The Orange Democratic Movement party came to be when its architect and leader, Raila Odinga, engineered the defeat of then President Mwai Kibaki’s efforts to pass weak constitutional reforms.
Raila rode his popularity from leading the movement to crushing Kibaki at the polls in 2007—an election those who swore in Kibaki maintain he won, but Raila and his supporters maintain he did not. We averted a civil war when Dr Kofi Annan and many others brokered a peace deal and coalition government between Kibaki and Raila.
Following another disputed election, this time in 2017, when it was clear the country was at yet another crossroads and nothing but an ungovernable country lay ahead, the powers that be prevailed on President Uhuru Kenyatta and former Prime Minister Raila Odinga to bury the hatchet and join hands in the now famous handshake of March 9, 2018.
One would have thought this was cause for celebration when these two men who had twice duelled at the polls and neither won in 2013—at least according to many, and Uhuru got a technical victory in 2017 when Raila refused to participate in a fresh election following the historic nullification of the earlier election. But that is not what happened.
The handshake was immediately put into question by Deputy President William Ruto and his supporters. If Ruto had any suspicions as to what the handshake was all about, that would be made clear when the President issued a gazette notice creating a Building Bridges Initiative task force.
The BBI task force was given the responsibility to examine and make recommendations about nine areas that Uhuru and Raila concluded were crucial in efforts to “create a united nation for all Kenyans living today, and all future generations”.
This immediately created a dilemma for Ruto for, on the one hand, he and his supporters saw this teaming up of Raila and Uhuru as a bad omen for Ruto’s quest to succeed Uhuru. It was therefore in Ruto’s interest to make sure BBI did not come to be the law of the land.
On the other hand, how could he oppose any efforts designed to create a united country, especially knowing the close call he had as a guest at the ICC?
Moreover, with his boss being a co-architect of BBI, openly opposing it would put him at odds with a President with all the tools to retaliate.
The solution for Ruto was to try and have the cake and eat it, which is impossible.
Ruto figured he could refrain from openly opposing BBI but allow his foot soldiers to do everything they could to badmouth BBI and to discredit its intended good.
The expectation was when the BBI came up for a then anticipated referendum, Ruto would mount a campaign to defeat it and, like Raila in 2005, ride that victory and popularity to victory in the next election.
Or he would neither oppose nor campaign for BBI’s passage so he could go with the wind, depending on how BBI fared. If BBI passed, he would try and use it to make further inroads in Mt Kenya region though as an underdog because BBI passage would have meant its leaders would form the next government.
As fate would have it, BBI was first derailed by Covid-19 and later by activist judges at the High Court and Court of Appeal. Although not dead as many hoped was the case, it is quite possible that the Supreme Court may yet breathe new life into BBI.
However, given the closeness to the August election, it is unlikely that anything can be done with BBI this year.
What can be done, and we are already seeing the tale-tell signs, is the morphing of the Azimio movement into a force no one can beat come Election Day in August.
An Azimio victory will be having a government of national unity as envisioned in BBI without BBI.
Samuel Omwenga is a legal analyst and political commentator
