Raila Odinga: Business as usual has flopped

CORD leader Raila Odinga speaks to ‘The Standard on Sunday’ in Nairobi, Sunday. [PHOTO: BONIFACE OKENDO/STANDARD]

Former Prime Minister Raila Odinga insists that the country must go into a structured national dialogue to address pressing issues including insecurity, rising cost of living, corruption, threats to devolution and unemployment among others. Mr Odinga responded to questions by The Standard on Sunday. Excerpts.

QUESTION: President Uhuru Kenyatta says the dialogue you are demanding is an everyday affair and that you should channel your demands through Parliament. Comment?

ANSWER: We do not think what we are calling for dialogue on are everyday affairs. Never before have so many of our people been killed so easily and so frequently by criminals. Never before have we seen so many tourists fleeing our land, so many hotels being closed and so many jobs being lost in one go. We have never before seen so many government projects turning into scandals one after another and even MPs lamenting in public about their communities being shut out of lucrative tenders. The institutions we created including the Houses of Parliament are emasculated by Jubilee’s infamous tyranny of numbers, which is being deployed against the people. That is why we are asking that people be allowed to exercise their constitutional right to exercise their sovereignty directly through dialogue. Business as usual, the so-called established channels, will not work. They have so far failed. It appears the citizens and the leaders in government are living in two different worlds.

QUESTION: You have been talking about a political storm should the government refuse to heed your call for a national dialogue conference. Please elaborate.

Some people have called this a threat. It is not. It is a statement of the problem as it is. Sometimes a doctor will tell you, take this medicine. It is very bitter but if you don’t take it, your leg may have to be cut. That is not a threat. It is a reflection of the situation of the patient.

Nobody doubts that our country is heading in the wrong direction and people are hurting. But our call for dialogue is being called noise. We are told we are dividing the country.

How does a call for people to sit together around a table divide a country? We fear that if people do not sit to discuss and the government keeps dispensing remedies that don’t work, people will at some stage say enough is enough.

QUESTION: A section of Jubilee leaders are claiming that you were in the US on a mission to set the ground to destabilise the government. Your response?

That claim by Jubilee is the best statement on the smallness of our politics, the shallowness of what passes for intelligence brief in our country, the confusion and uncertainty the country is wallowing in and how determined the regime is to take Kenya to the past. It has a scary semblance to what used to happen in the 1980s when only a few were seen to mean well for the country while others were supposed to be agents of foreign masters working to destabilise the country. That was the time when those expressing divergent opinion were labelled wasiotosheka, wanaojitakia makuu and waliopoteza mwelekeo. We may be heading back there.

The programme I attended is publicly acknowledged and recognised by the US government as part of Boston University. What it entails is not a secret. It is even on their website. Who else was on the programme and who has attended it in the past is also in public domain. What I did, including giving lectures in Harvard, Princeton, Columbia, Morehouse, Elizabeth City and Massachusetts universities were also in the open.

Those respected institutions are not for clandestine activities. It is really a pity that our politics is sinking this low, but I am not surprised. I was there with former Prime Minister of Tanzania Hon Sumaye. He has not been accused of anything back home. Instead their embassy in Washington welcomed him as their country’s ambassador. Sometimes, one can only pity our country.

QUESTION: So why, in your view, is this happening?

A: Jubilee is on a panic mode, looking for excuses and someone to blame for its failure. All failing regimes try to invent an enemy. Jubilee needs to look inwards. That is where the enemy is. That is where the failures emanate. Raila was not here when the courts stopped the laptops project. The project was not stopped by US courts. It was done by our own courts. Raila did not tell them to pay for Anglo Leasing. Yes, I said not all Anglo Leasing projects were fake. But some were. I did not stop them from explaining which one is this they were paying for and who was receiving the money. I did not increase the taxes that have raised the cost of living. The opposition is innocent. All Kenyans, or majority of them are victims of Jubilee. This includes class one children who were promised laptops.

QUESTION: What was your mission in the US?

The programme I was on allows leaders, both current and former, to reflect on their countries and continents, share and exchange experiences with other leaders and also do some mentoring of the youth. I did all this. I tutored graduate students in Boston universities and gave lessons particularly to those studying International Relations, Comparative Economics and Third World politics. I talked about the state of African politics and economies and gave projections of the future. I shared my thoughts on where Kenya fits in that future. I also gave lectures at some top US universities including Harvard, Columbia, Princeton, Morehouse, Elizabeth City and University of Massachusetts where I appealed to the administration to increase scholarship and admission opportunities to young Kenyans. My appeal and my lectures were very well received. In fact, I never exhausted all lecture invitations and I will be going back to complete them. I was a good ambassador for our country as I always do.

QUESTION: While in the US, you were reported to have had a tiff with the Kenyan ambassador there, what was it all about?

I did not have any tiff with any ambassador. I never met the ambassador. I learnt that the ambassador and other Kenya government officials skipped a function with Kenyan athletes in Boston because I was listed on the programme.

QUESTION: Rongo MP Dalmas Otieno and Nairobi County Governor Evans Kidero hosted the President in your political turf Saturday. What do you have to say about the two and Kalausi?

My understanding is that the President was in Nyanza for a funeral and not a political contest. Even if it were a political contest, I see no problem. Nyanza region is part of Kenya. And it is not true that Nyanza is my political turf. I represented a constituency in Nairobi for twenty years. In the last two elections, I received more votes in other parts of the country like the Coast and Western than in Nyanza so it is wrong to try and limit me to Nyanza. I am a leader of Kenya, not a leader of Nyanza. I have been to funerals in Central Kenya, which the President did not attend and it has never been an issue.