None is without blemish

Prof Makau Mutua suggested in yesterday's Op-Ed piece in the Sunday Nation that Raila Odinga should kick out William Ruto and the 'ruto-lites' out of the Orange Democratic Movement Party of Kenya (Why Eldoret North MP should not dine with reformers). He describes Mr Ruto's meteoric rise in KANU and his ascension to the seats of power in both President Moi's and President Kibaki's governments, starting out as an Assistant Minister and being suspended by President Kibaki from the Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Technology. What Prof Mutua glosses over is the fact that when Mr Ruto was useful, Mr Odinga had no qualms striking a mutually beneficial arrangement with Mr Ruto, using him in his war-to-end-all-wars with KANU in the run up to the 2002 general elections, in his war with Mwai Kibaki to defeat the Wako Draft in 2005, and in mobilising the populous North Rift for the ODM in 2007.

The tone and timbre of Prof Makau's piece seems to be that Mr Odinga has a greater claim on the presidency than Mr Ruto, given Mr Ruto's unsavoury past and his continued association with a political culture that, in Prof Makau's estimation and sans proof, Kenyans want no truck with. No one will dispute the fact that President Moi and KANU were the two worst things that ever befell Kenya and Kenyans. The corruption and crime that thrived within that party and in its government beggar belief, even today. The fact that Moi's blue-eyed boys are free today is proof that Kenya and Kenyans are not yet ready to bring to book every man and woman who ever profitted unfairly or unlawfully from what amounted to the biggest criminal organisation in the Republic of Kenya, the KANU government. Prof Makau also glosses over the fact that Raila Odinga's initial rapprochement with Moi's KANU in early 2002, much as it has been painted as a strategic plan to destroy KANU, was a pragmatic realisation that Mr Odinga needed to tone down his anti-Moi rhetoric if he was to be taken seriously by the masses. This cynical use by Mr Odinga of the millions who support him has been one of the defining features of his political coming of age, especially after the 1997 general elections. It is a quality that he has cultivated since he entered Parliament, most recently demonstrated in the manner in which he declared solidarity with the suffering people of Northern Kenya, and the plight of the refugees flowing in from neighbouring strife-torn Somalia.

I think Prof Makau recognises this which is why even he is not pretending that ODM, as a party, is a democratic outfit, in which dissenting voices will be given an opportunity to be heard or the concept of "one man, one vote" is taken seriously. When Prof Makau urges Raila Odinga to "kick out" Mr Ruto and his allies from the party, he acknowledges that ODM has become the personal political vehicle of Mr Odinga and that rather than attempting to persuade Mr Ruto by any means as to the error of his position, Mr Oodinga should act as Niccolò Machiavelli would probably have advised by striking first, striking fast and striking hard. None of the parties to the sorry state of affairs in ODM is blameless; all have been tainted, one way or the other, through association to each other, to KANU, and most illuminatingly, with President Moi. Not even Mr Odinga can claim that his conscience is snow-white clean; the violence that occurred in 2007 and 2008, regardless of his mealy-mouthed claims of innocence, would not have occurred if he had not claimed he had been unfairly denied victory by Mwai Kibaki. His call for "mass action" was the spark that lit that particular tinder. Since that defeat, and after his self-serving alliance with Mwai Kibaki in the Grand Coalition Government, Mr Odinga has done everything he could to consolidate the reins of ODM in his very capable hands. What Prof Makau, and the rest of Kenya, should realise is that it is a fallacy that there are any 'democrats' in Kenya's body politic; none has proven that they will sacrifice the chance at the presidency for the people of Kenya; none has demonstrated the willingness to jettison a political alliance for the people of Kenya; and none has admitted that they were wrong to lie, cheat, steal and refuse to pay taxes. Not William Ruto and not the mighty Raila Odinga.