As the 2002 election campaigns got more intense, the Social Democratic Party presidential candidate James Orengo, accompanied by Joe Donde and activist Paddy Onyango, visited a village in Luoland to attend a funeral.
Given a chance to speak, Orengo warned locals that the Narc Rainbow path they had chosen would lead to regrets. He said Mwai Kibaki, their presidential candidate, was a cold, calculating man, akin to the proverbial mouse that bit you while blowing soothingly into the wound.
The locals were not amused, and made Orengo scamper for safety, while asking him what he thought he knew about Kibaki that Raila Odinga, then his biggest cross-country campaigner, didn’t.
However, just a few months into the Narc regime and after the MoU fallout, the same locals were loudly wondering how they would apologise after their betrayal came to pass. I am reminded of this anecdote because the latest political whirlwind around Senator Orengo has to do with a warning he has given about certain items in the BBI Bill, and the pitfalls they portend for his people.
In Raila’s base in Nyanza, the people may tolerate the perceived negative sides of the Bill, including what is said to be skewed allocation of the 70 new constituencies, only in the belief that the document is some sort of an agreement between Uhuru and Raila to instaltheir man as President in 2022.
As with 2002, Orengo has safely sounded the warning, and you can guess whose political necks will be on the line, if this too ends with a betrayal. I can’t understand why the media has enthusiastically characterised the latest noise within ODM as Raila-Orengo falling out, or even as disharmony within the party.
The truth is that this is merely a civil war between divergent Luo factions within the party. The non-Luos may be wondering where all the heat is coming from. Even the famous Orengo speech on the floor of the Senate last week appeared directed at the Raila handlers who, in his view, think their blood is more Orange than his, and that their loyalty to the party leader is greater than everyone else’s.
In Luo politics, there is something often ignored but which remains important as new dispensations take shape. This is that of all elected leaders in that land, only Kisumu Governor Anyang’ Nyong’o and Orengo do not carry the “Made By Raila” tag.
They were both his peers in the Second Liberation, rather than politicians he created from scratch. They have had run-ins with him, and supported different formations in the past, while he was running or partnering with someone else.
Immediately following the death of Jaramogi Oginga Odinga in 1994, and while the community was still in Ford Kenya, Orengo became the highest-ranking Luo politically, as Ford Kenya vice chair to the late Wamalwa Kijana. He was, in fact, Raila’s boss, as the latter was then the director of Elections in the party.
In the 1997 election, Orengo stuck with Wamalwa and Raila ran for President on NDP. He still managed to retain his Ugenya parliamentary seat, while the rest of Luo Nyanza went with Raila’s NDP.
Joe Donde also sneaked in via Ford Kenya in Gem, but only because the NDP candidate had been strangely time-barred in presenting his nomination papers to the Electoral Commission of Kenya.
Orengo was on the presidential ballot five years later, in 2002. You cannot belabour the point too much,therefore, that in a post-Raila dispensation, Orengo has no peer in Luoland. He has played on the national platform much longer than all his opponents for the future kingpin role, and enjoys greater appeal beyond the tribe.
But remember where I said earlier that he does not carry the made-by-Raila tag? This means that those who hold court in Raila's political palace, his confidants and the predictable political orphans in a post-Raila dispensation, do not know where they would fall, or the continuity of their political careers under Orengo.
RAILA-ORENGO STRONGER TOGETHER
Since Orengo is a political giant you can’t fell in the absence of Raila, the long project by the ODM leader's handlers to paint the Siaya senator as being at variance with the Raila doctrine, hasn’t stopped since 1994, and won’t stop soon.
Ironically, in their political lives, Orengo and Raila have appeared stronger when they worked together. Raila taps Orengo’s brilliant mind, legal finesse and flawless oratory. Orengo, on the other hand, taps onto Raila’s wide populist appeal and endless networks, and operates like a submarine in the ODM chief’s circles while he takes the heat above the surface. They complement each other perfectly.
I can tell you for free that in their backyard, knowing their history, their voters love to see them together. The political history of this country would have turned out differently if they had worked together in Ford Kenya after Jaramogi’s death in 1994. It is important for both gentlemen to stop listening to political feathers around them and work together ahead of the crucial transition in 2022.
In Luoland, Orengo is known affectionately as “Nyatieng”, the grinding stone. He has been on the political grind so long that, true to his words on the floor of the Senate, he has seen it all. He has fought and survived nearly every regime in this country. His experience and resilience have been built in the trenches of democracy.
Within his party, the formations that seek to stop him couldn’t hold a candle to him in an open political contest. The belief flying around that 2022 will be the last election in which the ODM leader is a big factor, means his opponents are in a hurry to dispense with him right now, by using Raila’s name. But if you know Nyatieng’ well, he will make a quick lunch out of them, because he currently speaks the language of the people.
Ultimately, I imagine that if the Luo community was to pick a kingpin after Raila, they would want someone they can present to the rest of the nation as a possible presidential candidate later, or one with whom they can negotiate such other lofty national political posts.
Which is why I can’t understand how anyone within ODM or the Luo community, would want to sacrifice James Orengo, in preference to politicians whose spheres of influence begin and end on the banks of the rivers behind their village homesteads.
As they say where I come from, only a fool goes to war with the blunt machete, leaving behind the sharp spear.
