Has Raila made this deal with Kibaki?

This is a rumour I have been repeatedly hearing for almost a year and a half now. However I have failed to verify the information and like many of the other tips I receive all the time, I have been ignoring it.
But now it seems that recent political developments are confirming it more and more by the day and I can’t help but revisit what I have been told and look at it next to recent happenings.

The information is that PM Raila Odinga has made a deal with Mwai Kibaki that he will support the fight to keep the latter away from any Hague prosecution (even after he leaves the presidency in 2012) and in return the president will mobilize the support of Central province to back Raila to the hilt for the presidency in 2012. That supposedly 2012 winning team will consist of Raila as President and Uhuru as his running mate and Vice president.

Let me first repeat what I have said here in this blog many times. Raila Odinga’s contributions to Kenya are considerable but he will never be president of Kenya. He is probably one of the best presidents Kenya will never have. Sadly he won the 2007 elections and should be serving as President right now. But alas his chance has passed. In the next general elections Kenyans will elect a fresh crop of people who have mostly never been in mainstream politics again, starting from the president. This determination to give the motherland a real fresh start with the new constitution is gathering momentum by the day and will be unstoppable by the time we go to the polls. But that is a story for another day and another controversial post. For now the most tell tale sign that there could have been a deal is the strange behaviour of ODN after Ocampo released his list.

An official statement from the ODM high command and parliamentary group shortly after the Ocampo 6 was named drowned in all the hype and noise” from PNU operatives. However the statement speaks volumes and explains why there seems to be a deafening silence from ODM members.

The carefully worded statement expressed solidarity with the Ocampo 6 including William Ruto who has fallen out badly with the party chairman in recent months. Individuals within the party who have always advocated for a Hague solution have been strangely quiet.

So as ODM and it’s leading lights changed their minds about the Hague being the best chance to strike a mortal blow on old man impunity?

Even stranger is the fact that despite the ODM MPs have failed to respond to thinly veiled attacks at the PM by PNU legislators who are saying that the whole Ocampo thing has been orchestrated by a presidential candidate who wants to clear away competitors for the high office ahead of the 2012 polls.

But some PNU supporters have confused the issue even further by claiming that William Ruto and Henry Kosgei’s defense will implicate Raila. Actually, insiders have revealed shocking details to this blogger of what exactly happened at the height of the post election skirmishes. Interestingly these insiders were close supporters of Ruto. From what they say, Raila did not play any role in the skirmishes. If anything he annoyed Kalenjins greatly by “being scared.”

I found the following two statements from some of those I spoke to fascinatingly revealing;

“When things got really hot, Raila was scared but Ruto was excited and wanted war.”

“Kenyans have forgotten that if it hadn’t been for Ruto’s bravery and that of the Kalenjin’s Kibaki’s election theft would have been allowed to stand and today ODM would be in the opposition and Raila would be a nobody. Instead Raila flys around the world on government money and gets his toilet paper paid for by the state while spitting on the faces of Kalenjins.

So what really happened in those dark days following the bedroom swearing in of Mwai Kibaki after a stolen presidential election?

According to information from the same insiders and those who were on the ground then, Ruto was swept along in the Kalenjin wave of the time and could do very little to resist. The community was fed up with the Kibaki presidency like most Kenyans but had also been deeply incited against the Kikuyu community by the ODM campaigns. Without doubt a Raila victory would have appeased the community somewhat (although evictions would still have take place but probably with much less blood being spilt). But when Kibaki stole the presidential elections it handed the community the perfect “excuse” to let loose their anger.” Even if Ruto had refused to swim with the wave (and being a politician battling for his political survival against political veterans with much deeper pockets like the Mois, this was highly unlikely) nothing much would have changed. And so the Eldoret North MP had to sing the tune of the mob and he rose to the occasion magnificently. There is no doubt that the bloody violence unleashed in the Rift Valley that continued to spread was what finally brought the stubborn Mwai Kibaki and his PNU diehards to their knees and onto the negotiation table.

Contrary to what many PNU supporters think, calling for mass action is NOT a crime against humanity. Neither is calling for civil disobedience. The PM and his high command are on record for doing both. Having said this, rather than the Ocampo prosecutions smoothing the way for a Raila presidency it has in fact complicated matters considerably. For all intents and purposes it will cause him to lose the whole of the Rift Valley and vast areas of Central province, (with or without Kibaki’s nod) two constituencies that any victorious presidential candidate cannot do without.

It is interesting to note that Uhuru Kenyatta’s first reaction to being named in the Ocampo 6 was that the whole thing was of no consequence. That is certainly not true. Just watch the damage being named on that list will do to all six politicians in the next 6 months. Of course Ruto will be elevated to the status of his famous namesake, Koitalel arap Samoei amongst the Kalenjin community, but that in itself will completely destroy any shred of a national image this so-called presidential candidate had. In other words he is finished politically irrespective of what verdict emerges from the Hague.

P.S. Francis Atwoli is without doubt a presidential candidate for 2012. A misplaced one at that. Plenty of proof for that but the latest is the careless statements he is now making calling the Ocampo 6 heroes (Mashujaa) in a cheap vain attempt to attract the Kalenjin and Kikuyu vote for his presidency. Even if he was a serious candidate I don’t want to elect a president who misuses the word Mashujaa so badly….

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Fascinatingly interesting comment in the previous post:

Anonymous said...
some said that kumekucha is dead, yet so many articles in various kenyan newspapers and what have you are beginning to regurgitate posts and comments that have appeared on kumekucha in the last couple of months. mmmmmm. it's very difficult to fool the public all the time.