Here Are The Basic But Important Reasons Why Veteran Odinga Lost To First Timer Ruto

By Isaac Mutema

Raila Odinga didn’t plan for defeat. The perennial loser this time round came to the polls with a fat sense of a sure winner.

Odinga also arrived at the political game with a huge sense of entitlement. He was kind of thinking that Kenyans were owing him a massive debt for electing him after rejecting him four times already.

In addition to this, the old man was counting a lot on the sympathy card seeing that he is a Luo who has been unfairly stopped by the Kikuyu and Kalenjin from gaining State power.

Odinga was wrong. His father, Jaramogi Odinga Senior was one time the past part of the Kenyan ruling dynasty as has been his chief campaigner, President Kenyatta Uhuru Junior.

Odinga’s father, Odinga Senior happened in the past to share power with Uhuru’s father, Kenyatta Senior.  If Odinga the son of Odinga Senior had forgotten this historical fact, sorry, the voters were, on the other hand, still aware of this piece of history.

Odinga Junior himself has been part of the Kenyan dynasty having run four times previously already for the state, albeit, unsuccessfully as well as served Uhuru’s government as a prime minister.

Who knows, the Kenyan voters could have voted in the manner they voted looking to break the chain of dynasties from taking deep root in their motherland, moreover, in this day and age.

Sorry, Kenya currently boasts of a breed of young voters, moreover, who are well educated and averagely affluent. These kinds of voters don’t vote for tribes or dynasties per se. But are inclined most towards choosing competence as interpreted by them.

Further to that, Odinga came to the game with the support of the sitting president, Uhuru Kenyatta.

With that card assuredly in his bag, Odinga thought that the presidency was for him to win. But Odinga was wrong in his calculations.

By riding on the back of Uhuru, Odinga also accepted to ride on the huge past blunders which Kenyatta Senior committed against Kenyans, those of his anointed successors notably Arap Moi and later Mwai Kibaki and mostly recently, Uhuru Kenyatta Junior himself.

Joining forces with Uhuru was further interpreted by some Kenyans to be pure prostitution whose object was to gain power by either hook or crook.

In short, moralists interpreted Uhuru’s and Odinga’s as an unholy alliance which was up to no good apart from serving the egos and interests of the two allying principals.

By dumping Ruto who helped him to win power from Odinga, Uhuru was seen by the moralists as a latter-day Judas Iscariot.

Consequently, the moralists among the voters ended up backing Ruto in revenge. And as an act of sympathy towards the deputy president.

Not to be discounted also is the fact that Kenya is no longer just like any typical African banana republic where whatever the president happens to support is what ends up taking the day no matter what.

Odinga ought to have detected this long ago. Take the courts for one example. The judges have served Odinga with several doses of their professionalism and impartiality. They have done so by absolutely ruling against Uhuru.

Uhuru other than flexing his muscles over the bad judgements has been humbly and gracefully letting the courts’ decisions be and moving on thereafter with his own life.

The armed forces themselves have been acting professionally and with a high sense of demonstrable impartiality.

No member of the armed forces has been seen or heard acting ultra-vires the law. For instance, beating up candidates or voters, shooting at candidates let alone voters, raiding offices of candidates, arbitrarily arresting candidates and their agents as well as detaining them incommunicado, defacing posters of candidates and such crude things.

If any member of the armed forces, but who I don’t know of myself, has done so, he or she has done so on his own without the armed forces leadership’s consent plus approval.

Sorry comrades, but the press is guilty too of hyping Odinga. The fourth estate has been giving a lot of political marks to Odinga.

This in essence has tended to further swell up the old man’s already swollen ego and hence given him a false sense of a sure victor and ultimately an entitled president.

Overall,

blinded by the inflated but false airs of a sure victor and entitled president, Odinga failed to see the tsunami that was swirling around him.

Consequently, he didn’t plan well ahead in time about how to handle the effects of being swept off his feet by the tsunami that was gathering around him.

This is why when the tsunami finally started to sweep him off his feet, the overly confident victorious Odinga found himself completely bereft of any idea of responding civically to the problem at hand.

Other than responding to the problem at hand as a statesman would, Odinga instead

reacted foolishly and hence ended up committing all sorts of blunders.

The mother of those blunders which Odinga hasn’t to date tellingly denounced, occurred when one of Odinga’s chief campaigners shamelessly and criminally so, commandeered the national votes tallying centre before declaring the same a scene of the crime!

What on Earth stopped Odinga’s team from reporting whatever case they had detected as going on at the tallying centre, is as perplexing as the act of raiding the tally centre itself is.

Yet one cannot rule out the fact that Odinga and his team, except the president Uhuru Kenyatta, hadn’t planned for defeat.

I will repeat for emphasis’ sake. This is why team Odinga has ended up acting unreasonably as soonest as the inevitable doom itself had likewise started looking them straight into the face.

Even in the event, he had turned out to be the ultimate winner, Odinga would have lost the plot of the Statesmanship to Ruto for acting against the probable defeat in the shameless manner he and his team has.

When I return I will show why Ruto could not steal the election as the bad loser Odinga would rather wish the world to believe.