I don’t like insiders who write tell-all books following fallouts within their workplace or family. Usually, there is too much innuendo and unproved allegations, quite often followed by silence from the subjects of such books.
I read Too Much and Never Enough, a book by Mary Trump, a niece to former US President Donald Trump, in which she purported to explain the origins of what many circles considered the unstable character of her famous uncle.
I also devoured with relish, another tell-all book called The Room Where It Happened, the memoirs of one-time Trump’s National Security Adviser, John Bolton. Each time, after putting the books down, my initial thoughts were “it would have been nice to hear the other side of the story”.
Closer home, and long before the latest book by 2022 Azimio presidential elections chief agent Saitabao ole Kanchory, lawyer Miguna Miguna, himself a former insider of ODM boss Raila Odinga, had made the act of churning out tell-all books famous, by unleashing two, Peeling Back the Mask and Kidneys for The King.
I felt no motivation to buy or read either, largely because Miguna’s angry rants on TV are enough for one pair each of eyes and ears, even before you allow yourself the misfortune of touching his books and escalating the heartburn.
I have, however, read Kanchory’s book, one because I am interested, like many other Kenyans, on how a seemingly assured victory escaped Raila’s grasp in August 2022, and two, because whatever you may say against him, Kanchory isn’t as cantankerous as Miguna. This leaves room for one to read the former’s thoughts with an open mind.
Let’s get something out of the way first. In his book, Why Baba Is Not The 5th, the author alludes to some people within the Raila campaign organisation, specifically law scholar Makau Mutua, not being fit to head of the secretariat.
There is deep irony in Kanchory being the one to say this. Unknown to him, the general consensus within the Azimio movement was that his own appointment as Raila’s chief agent was based purely on the latter’s obsession with the so called “face of Kenya”, especially with bringing people from minority communities to the mainstream.
Before this appointment, I can bet you nobody in ODM or Azimio had ever heard of him. To make it worse, many hearts within the Azimio formation sank when Raila unveiled his election agents at Bomas of Kenya weeks before polls opened.
They included Kanchory, former Nyeri Deputy Governor Caroline Karugu and university don, Prof Isaiah Wakindiki. Simply put, the Azimio coalition was facing a cunning, conniving opponent at the ballot, in the form of the ruthless Kenya Kwanza, as well as a mistrustful election agency, but were busy appointing laid-back doves for the job.
In the view of many, the top agents should have been brawlers, the sort of nuisance machines of the Miguna mould. Kanchory, therefore, at least according to many Azimio supporters I know, did not inspire confidence that he would be the eyes of the presidential candidate.
There are several things I found funny in the book, but one was most hilarious. It is the anecdote around a Cabinet Secretary who had stashed so much money in his office that when he invited a trusted friend over, this friend had to walk on banknotes on the floor to get to the big man’s desk.
Now, don’t get me wrong. Like every random Kenyan, I love money with all my heart, and the thought of owning a lot of it keeps me awake most nights. But if I had it in plenty, I wouldn’t let it sit on my office floor. I would probably transport it by night and bury it alongside my ancestors at the family graveyard in the village, awaiting the opportune moment to spend.
The last thing I would do is to invite a friend to walk on it, especially because I wouldn’t find one human being to trust with this kind of information. In any case, the so-called trusted friend told Kanchory about the incident, most likely sharing the story with many others. This episode could have made it to Ripley’s Believe It Or Not!
There is a theme around Kanchory’s narrative that suggests President Uhuru Kenyatta and his government didn’t do enough to help Raila win election, while the Azimio leader himself is painted as not being focused enough on his campaign strategy.
I hold the view that when you have an independent electoral agency running an election, the winner of that election (and Kanchory states unequivocally that Raila won the 2022 polls), should be declared, regardless of whether his campaign was chaotic, or even if he had no agents at polling stations.
The constitutional duty of the IEBC and its chairman cannot be dictated by how chaotic a one side’s campaign is, or how weak the deep state has turned out to be in asserting the incumbent President’s will. The failure of the IEBC, or any fraud therein, must be seen as independent of Raila and Uhuru or whatever faults you can find with them.
Be that as it may, there is a side of both Uhuru and Raila that I believe those who work with them, including the author of this book, do not appreciate. The two gentlemen were raised by Kenya’s two foremost nationalists, in the form of Jomo Kenyatta and Jaramogi Odinga, the first President and first VP of independent Kenya, respectively.
The two, therefore, hold nationhood and the unity of the country to a greater standard than their opponent. At the most critical times, when the unity of the nation is at stake, Uhuru and Raila are more likely to let go of their own ambitions and interests to save the country, rather than take an “at all costs” avenue.
This can be frustrating to their subordinates who wonder why the principal isn’t giving a radical instruction when things are thick. I am sure many at Bomas of Kenya during election tallying last year went through this.
Well, you probably wouldn’t get this from either Raila or Uhuru. I have to add that this Raila (and Uhuru, for purposes of this book) obsession with legitimacy and clean politics, at the expense of electoral victory, is ultimately a good thing. You have to spare a moment and wonder what would have happened to the nation if Raila had listened to hardliners around him in 2007, who wanted a fight to the bitter end rather than the national accord, or if he had taken a hardline stand in the next three disputed elections.
If you asked me why Baba is not the Fifth, and wasn’t the Third in 2007, the simple answer is that Raila is not wired towards destroying a nation for him to become President. We often wonder how he smiles and makes peace with his bitter opponents after these elections, only because we do not see the country the way he does. The burden of nationhood, after all, is too heavy for ordinary shoulders. This should be a lesson to all those who work around the statesmen.
Well, on top of the other lesson that it is bad manners to work for someone then write a book disparaging him and his team soon after!
