From left: Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka, Prime Minister Raila Odinga and President Mwai KIbaki before they addressed the nation from KICC, Nairobi, on August 5,2010 during victory celebration after the referendum in which the YES won.
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Raila Odinga, Kalonzo Musyoka feud and plot to oust Mwai Kibaki
This is an excerpt from Oburu Oginga's book 'In the shadow of my father'.
In case you missed them, read: Saitoti’s strange behaviour and Kipkalia Kones’ near punch-up with Raila
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The entire Narc team was in high spirits, with expectations across the country sky-high. It was time for our country to have a new beginning.
For the first time in Kenya’s history, Kanu was out of power. Mwai Kibaki and Narc won with over 65 per cent against Kanu’s Uhuru Kenyatta. By the time ECK chairman Samuel Kivuitu announced the results, Kenyatta and William Ruto had long called their own press conference to concede defeat. Kenyatta’s running mate, Musalia Mudavadi, who had been Moi’s vice-president for sixty days, did not even show up for the concession press conference.
After the momentous swearing-in ceremony at Uhuru Park, most leaders joined the new President at State House for a luncheon. At some point, I walked towards where Kibaki was seated to congratulate him but amazingly I was pushed away by his security personnel. I was used to travelling and walking with Kibaki everywhere before and during campaigns. Within hours, things had changed and I could not just believe it. Kibaki himself was watching the drama as his people pushed me away like a loafer. He kept quiet and did nothing. It dawned on me that a great betrayal had just happened and shortly something would go terribly wrong. Per the MoU, Michael Kijana Wamalwa was now the new vice-president.
Immediately after the luncheon we went to Nairobi Club to meet other LDP legislators and discuss a way forward. One of us, Moody Awori, had been the chairman of the top Narc campaign organ called the Summit. We had earlier agreed that we would submit our names to Moody Awori, who would take them to Kibaki for inclusion in the Cabinet. The MoU was very clear on the portfolio balance. Later, Moody Awori informed us that Kibaki had accepted the list and that we should wait for his announcement. Interestingly, we found Ngilu there, complaining that we were forwarding our names while hers had not been considered either.
Ministry of Roads
To our consternation, Kibaki announced the Cabinet without paying heed to our agreement. It was as though the MoU that brought him to power never existed. Out of the list we gave, only Raila was asked to choose which ministry he wanted to head. He chose the Ministry of Roads. Some LDP members, namely Raphael Tuju and Ochilo Ayacko, had not been in our list but were now made Cabinet ministers. In a meeting that followed with the President, I informed Kibaki that we would be in trouble with our supporters, especially in Nyanza, because they had agreed to support Kibaki and Narc on the promise that Raila would be named prime minister.
Kibaki mumbled something in his characteristic style but I could decipher something to the effect that he was certainly not going to have two centres of power in his government. I did not want to believe what I thought he said. I asked Kibaki to come to Nyanza and try to explain to our angry supporters what he told me, and he said he would come. But that was the end of the matter.
The new Cabinet was to be sworn in on January 6, 2003. A day before, I joined Joseph Kamotho, Gor Sungu and Mutinda Mutiso in a press conference, where we told our supporters that LDP had been short-changed in the new arrangement. The next day, as Kibaki witnessed the swearing-in of his Cabinet, Kajwang rounded up 24 Narc MPs and loudly complained that Kibaki and his NAK wing of the coalition had trashed the MoU that was basis of the entire Narc dream... The Narc journey had started on the wrong footing. The rickety juggernaut that removed Kanu from power could only creak and tweak on its way towards imminent disaster.
Contentious draft constitution
After the Narc victory of 2002, the CKRC (Constitution of Kenya Review Commission) was reconstituted in 2003. The CKRC draft of 2002 formed the basis of the talks we were involved in at the Bomas of Kenya. The NAK side of government wanted to take the Bomas Draft to the AG immediately for ratification. But trouble started when some people went to court, and on March 23, 2004 the High Court blocked the CKRC from taking the Zero Draft, as it was initially called, to the AG. Five days later, another group went to the High Court and secured orders barring Parliament from discussing the draft until Section 47 of the Constitution had been amended.
The following day, members of LDP, Kanu and Ford-Kenya met to explore ways of negotiating around the two High Court rulings. Essentially, the process seemed to have hit a wall after years of struggle, effort and even bloodshed. President Kibaki met MPs at State House twice later in the same week but no broad agreements were reached.
In May, a large consultative meeting was held in Mombasa. It was supposed to be the mother of all meetings, with all MPs and the President expected to attend, but it was a monumental flop. Only 25 MPs absented themselves with apologies. Tellingly, 96 others absented themselves without apologies. I was among those who skipped the meeting. Yet it was from this meeting that was absconded by more than half the MPs that resolutions were reached to hand over the Bomas Draft to AG Amos Wako for ratification. The draft Wako prepared, called the Kilifi Draft... was neither agreeable to most of the legislators in Kenya nor to the majority of the delegates in the CKRC.
In a nutshell, that was how we arrived at a contentious draft that was pushed for a referendum scheduled for November 21, 2005. The ECK gave the orange symbol for those who opposed the draft and a banana symbol to those who were campaigning for it.
From the beginning, the banana team reckoned with a bigger rebellion from its rank and file than its predecessor Kanu. Leader of the Official Opposition Uhuru Kenyatta teamed up with LDP to form a broad team of seasoned politicians who felt the Kilifi Draft was wrong for Kenya. Instead of devolving power and resources from the centre, as leaders had been promising Kenyans for over a decade, the proposed Constitution seemed to have added more power to the centre. The document also seemed to have skirted around the land problem, which was one of the most contentious issues in the country.
The last and biggest meeting of the orange team was held at the Kenyatta Sports Grounds in Kisumu. The boisterous crowds, the infectious air of camaraderie and the sense of purpose in our team were so pervasive that we knew we wanted this thing to continue even after defeating the banana team. It was Najib Balala, who had been leading the Coast campaigns, who first came up with the idea that we could form a permanent union out of our orange camaraderie. I remember seeing him going around talking to Raila, Kalonzo, then Uhuru Kenyatta, urging them to turn the orange agenda into a movement and political party.
One main reason why most leaders felt we needed an orange movement to canvass our agenda into one vehicle was that we came from different political parties. Our colleagues from Kanu had made it clear that even if we collaborated, they would never abandon their party for LDP. Both Kenyatta, who was the chairman of Kanu, and William Ruto, who was the secretary-general, had said they were willing to work with us in a new outfit where all of us were insiders.
When the suggestion was floated to form an orange movement, it seemed to be just the medicine the doctor ordered. We decided to form an outfit called the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) by the time we won the referendum by 57 per cent against 43 per cent received by the banana side.
President Mwai Kibaki was stunned. He immediately dissolved the Cabinet and fired ministers who opposed the draft Constitution. He then raided Kanu and appointed their MPs to senior positions. The Kanu beneficiaries included Njenga Karume, who was appointed to the Cabinet even though he campaigned against Narc in 2002. Karume and Kibaki were old buddies and now they were reconciled.
Kibaki then reached out to Ford-People and took Simeon Nyachae and Henry Obwocha. Nyachae was excited because he found an opportunity to sneer at us for throwing him under the bus in 2002. He then ordered the government chief whip, Norman Nyagah, to kick out Orange members from key parliamentary committees.
An enterprising lawyer called Mugambi Imanyara had gone ahead of us and registered the ODM as his own party, complete with the single orange symbol that we had used during campaigns. We had to settle for the name Orange Democratic Movement-Kenya (ODM-K).
Suspicious reports
As we entered 2007, a large group of leaders had declared their interest in running for the presidency. Musalia Mudavadi had learned from his political acrobatics of 2002 and was now with us. One of the key LDP leaders, Moody Awori, could not join Orange because he was the vice-president. Others who wanted to be president under an Orange banner included Najib Balala, Joseph Nyagah, Kalonzo Musyoka, Uhuru Kenyatta, Musalia Mudavadi, William Ruto and Raila Odinga.
A group of elders were asked to form a committee under the chairmanship of Fred Gumo. They were supposed to interview and vet all prospective candidates. I was a member of that group. I remember interviewing Ruto, Kenyatta and Balala. A small group was selected from our group to further speak to the presidential candidates in private.
This smaller group was chaired by David Musila and I remember Chris Okemo and I were also members. As deputy Speaker, it was easy for Musila to acquire a committee room inside Parliament, so we decided to rely on him whenever we wanted to speak to a presidential candidate in private. It didn’t take us long to discover that, while other candidates were strong in certain areas, Raila and Kalonzo were the main contenders for the presidential ticket. Kalonzo was especially adept at beating his own drums. With his confidante Musila as our chairman, we knew he would be a little biased towards his friend.
There were also suspicious reports being circulated, complete with opinion polls showing Kalonzo was the most popular politician in Kenya. Some intelligence officers at the NIS had done impressive calculations based on propaganda and circulated reports indicating that Kalonzo had euphoric support in Ukambani that could not be transferred to another candidate. The papers also said Raila had euphoric support from his support bases, and that he was capable of transferring that support to another candidate.
The reports, some of which were picked up by journalists, were calculated to convince ODM-K to nominate Kalonzo Musyoka as its presidential candidate. The PNU side knew that if we picked Kalonzo they had a chance of beating us in the polls. The larger group from which we were selected was growing impatient with us because Kalonzo and Raila seemed to be pulling in different directions. Their style of campaigns was markedly different. The group of elders wanted recommendations but we didn’t have any yet. It was now mid-2007 and I personally felt we were running out of time.
One day, my team decided to summon Raila and Kalonzo to Karen Country Club for a talk. The two had been to Addis Ababa together and when they arrived they were in high spirits. When we sat down, Kalonzo started saying how he was willing to die for his “brother” Raila but he didn’t know whether Raila was willing to die for him. In the end, we agreed that Musila and I would draw some recommendations and then report to the duo and elders. We insisted that everyone should abide by our recommendations.
Tomorrow: In the last instalment, Dr Oginga reveals when Ruto-Raila differences began and talks about working with Uhuru Kenyatta.
