The Raila Odinga ‘succession’ is taking a toll on politicians who have always depended on the ODMfo leader’s patronage.
For them, every public event is fair fora to wail about their inevitable political destitution. The time was always coming. Raila’s ambition to lead the African Union Commission brings the prospect closer.
But political serfs won’t be king through inheritance. Some of the diehard dependents are likely to avoid elective politics for fear of exposure. The lot is running out of luck in postponing the eventuality.
The discourse on who won’t, who can, and who should inherit the former prime minister’s clout, is a chase of the impossible. Raila’s charisma cannot be transferred.
Sacrifices that define Raila’s political career cannot be inherited. They cannot be replicated. It won’t be done no matter how loyal the aspiring inheritor is to the former Lang'ata MP.
History does not forget those who sacrifice to make life better for the many, even at a cost and pain to themselves. One such person, whose sacrifices, fortitude, resilience and magnanimity will be embossed in the history of post-colonial Kenya is Raila Odinga.
The man’s history is not transferable. No one can redo what he did to be him. The man was many times detained without trial for demanding a just constitutional order.
Raila has been, and will always be, a force of purpose for the victims of politically motivated injustices. The man had so much going for him. He could easily have lived and enjoyed the comfort and privacy of personal plenty. But he chose public life of denial, jail, detention, and harassment to protect human rights.
Those who aspire to be him may not have the largeness of heart to speak to power about justice for the masses. Wannabe Raila are likely to fall prey to the politics of compromise.
Enigma – the mystery and the unpredictability of the man, a quintessential politician — cannot be inherited. His inscrutable persona is uniquely his – a consequence of the history that shaped his political career.
Raila's enigmatic influence on admirers comes free, on account of the magnetic influence of his persona. What the late vice president Wamalwa Kijana once described as Railaphobia and Railamania sprout from a character that is at once loved and hated, admired and detested.
Defiance, which has defined Raila’s relationship with successive regimes, cannot be inherited like genes. Those who try will always fall below his threshold because times have changed.
Magnetism of the persona cannot be passed over to the favourite, at least not with the same results. Raila’s crowd-pulling hue won’t be transferred to the next ODM or Azimio coalition leader when he leaves these formal positions.
This generation knows only one idiosyncratic Raila Odinga. History will always remember one person by the name. To claim to be positioning oneself to be the new Raila is to defy history. The results won’t be the same.
Raila became the magnet and the icon he is from his youth. And not much of it has to do with his pedigree. From the great Jaramogi Oginga Odinga family, there is only one person who fits the description of ‘Agwambo’ — the enigma.
It is ridiculous to hear dependent politicians craving a position that is beyond their weight. The man has been to places, passed through trials and trials, that the clamouring inheritors won’t dare. He has walked through a rugged political terrain, where electoral absurdities reign.
When the Mwai Kibaki government, through a compromised Electoral Commission of Kenya, snatched victory from a winning Raila Odinga in 2007, the former Lang'ata MP did not cry over spilt milk. He overruled the advice of radicals, who preferred the last person in the room shut out the light on Kenya.
Raila relented because he had a larger purpose than personal vanity. He gave Kenya a second chance to rework its electoral processes. The seeds of the 2010 Constitution germinated over the ashes of the 2007 post-election violence, through the willed push of Raila Odinga and others.
When the electoral agency bungled the 2013 presidential election to deny him victory, Raila's advice was, 'Don't cry for me; cry for Kenya'. Then came the sham presidential election of 2017. The muddled process was a setback for democracy.
The post-impunity era, when the vainglorious reign, is more likely to generate political defectors than leaders of principle who are ideologically inclined to speak for the majority.
