He had also initiated the collection of the so called 10 million signatures to ensure that the Ruto administration is brought down. Together with his bunch of former officeholders; Oparanya, Martha Karua, Wa Iria, Eugene Wamalwa, Kalonzo and others, they engineered a situation whereby many Kenyans feared for their life and property.
This was because the previous Wednesday, Raila’s supporters, especially goons had destroyed property, raided supermarkets in Kisumu, stole merchandise in places such as Gikomba and harassed innocent people who were going about their businesses.
Apparently, a rally was held at Kamukunji and Raila, realising that maandamano had been a big flop, called off the so called protests at 5 pm. I was in town the whole of that day and though traffic was fewer than normal, the place was as peaceful and secure, with many people going about their businesses. By Thursday, life came back to complete normalcy and by Friday, nobody even remembered that there were the so called maandamano.
All of a sudden, Raila developed some flu and it was alleged that he didn’t have to show up for the maandamano. He went to Malindi on holiday it is so claimed. His bodyguard had been summoned for questioning on what plans they had.
It was interesting to note that trouble shooters like Babu Owino were also arrested alongside Stewart Madzayo, the leader of Minority in the Senate. This time round, the police never took chances and most ODM MPs switched off their phones to avoid being arrested.
Their security had been withdrawn, especially because it has been observed that at times, the police can be misused to cause commotion. Indeed, one of them called Otieno joined protesters to stone a police station. He had 10 rolls of bhang in his possession.
Azimio bloggers were busy hosting fake live feeds on Tik Tok about the situation of maandamano. Some of them had photoshoped images to augment police brutality, but all these came to a naught. The mainstream media as usual decided to amplify very sporadic, few and far in between incidences of protests. If you focus you camera on a burning tyre, one may think that the whole town is on fire.
Some are still pushing for their candidate Raila Odinga who curiously got 67 per cent of their coverage during last year’s general elections, to join govt. They didn’t succeed as more and more Kenyans increasingly aren’t watching TV. In fact, it’s common nowadays to be in a homestead whereby everybody at the sitting table is busy on their phones while the TV is either providing some background noise or is switched off completely.
Rarely do people sit down to watch news as a family as it used to be only less than a decade ago. Newspapers are better read online rather than the once predominant hard copy. This indeed has made the space more democratic thus reducing the effect of biased aggregation.
President William Ruto and his deputy Rigathi Gachagua have thus succeeded in quelling and containing Raila and his troops by demonstrating that they are in charge of the country. In fact, as President Ruto had promised, he indeed stopped the maandamano.
Raila Odinga and Uhuru Kenyatta have finally acknowledged that William Ruto is the president. This is especially so after the police raided the home of Jomo Kenyatta Jr. the eldest son of Uhuru Kenyatta. Ostensibly, he has 28 guns for ‘shooting birds in the Mwea rice scheme’ a hobby that his father Uhuru finds so legitimate as to obtain a court order barring the police from cancelling their licenses.
Raila in his usually predictable manner had apparently enrolled Tanzania’s President Samia Suluhu Hassan to ‘mediate’ between him and President Ruto. State House has since denied this, meaning that Raila is desperate for another ‘handshake’ going by what is in the grapevine concerning the demands that he is making.
However, President Ruto has made it clear that he can only talk to him about matters development but not about the sharing of government. It cannot be that after every general election, Raila will always want to manipulate a sitting president to concede to his demands of getting into the govt through the backdoor.
He did it with Uhuru, and the results were disastrous. A whole progressive constitution was almost mutilated in order to have Uhuru and Raila perpetuate their stranglehold on this country’s leadership. It failed.
President Ruto and his able deputy Rigathi Gachagua has thus proven that it’s not business as usual, and that Raila can finally be tamed.
As Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi aptly put it, one cannot use their own community as a shield. It’s about time that we moved on as a country to rebuild it for both the current and future generations. Kudos to our Kenya Kwanza leadership for putting the interest of our nation first and for protecting life and property as is the mandate of government as per the constitution.
