Truth be told, Raila had nothing to do with the Kasarani Orange polls fiasco

By Dennis Onyango

Nairobi, Kenya: Last week, The Standard on Sunday all but named ODM leader Raila Odinga as the sponsor of the “Men in Black” who disrupted his party’s National Delegates Convention in Kasarani. The paper should not have. The NDC was an ODM function, organised by the party. Raila had placed so much hope in the exercise, put in much time and energy, spent personal resources on it and resisted calls for its postponement because he wanted to put the elections behind and embark on other critical national and party issues.

Throughout the campaigns, Raila explained time and again that he had no preferences between the two main groups that had emerged.

He acknowledged that he was being portrayed as supporting the group that included Dr Agnes Zani and Dr Paul Otuoma. But he persistently explained that he saw this as politics in which some tried to gain advantage over the other while others tried to portray themselves as underdogs fighting against monumental odds in a bid to win sympathy votes. Raila also explained that the attempts at character assassination were unfortunate but not unexpected. After all, the candidates belonged to the same party, meaning they subscribed to the same ideology and had similar stand on policy issues. Getting personal was not wholly unexpected under such circumstances. But he constantly warned against it, and indeed, it was really minimal. Raila openly objected to the idea of branding some people as moles in the party. Time and again, Raila agreed with the analogy of Budalangi MP Ababu Namwamba, a key candidate that the campaigns ought to be seen as a friendly warm up match. The real league was coming later, against Jubilee.

About a week to the NDC, it became clear that animosity was building in the party between the two main camps. Getting the Ababu team to the table with Dr Zani’s was getting impossible. Each side was suspicious of the other. Each questioned the other’s intentions and a campaign that was expected to rejuvenate was now demoralising supporters.

That is what sparked off the flurry of meetings that the Standard on Sunday portrayed as conspiracy gatherings at which the decision to hire “Men in Black” was taken.

The first meeting was between the party leader and the team of Oparanya and Zani who claimed they had information that their rivals were planning chaos and ferrying in youths from outside town. Raila asked them to report the matter to the Secretary General who was a member of the Organising Committee chaired by the party’s Executive Director Magerer Langat. George Aladwa and Ruben Ndolo were also members of this committee. Each time Raila met one camp, he insisted on meeting the other too. Mr Odinga acknowledged that one of his meetings with Mr Namwamba’s group was charged and difficult. This group raised concerns about security at the venue and claimed that Mr Ndolo and Mr Aladwa were planning chaos. The team was contemplating a boycott of the NDC. After lengthy deliberations that ran past midnight over dinner, Raila assured Mr Namwamba and his group that he would get Aladwa again and share the concerns. That was the reason behind the meeting at the night meeting with Aladwa and Mr Ndolo about which the Standard on Sunday reported Raila had dinner and asked youths to do as the leaders told them.

There was no dinner and no youth at this meeting. It was past midnight and Raila had just come from Kempinsky where he had dinner with the Namwamba group. At this meeting, Raila impressed on Aladwa and his team the need to ensure there was no interference with the NDC, telling him what their opponents had just reported.

There was a meeting at Raila’s private offices in Upper Hill. In fact, the media that had wind of it were allowed in and Ndolo and Aladwa addressed them.

The meeting was not with Nairobi delegates as the source told the paper. It was with ODM chairpersons from all the 47 counties. Many other people joined, turning it into a rally of sorts at which loud speakers were used.

Now even a beginner in politics knows that you don’t discuss strategy in a rally. You certainly don’t announce strategy over loud speakers.  Yet this is the event at which the single source told the paper that the decision to disrupt the polls was discussed. Given the polarization that had gripped the party, it would have been greatly naïve to discuss poll disruption at a meeting where you could not tell who was supporting who in the campaign.

If the polls had to be disrupted, those doing it did not have to be in uniform. It would have been easier for them to be unmarked. So why would anybody spend Sh200, 000 on suits for a job that could be done without uniforms?

Yes, there were police officers at the venue. But the decision to engage youths was also taken by the organising committee. On the morning of the meeting, the committee reported its decision to deploy party youths to man the venue and to increase the number from 25 to 50. The entire 1000-plus word story was based on the narration of just one “ODM senior official from Nairobi” who remains anonymous.  The reliance on one anonymous source for a story about an event arising from a campaign that had multiple players and which had split the party into at least three formations raises authenticity and credibility questions.

But more disturbing is the failure by the writers to reach the man their narrative was building towards blaming: Raila Odinga.  The NDC saga is now the subject of investigations. But the idea of a party leader organising a function, inviting dignitaries even from abroad and planning its disruption simply does not add up.