Raila To Support Kosgey At The Hague: Why The Change Of Heart?

Prime Minister Raila Odinga, Fred Gumo and Henry Kosgei

What is ODM’s official position on the Hague?

The party fought for post election suspects to be taken to the Hague rather than be prosecuted locally. After a rather bruising battle, they won and got their way.

The party is also on record for saying that they will NOT support any Hague-bound suspects financially or otherwise. ODM was also against the PNU policy of using taxpayer’s funds to pay legal fees for the Ocampo 6.

But last weekend the Prime Minister and leader of ODM Raila Odinga made an about-turn, trashed all the good work the party has done in the past in seeking justice for Kenyans and pledged full support for Henry Kosgey who is one of the Ocampo 6. This was during the wedding of Kosgey’s son to a beautiful Kikuyu lass. Read the story HERE.

Kenyans are now very confused. If ODM fully supports Kosgey, why did they fight so hard for the Hague? And now that Kosgey is going to receive full support which obviously includes financial help, what was all the hullabaloo about taxpayers paying legal fees for the Ocampo 6 about?

What clearer evidence does one need to conclude that ODM has no official position on anything. Party policy depends on what mood the party leader woke up with. Or which direction the political winds are blowing. This simply means that if the party leader wakes up feelng friendly towards Kosgey and the ODM members in the Ocampo 6 then the official party line is that of support. But if he wakes up in a foul mood or if Kosgey attends a PNU/Ruto meeting and tells the people to read the sign of the times, then the party position is that of absolutely NO support.

Even former president Daniel “road-side declarations” arap Moi who used to craft government policy on the roadside was at least consistent. The former president always had a firm official position on everything, including wife-beating and ugali in sufurias. Not to mention mini skirts and KBC programming (Moi once banned a KBC sponsored programme educating the masses about family planning called Tushariane. Some hands-on president he was!!).

But I will tell you why Raila Odinga and ODM are not consistent. The problem here is the fact that Raila Odinga is very desperate to be the next president of Kenya. There is nothing wrong with that of course. It is his constitutional right. But the people of Kenya will decide if this is thye kind of president they want based on his track record as Prime Minister.

Sources indicate that Raila handlers have been very busy behind the scenes crafting ways and means for their man to politically win back Rift valley support which they see as being crucial to Raila’s bid for the presidency. And this camp is prepared to do anything to get this support. Hence the sudden warming-up to Kosgey.

Anybody who wants change in Kenya will be alarmed at the PM’s pledge of support for Kosgey. This is the man who bankrupted the once very prosperous insurance company called Kenya National Assurance. It wasn’t even mis-management, the new blue-eyed Raila man just looted the State Corporation dry. He did the same with the 4th All African games held in Kenya in 1987. These are the two main sources of revenue Kosgey used to become the stinkingly wealthy man he is today. So wealthy is he that he was one of the major financiers of ODM in 2007. This is the “good work for the party” that Raila was referring to last Saturday when praising Kosgey for contributions to ODM.

I also have to add that a successful Raila bid for the presidency is very wishful thinking indeed. Politics does not work like that. Consider the following.

In the first multi-party elections of 1992 Kenneth Matiba and Ford Asili gave a very good account of themselves and indeed there are those who believe that Kenneth Matiba won those elections. Those were the Ford Asili elections. And so in 1997 some people assumed that Ford Asili would continue to be very popular countrywide and especially in Central province. Even Kanu strategists rubbed their hands in glee secure in the assumption that the Kikuyu vote would at the very least be split between Kenneth Matiba’s Ford Asili and Mwai Kibaki’s DP. Instead the whole of Central province put their weight behind DP and Mwai Kibaki. And so in 2002 some people assumed that DP would continue to be popular. Instead what happened is that an alliance crafted by Raila Odinga called the National Rainbow Coalition carried the day. But again in 2007 some folks made assumptions and again things changed. Those were the ODM elections and everybody knows that it is Raila who triumphed.

Now some people are sure that in 2012 we will have a repeat of 2007 and that Raila Odinga will carry the day and end up in State house. This reasoning does not make sense based on what we have seen has happened in the past. Not only that. Nationally Odinga benefited from a strong anti-Kibaki wave so that the votes he received were protest votes. With Mwai Kibaki out of the way the protest votes dissappear and the scenario completely changes. What will happen is that Raila will have a strong showing in Luo Nyanza and nowhere else in the republic.

Briefly told: Strange things in the Zimbabwean Voter's register
If you thought Kenyans are good at rigging, then you will change your mind when you hear what is happening in Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe. The voters register there has 40,000 voters aged over 100, "which is four times more than the number of centenarians in the whole of Britain." Then at least 16,000 of these voters all mysteriously share the same birthday of 1st January 1901, while 133,000 voters are between the ages of 90 and 100.

The voters roll also lists about 230 new voters under the voting age of eighteen, including some children who are only one or two years old.

But the biggest problem is that the current roll is based on the 2008 voters roll, which contains about 2.5 million names too many. These "ghost voters" are more than enough to decide the outcome of any election.

Recently instead of removing these fictitious entries, the Registrar-General, Mr Tobaiwa Mudede, an outspoken ZANU PF supporter, has added more than 360,500 new voters.
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Are You A Late Bloomer And Don't Even Know It?

From far right: Mario Puzo, Poster of The Godfather, Colonel Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame, Jomo Kenyatta, Mount Kenya.

A late bloomer is a person whose talents or capabilities are not visible to others until much later than usual in life.

The truth is that the Kenyan political landscape is filled with late bloomers starting with Kenya’s first president and founding father of the nation Mzee Jomo Kenyatta.

Kenya as a nation is just beginning to emerge from the abyss and will no doubt be a late bloomer, just how late is anybody’s guess because she is already almost 50 years old. Still many would argue that for a nation that is still very young.

But in this post I would like to focus more on individuals and what they have achieved. I stumbled on this information and I thought it would make a nice change from all the negativity that comes with the territory that is Kenyan politics.

There is no denying that genius and creativity is popularly associated with the freshness and vigour of youth and indeed there are plenty of examples. Mozart wrote his breakthrough Piano Concerto No. 9 in E-Flat-Major at the age of twenty-one. Orson Welles made his masterpiece, “Citizen Kane,” at twenty-five.

Closer to home Tom Mboya clocked many of his achievements while in his late 20s and early 30s. Mwai Kibaki was in the cabinet in his early 20s. 

But I guess the truth here is best described by what a friend said in a recent Facebook discussion we were having with quite a number of old school mates. He said that those destined for greatness have to finally emerge no matter how long it takes. In other words time is not a factor in true genius and creativity.

So my hope is that if you are reading this and have always felt that you have passed your sell-by-date by a decade or two or even three, then let this be the post that inspires you to turn around your life.

There are some pretty amazing things very old people have done. Jomo Kenyatta did the intricate balancing act of leading Kenya to independence with all the political jostling and set a firm foundation for the new nation of Kenya when he was already well into his seventies.

In business Irene Wells Pennington became best known in her nineties when she helped straighten out irregularities in her husband's oil business after he went senile in his own 90s. Colonel Sanders began his franchise in his sixties and can also be deemed a late in life financial success.

And then there is my all time favourite late bloomer, Mario Puzo. That’s the guy who wrote the runaway best seller called The Godfather. For years Mr Puzo struggled doing the kind of writing where he could not even afford to put food on the table for his family.

Puzo's most famous work, The Godfather, was first published in 1969 (when Puzo was 49 years old). He based it on anecdotes about the Mafia organizations that he had heard during his time in pulp journalism. He later said in an interview with Larry King that his main motivation in writing the book was to make money. By this time he had already written two earlier books that had received great reviews, yet had not amounted to much. As a government clerk with five children, he was looking to write something that would appeal to the masses and make a killing. And it happened beyond Puzo’s wildest dreams because after the huge success of this book, others followed and then the films.

The story of the making of The Godfather is another Cinderella saga. Paramount was in financial trouble at the time of production and was very desperate for a "big hit" to boost business, hence the pressure director Francis Ford Coppola faced during filming. They were determined that The Godfather should appeal to a wide audience and threatened Coppola with a "violence coach" to make the film more exciting. Coppola added a few more violent scenes to keep the studio happy. The scene in which the character of Connie breaks dishes after finding out that her husband is cheating was added for this reason.

And the list can go on and on.

Quit feeling sorry for yourself and get out there and do whatever it is you were brought into this earth to do.