and help them to fashion their unity into a political behemoth that could swallow President Ruto and Kenya Kwanza? He probably could, now that without Raila he has the most potent calculus outside the State.

Uhuru has the highest moral political seniority outside the government. But he also has the choice to use this authority to unify and strengthen the Opposition, or conversely to suffocate and scatter it. 

But where does all this leave President Ruto? Ruto has been swift to insinuate himself into the Raila family, political, ethnic and charismatic spaces. He has seen the gaps and opportunities and he is not letting them pass him by.

Ruto has given Raila  a State funeral that is both deserved and opportunistic. It is deserved on account of Raila’s monumental political space in his heyday, but opportunistic because of the political capital Ruto expects to reap. He has styled himself as a unifier and reconciler. In the coming days, he will reach out to Luo Nyanza telling the people that the political space he occupies is where Raila wanted them to be. They will be told that the best tribute to Raila’s memory is to remain where he left them. 

 Ruto is also likely to tap into any divisions and rivalries among Raila’s political orphans not just in Nyanza, but across the country. He may want to redefine the political landscape as one that is finally free of the Ruto-Raila rivalry that suffocated the political space throughout 2022, across 2023, and ate significantly into 2024. Calls for national unity are set to rend the air, with anyone who speaks differently being cast as the enemy of the people. 

 Raila’s death is a huge emotional shock to the Kenyan nation. Without minimizing other passings, it brings back the shock, awe and uncertainty that gripped the nation following the passing of Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, and those of Tom Mboya, JM Kariuki, and Ronald before  Kenyatta. Later the country would be tested by the deaths of Robert Ouko, Bishop Alexander Muge, and Prof Odhiambo Mbai. In politics, however, it is also an opportunity, and politicians will take advantage of opportunities. 

The courtiers, brokers, and orbiters who have lived in the Raila inner sanctum will be wary of the opportunities open to their nemeses. ODM has not been just a political party. It has been an extension of Raila Odinga and his authority. Kenyans often heard that ODM was Raila and Raila was ODM. Within this syllogism, is the death of Raila also the death of ODM? 

If it should be, does this open up opportunities for others to encroach the space ODM has occupied? Raila silenced quarrels in the party. He reconciled individuals and factions, blessed candidates, and rewarded loyalty. He goes away with the magnetism, the magic and the glue. ODM’s nakedness is at the risk of exposure. Like all personal edifices, it might be difficult for it to outlive the owner. 

Yet ODM could also reinvent itself as a true political party, after 20 years of existence as a personality vehicle, and an Odinga family property. The naming this week of Oburu Oginga as the acting party leader in the place of his late brother, however, casts this in doubt. It is, indeed, the finest entry point for strife in the post burial days. It should not be surprising to see progressive voices question the basis for handing leadership to Dr Oburu, his abilities, and the family party tag. ODM could easily pass into an irrelevant ghost entity by the time Kenya goes to the 2027 elections. 

 Then there are the Raila orphans, those who justified themselves by saying they were cows, doing everything the cow master asked them to do. Their moral cover is blown. They are naked, some without any anchor, others as Ruto’s proteges.

Perennial sycophants and power brokers are now challenged to be their own men and women. There will be no Capitol Hill to hover around, no photo opportunities to ingratiate themselves with, and no coattails to hang on. 

The suddenness of the death of a political powerhouse like Raila will also often spell the death of careers and lifelines. There is nobody to ring, no doors to knock. he dolphins among them will already be sensing the behaviour of the waves in the emerging turbulent political waters, determining which wave to ride. They must ride the waves, or be left to their own deficient designs, devices and doom.

 Dr Barrack Muluka is a strategic communications adviser