Even Mr. Rigathi Gachagua has the good sense to pretend that he loved Raila Odinga unreservedly. The late Mr. Odinga was a force of nature, a political phenom. He shaped and reshaped Kenyan politics. He became an institution. It didn't matter what power presidents thought they had, if Raila Odinga adopted a position on any matter, the president had to figure out how much political pain he was willing to endure to try and prove Raila Odinga wrong. More often than not, the president chose peace.
So it is no surprise that men and women of little political consequence are today pretending to have been Mr. Odinga's closest boon friends, that they stood with him even when he was tilting at windmills, that they were the wind beneath his sails, and that they espoused the same [often radical] politics he espoused. In the days after his state funeral, you have seen these political dwarfs lining up at Mr. Odinga's grave, laying wreaths, and paining themselves as the spiritual; successors of Mr. Odinga's politics. It is a wonder Mama Ida Odinga has not chased them from her who with a kiboko.
We are still coming to terms with Mr. Odinga's death. We should have been better prepared; even international icons die. Mr. Odinga was quite aged, and it was unreasonable to expect that the would outlive us all. And because we were not prepared, we are trying, in our own way, to shape the post-Raila-Odinga era, with charlatans and scallawags taking on airs and pretending to being the Second Coming of Raila Odinga, while others try, in underhanded and scurrilous ways, to erase from the historical record the vile and hateful things that said about, and did to, Raila Odinga.
I don't know who among the contenders will inherit Mr. Odinga's political kingdom. But in the 22 months to the next general election, Mr. Odinga's shadow is going to loom quite large. In his political party, the Orange Democratic Movement, no amount of PR engineering is going to Make Mr. Oburu Odinga, Mr. Odinga's elder brother, a charismatic leader. Neither will it make Ms. Gladys Wanga, Homa Bay Governor, any more popular now as she was when Mr. Odinga anointed her as the Homa Bay gubernatorial candidate. The true battle for the leadership mantle in ODM is surely going to be between Mr. Edwin Sifuna, Secretary general and Senator of Nairobi, and Babu Owino, Member for Embakasi East, isn't it? No one knows.
Kenya's political opposition is practically dead. The Minority Party exists in name only. It does not have a unifying figure to direct its energies. Ms. Martha Karua, indefatigable as she might be, is in the same leaky dinghy as Mr. Gachagua and Mr. Kalonzo Musyoka. No one is listening to her, just as no one is listening to the other two has-beens. Peter Anyang' Nyong'o and James Orengo, the late Mr. Odinga's closet political confidants are over the hill same as Mr. Oburu Odinga; they will not be building a political movement on the memory of the late Mr. Odinga any time soon. Their political glory days are long in the past.
The ODM appointees in the Cabinet will keep their mouths shut; no one with any sense talks with their mouth full. The ODM parliamentary party is going to maintain a studious silence as well. Even there champion debaters will say little worthy of attention. They are all trying to work out if they have a political future now that the political memory of the man who brought them to political prominence is swiftly being co-opted by charlatans and scallawags.
The political moment is in President Ruto's hands to shape or shatter. Only one man has the political charisma to affect how his presidency will evolve in the next 22 months: Uhuru Kenyatta. But will Mr. Kenyatta lose interest? Will he demonstrate the late Mr. Odinga's deft political touch? Or will he foolishly and obstinately insist on the deeply unpopular and unliked Mr. Fred Matiang'i as the vessel of his politics?
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