It was the end of what was and will always remain an unparalleled quest for power with the noblest of intentions, and along the way bringing major changes in the country’s social and economic affairs.
In ordinary circumstances, the zeal and determination with which Raila has sought the presidency, with scars to prove it, and the positive impact he already had doing so should be rewarded by allowing him to occupy State House, even for a day as president.
Of course, Raila would refuse and consider it an insult.
Raila first contested the presidency in 1997 when he came third behind the ‘Professor of Politics’ Daniel Moi who ‘won’ the elections and the late Mwai Kibaki who gave Moi a run for his money but still fell short.
Raila then embarked on a mission that would ultimately deliver a fatal blow to Moi’s project in 2002 with his ‘Kibaki Tosha’ declaration.
Raila was getting ready to contest again that year but in wheeler-dealing we had never seen before, Raila and Kibaki agreed to cooperate under terms memorialised in the infamous MOU Kibaki would rip to pieces soon after he was sworn in as country’s third president.
If you’ve ever heard the idiom no good deed goes unpunished, what Kibaki did to Raila and the MOU is a classic example.
Someone else would have been crushed and gone crazy but not Raila. A veteran of even worse at the hands of barbaric Nyayo House ball crushers and torture specialists, Raila took a deep breath and went back to the drawing board.
The outcome was a massive defeat for Kibaki in the 2007 elections, for which the precursor was the 2005 referendum in which the Raila-led Oranges emerged victorious against Kibaki and his government’s proposed new constitution.
The Orange Democratic Movement or ODM, which was instrumental in defeating the 2005 flawed constitutional proposals, proved to be formidable. It was victorious not only defeating the flawed constitution, but also the party was even more formidable in the 2007 elections when Raila easily floored Kibaki.
In a real democracy, Raila would have been sworn in as president in 2007, and who knows what direction the country would have gone, other than to say not where it did following the obvious rigging to keep Kibaki in power.
As one on a team that heavily lobbied in Washington for months to bring peace in Kenya, I knew Raila getting the prime minister’s spot was only a temporary stop on his way to becoming president come 2013.
Let me not repeat for the umpteenth time what happened in 2013 but I believe few would disagree with the conclusion neither candidate won in the first round but the powers that be decided to do away with round two because Raila surprised them by not performing as strongly as they had assumed and braced for his performance.
In 2017, the Supreme Court nullified the August election because Raila won but the powers that be once again said to hell with voters and did their thing.
Saying the same crooks were in place to run the fresh elections ordered by the Supreme Court, Raila boycotted the elections, setting in motion events that would culminate in the infamous handshake with now-retired former President Uhuru Kenyatta.
Then came 2022 when Ruto shocked everyone but himself and a few in the know by hoisting himself to the presidency. Deputy William Ruto was declared the winner.
Although it’s tempting for Raila to vie again, especially given how poorly Ruto has performed as President, being the AU chairman instead is more certain and more befitting the statesman he has become.
This explains why Ruto and team are eager to have Raila ship out to wherever AU Chairmen operate and give them breathing room to deal with Raila’s ‘orphans’.
As history has proven time and again, even an orphan can rise to the height of power and fame.
