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Tragedy: How deaths of five key political allies shook Raila’s cause to the core

News
 Otieno Kajwang, Fidel Odinga and Chrispin Mbai

Over the years, Opposition leader Raila Odinga has lost some of his key political lieutenants at a most delicate moment.

His own son, Fidel Castro Odinga, described by insiders as the quiet political force behind Raila, is the latest to exit the scene.

Having been in active politics for more than three decades, Raila has rubbed shoulders with many and also lost many political friends.

For the former prime minister, the tragedy has not only been the loss but the timing of the deaths of some of his closest confidantes.

His first born son, for instance, passed on just three days before Raila marked his 70th birthday.

It was also at the turn of a new year, just when the Coalition for Reforms and Democracy (CORD) had re-engineered itself and was planning to roll out a host of political programmes.

To Raila, Fidel was more than a son. He was a personal assistant, political companion and confidante, and all-round aide who hung around the Orange party leader around the clock.

Unknown to many, Fidel was Raila’s behind-the-scenes effective political operative.

 Fidel Odinga

During the 2007 presidential poll, for instance, he was tasked to campaign extensively and secure the Lang’ata Constituency vote as the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) presidential candidate traversed the rest of the country. Fidel ably delivered on this one, as he has done on several other assignments.

Fidel passed on about a month after Homa Bay Senator Otieno Kajwang’s demise. Kajwang’ equally exited the scene at a most crucial time, when the ODM party leader was battling with internal dissent.

Shifting allegiance

The death occurred when Raila was facing rebellion from some political leaders in South Nyanza. Kajwang’ was Raila’s sole experienced political ally from the region and was well placed to stem the revolt.

The timing of Kajwang’s death was almost similar to that of Kipkalya Kones and Lorna Laboso on June 10, 2008.

 Otieno Kajwang

Kones, then Minister for Roads, and Laboso, assistant minister for Home Affairs, perished in a plane crash at a time when the former prime minister’s relationship with William Ruto, then Agriculture minister, was getting frosty.

Raila and Ruto were members of ODM’s elite organ called the Pentagon where they served as partners in the Grand Coalition Government with President Mwai Kibaki’s Party of National Unity (PNU).

By the time of the plane crash, Raila and Ruto were drifting apart and most members of parliament from the now Deputy President’s Kalenjin community were shifting their allegiance from the party leader.

However, Kones and Laboso remained steadfast Raila loyalists. Kones was an experienced and influential politician who had served as a Cabinet minister in previous governments.

Laboso, on the other hand, enjoyed a special bond with Raila’s wife, Ida, whom she regarded as a political mentor.

The demise of Kones (Bomet MP) and Laboso (Sotik MP) near Kajong’a Market in Narok, however, diminished any hopes of Raila maintaining his political hold on the Upper Rift region.

And just a couple of months to the 2013 presidential elections, another of Raila’s prime backers, Martin Shikuku, succumbed to cancer on August 22, 2012.

A veteran politician, who had served in Jomo Kenyatta and Daniel arap Moi governments, Shikuku was a pre-independence and second liberation hero as well as a respected leader, more so among members of his populous Luhya community.

Had he survived, perhaps Raila and his former ODM deputy, Musalia Mudavadi, would not have parted ways before the polls. Alternatively, the seasoned orator would have made Raila’s campaign in western Kenya a lot easier.

Although Raila garnered most of the presidential votes in the region, Mudavadi claimed a fair share of the parliamentary seats in the polls.

And even before CORD had settled down as the official Opposition, Makueni Senator Mutula Kilonzo died at his ranch in Maanzoni, Machakos County, on April 27, 2013.

 Mutula Kilonzo

“It is a terrible, terrible tragedy. It is sad that I should lose my brother so soon after the Senate has been opened.

We had a working lunch together 48 hours ago and he was in perfect health,” mourned Raila, vowing to get to the root cause of Mutula’s death.

Although the respected lawyer was a member of the Wiper Party, he belonged to the wider CORD alliance and had played a lead role in Raila’s presidential campaign, including putting together the subsequent petition challenging Uhuru Kenyatta’s election as Kenya’s fourth President. Mutula’s daughter, Kethi Kilonzo, played a sterling role in pushing Raila’s case.

Raila openly regretted the loss of a brilliant mind that would have otherwise helped CORD to settle down and chart its new path in the Opposition.

Much earlier, in 2003, in the nascent stages of constitution-making, the reform-minded forces were dealt another blow following the death of Crispin Odhiambo Mbai, a University of Nairobi political science professor.

 Chrispin Mbai

Cold-blooded killers walked into Mbai’s Nairobi home on a Sunday, September 14, and sprayed him with bullets, killing him instantly.

The political scientist was at the time chairing the crucial Devolution Committee at the ongoing constitutional conference at Bomas of Kenya.

The architect of the devolved system of government, Mbai was chairing the sensitive committee weighing the possibility of Kenya adopting a parliamentary system of leadership.

At that time, Raila’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) was pushing for the system, with a prime minister as head of government.

The Bomas exercise later ended in utter confusion, with then Justice and Constitutional Affairs minister Kiraitu Murungi declining to recognise the final product of the process as presented by its chairman, Yash Pal Ghai.

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