I have always dreamt of a Raila presidency, but not like this

ODM leader Raila Odinga speaks during an interview with 'The Standard' at his Karen residence, Nairobi, 2016. [Edward Kiplimo, Standard]

In May 2012 I said in this column that Raila Odinga lived on the right side of history. He was a conscious, firm and heroic votary for justice and democracy.

I supported this paragon of just leadership and the search for a free, equitable and fair society. I was going to vote for him as my president in 2013, I said. Moreover, I had voted for him in 2007.

To date, I remain persuaded that, regardless of what Justice Johannes Kriegler of South Africa says about the 2007 election outcome, Raila's 2007 election was stolen.

It was a painful experience. It still hurts today. When half of the Grand Coalition Cabinet of 2008 – 2013 defied and mocked him as Prime Minister, it hurt. The “nusu-mkeka” memory still hurts. 

Yet, that was Raila in a gone age. He is a dream in a deep past, replaced today with a less inspiring and deficiently believable liberator. He evokes the memory of the four different Jomo Kenyatta profiles that Ngugi wa Thiong’o paints in the prison diary titled Detained.

Two of these were the Kenyatta who was detained and the Kenyatta who detained. The detaining Kenyatta put people behind bars even without the benefit of fair trial. He condemned and punished them unheard. In Ngugi’s estimation, one Kenyatta was a hero, the other a villain. The villain reneged from what the hero believed in. 

ODM leader Raila Odinga (right), 1993. He, alongside other leaders, openly led Kenya's multi-party crusade and faced detention. [File, Standard]

Renegades abound in world history and in literature. In George Orwell’s dystopian Nineteen-Eighty-Four, the great hero against dictatorship embraces the great despot called Big Brother.

The novelist remarks, “He gazed at the enormous face (of Big Brother). Forty years it had taken him to understand what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.”

As I file this column, Raila's ace lawyers, James Aggrey Orengo and Paul Otiende Amollo, have won similar victories alongside the political leader some people call Baba.

They are making confounding political remarks outside the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC), regarding their client, Murang’a County Woman MP, Sabina Chege, and her potentially dangerous remarks on electoral integrity in Kenya.

I leave the merits and demerits of her remarks to IEBC. Years hence, the history of the times shall be written. It will talk of renegade great heroes who turned their backs to all they previously believed in. For Raila it will be whole stand-alone volumes.

The supporting cast will make for massive chapters or, at any rate, significant paragraphs – or footnotes. Future generations will wonder why, like Winston Smith the lead character in Orwell’s story, they “wasted so many years, fighting for things they did not believe in.”

But history will wonder, too, why they thought that everyone should migrate with them into turn-face spaces. For there seems to be a belief in the country that when some people change the truth and migrate to a new truth – that is basically a lie – everyone else should migrate with them.

You are expected to be an unthinking zombie with regard to yester heroes. They know everything and are always right. Like Ruth the Moabites, where they go you should go with them. 

ODM leader Raila Odinga holds a bible aloft after swearing an oath as Prime Minister, 2008. [Courtesy]

I have previously wanted Raila to be my president. Yet I never dreamt of him arriving as anyone’s venture. Several times now, I have seen TV footage of a governor, a woman county MP, Raila's own brother, and several ODM MPs, bragging that they now have the Deep State and the system. That they are now assured of electoral victory.

Moreover, election laws are tampered with, apparently to ensure a predetermined outcome. I press my head in my big hands and wonder where we lost it, that we would welcome the possibility of stealing an election as glorious.

How different and better are we from those we call thieves? When you steal an election, you will spare nothing else.

-Dr Barrack Muluka is a strategic communications advisor. www.barrackmuluka.co.ke