To some, President Kibaki owes a debt of gratitude to Prime Minister Raila Odinga.
It was the opposition presidential candidate who calmed down more extremist elements in his party to agree to a power-sharing agreement. The deal did not only end the post-election violence, but also lent a modicum of legitimacy to a president re-elected in such contestable fashion.
After the initial clashes, President Kibaki and PM Odinga seem to have reached an understanding that confounds even their respective lieutenants.
A remarkable element about the Kibaki-Odinga understanding is that it is not just a PNU-ODM coalition, but one that might also somehow represent the long-elusive Kikuyu-Luo rapproachment.
In some circles, there is even talk that it could lead to a political alliance ahead of the 2012 elections. This is especially so with the fallout in ODM that is seeing Mr Odinga parting ways with powerful Agriculture minister William Ruto, which, in Kenyan dynamics, translates to a Luo-Kalenjin split.
Yet old suspicions die hard. To many, relationships between the two groups will always be defined by historical schisms, betrayal and mistrust. Mr Odinga’s father, Mr Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, helped Mr Jomo Kenyatta out of detention and into State House as the first president.
His reward was being thrown into political limbo for a generation. From the other side, some might see him as the ingrate entrusted with the vice-presidency, but who was too impatient to wait his turn.
Best chance
Some might go back to the 1992 successful conclusion of the multi-party campaign and Mr Oginga Odinga’s best chance to fulfil a life-long quest, only to fall flat when fellow multiparty campaigner Kenneth Matiba and new convert Mwai Kibaki, both Kikuyu, split the opposition vote and thus helped President Moi’s re-election.
There is also 2002, after Mr Raila Odinga went into Kanu, destroyed it from within, and decamped in time to ease President Kibaki’s ascent to power, only for the latter to renege on a power-sharing pact.
That Saturday, 40 years ago, stands out as a pivotal moment in Kenya’s political history that further poisoned relations between Mr Kenyatta and Mr Odinga, and by extension between the “ruling Kikuyu” and the “opposition Luo”.
In July the same year, the charismatic and brilliant Economic Planning minister and Kanu secretary-general Tom Mboya had been assassinated.
It was Mr Mboya, who, in 1966, had devised and executed the strategy that had driven his Luo rival, Mr Odinga, out of the vice-presidency and into opposition. He was seen as the most likely successor to Mr Kenyatta, and his reward for getting Mr Odinga out of the way was a bullet on a Nairobi street.
Assassination
Tensions were still high over the Mboya assassination when Mr Kenyatta made his ill-fated visit to Kisumu. At independence in 1963, Mr Kenyatta was Prime Minister and Mr Odinga his effective deputy.
The relationship soon soured, and it was almost inevitable that Mr Odinga would be drummed out of Kanu in 1966. The Luo naturally saw it as a great betrayal and the fractures wrought have never been healed. In fact, they accentuated with the Kisumu shootings and detention of Mr Odinga.
President Kenyatta died in 1978 without ever again stepping in Luoland. His successor, Mr Daniel arap Moi, inherited the suspicion and distrust of the Luo and their leadership.
Mr Odinga and ex-Kenya People’s Union leaders were locked out of successive elections once Mr Moi came to power because they had not demonstrated sufficient “change of heart”.
President Moi’s natural suspicions were reinforced in the abortive 1982 coup attempt by elements of Kenya Air Force. The farcical attempt was linked to the Odingas. The old man was briefly confined to house arrest. His son, then deputy director of the Kenya Bureau of Standards, was initially charged with treason, which carries the mandatory death sentence, before being detained without trial.
Detention camps
Mr Raila Odinga went on to become a veteran of the Moi era detention camps.
When the agitation for a return of the multiparty system picked up early in 1990, the Odingas, and by extension the Luo, were in the thick of the action. They found ready allies in a large corpus of leading Kikuyu politicians and businessmen who had over the years been shunted aside by the Moi system.
It looked like a match made in heaven, and to the point that President Moi attempted to fight alliance by bringing back the Kikuyu on his side.
Those were the so-called Gema-Kamatusa (Kalenjin, Maasai, Turkana, Samburu) talks. At one session at Nakuru State House, President Moi told Gema representatives that they should shun any alliances with the “communist” and “subversive” Luo, and unite with the Kalenjin.
Now, some in both the Luo and Kikuyu leadership are considering uniting against a common foe.
These are the ethnic dynamics and ironies of Kenyan politics.
Source: Daily NATION
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