President Uhuru Kenyatta should uphold Raila Odinga’s dignity in defeat

By Kipkoech Tanui

I thought after they politically blew up Raila Odinga they wouldn’t need to gather his smithereens and crush them underfoot. I also may have been wrong that after the outcome of both March 4 election and Supreme Court ruling upholding Uhuru Kenyatta’s win, all these phobias about Raila would end.

I don’t have to be a Raila admirer to be taken aback by the humiliation he has been subjected to at our national airports. I have also taken cognizance of the fact that the rest of the world doesn’t take him as some of us do.

But my first digression; during one of the pro-reform rallies police violently dispersed in 1997, former President Kibaki sought refuge in All Saints Cathedral. The charged police, unleashed by Kanu’s monolithic security machine stormed in, spewing the spat of anger against Opposition leaders, and generously doling out painful lashes and hard-knocks from their cudgels.

When the policemen who had desecrated the church reached where Kibaki was, they respectfully asked him to leave. Unfortunately, one of them had shattered the wrist of former Nithi MP Njoka Mutani.

The bottomline was that on account of age and seniority in Kenya’s politics, plus his gentleman mien, Kibaki was left unscathed.

Police too, you understand, appreciate the role Kibaki played to make Kenya a better place, not for themselves but for all of us, and didn’t need Kanu mandarins to tell them how to treat him!

Second digression; as a university student with blood bubbling with idealism of democratic ideals and who would occasionally write in Society Magazine, I attended the burial service of Raila’s late father Jaramogi Oginga Odinga. There were three highlights to the service at Uhuru Park. First, the mourners shouted down then Vice President Prof George Saitoti when he rose to speak on behalf of government.

Second, Kibaki who was then Leader of Official Opposition turned down the government’s offer of military choppers to carry Jaramogi’s body and his family. “They are in a hurry to see Jaramogi reach his grave but those of us who loved and worked with him will drive by road all the way. Even if it takes us three days, we shall stop at every town for wananchi to bid him farewell,’’ declared Kibaki.

Then came late George Anyona, who in 1982 was detained together with Jaramogi for trying to register an Opposition party. He reminded teary mourners that as the flag of Independent Kenya was first hoisted at the fall of colonialism, Jaramogi was in UN headquarters, hoisting the national flag among those of the global family of nations.

He also reminded Kenyans Jaramogi helped design the Kenyan flag and refused the colonist’s offer to form government in the absence of Mzee Jomo Kenyatta — or to put it differently, Uhuru’s father.

“But today as his body lies before us, his coffin has not been draped even with a piece of the national flag and he died without being given a single medal of honour by our Presidents. Land grabbers got Elder of the Burning Spear and Moran of the Burning Spear, but Jaramogi got nothing.”

He added: “He may never have been President, security agents pulled out this oldman from bed in pyjamas and flew him to detention in the Coast…but today in turning up in thousands, you have garlanded him with the most important medal few in this country will ever get; it is in your hearts and manifests itself in how you have embraced him’’.

Political irrelevance

Now let us go back to Raila; it is true the office of Prime Minister was abolished and he lost the elections, and so naturally has no public office. It was also natural given the outcome of the elections that Ruto would take up his former office, and the Deputy President’s wife Rachel, that of Ida Odinga. That is normal and I don’t think Raila and his supporters expected anything different.

How soon we forget the relief the country got when Raila and Kalonzo Musyoka, a former Vice President, went to State House to meet Uhuru and Ruto just after the petition ruling. Raila and Kalonzo went there despite the cynicism that greeted the Supreme Court ruling and forever devalued the reputation of Chief Justice Willy Mutunga.

Uhuru is too busy and likely too dignified to give such orders as to reduce Raila to where he ‘belongs’ — the corner of political irrelevance. But again junior airport officials can’t humiliate Raila the way they have done without blessings from someone high up in his government.

Uhuru’s is a powerful presidency and VIP lounges aren’t things he and Raila should fight over. It also doesn’t augur well for him to stand aside and see the embers of rivalry between his father and Raila’s rekindled, alongside the attendant bad feelings. Also, it is not in the interest of national reconciliation, which Uhuru promised, to treat Raila the way he has been lately.

Again, as Intelligence chiefs must have told him, it is in the interest of national security and directly his own, to ensure Raila’s security is uncompromised. Why? If he drops dead, even out of heart attack, you know where the fingers of culpability will point.

Finally, Raila gave Kenya so much, including nine years in detention, and surely even Uhuru and Ruto can’t argue against that, and therefore, it is gentlemanly to treat him different, say from you and me. In any case, Uhuru and Ruto will soon be canvassing for votes from every Kenyan voter, including those who voted Raila! In short we need no laws to treat Raila and others who have helped change Kenya differently, and with respect and decorum. We just need to be civil.

Writer is Managing Editor, The County Weekly at The Standard Group.

[email protected]