Washington, DC — One of Kenya's consummate political operators, Raila Odinga, is on an international tour to spread the word about his latest political project, the National Rainbow Coalition (Narc).
As a prime mover in the coalition of opposition parties which is challenging President Moi's ruling party, Kanu, at the polls next month, Odinga is in full-scale campaign mode, talking up his party's policies and chance of victory, unbraiding opposition groups that have refused to join Narc and scorning the strategies of Kanu.
Yet Odinga was a member of Kanu's inner cabinet until only a couple of months ago.
Jailed repeatedly in the 1980s during the struggle to end one-party rule in Kenya, Odinga's political career has been closely associated with the dissident wing. After the campaign for the introduction of multi-party politics was won at the start of the '90s, he was a founder member of the Front for the Restoration of Democracy, or Ford, the leading opposition party that aimed to overturn decades of Kanu rule.
Yet having expended such effort to win the right to participate, Moi's opponents made a major strategic error at the 1992 election. The appearance of multiple opposition parties on the ballot split the anti-Kanu vote between over ten rivals. Even though, between them, the opposition parties won 64% of the vote, Kanu was returned to power with 36%.
Ethnic divisions in the opposition, personal ambition, a poll boycott and rigging - once again gave Kanu victory in 1997. At that point, Odinga says, there was no point in seeking to overturn the result because Kanu's grip on the country's political life was too strong - the outcome of any re-run poll would be the same.
So after some 'careful analysis', he mapped out a plan for 'constructive engagement' with Kanu with the aim of changing some of the ground rules - to press for a revision of the constitution, the installation of independent institutions and other reforms which could level the playing field ahead of the next election in 2002.
Additionally, he says of the period after the 1997 poll, with Kanu at one extreme and the opposition at the other, the situation was too polarised to make any progress: "We needed to lower the political temperature - create some middle ground."
Under a hail of criticism - "I was called all kinds of names" - he took his National Democratic Party first into a "working relationship" with the ruling party, then into a "partnership", followed by a coalition government and eventually a merger. He adds drily; "And then that led to a divorce."
His political critics have argued that Odinga - who, by mid-2002, was one of a group of four men from whom President Moi would pick his successor - was happy to use entry into Kanu as a route to the top because he had concluded that he could not get there via the opposition route. The "divorce" came about, they argue, only because Moi anointed Uhuru Kenyatta, son of Kenya's first president, to succeed him, rather than the ambitious Odinga.
In the wake of that decision, Odinga (himself the son of one of Kenya's founding fathers, Oginga Odinga) and other disappointed cabinet members, stirred up a row in the party and he eventually quit in October, amid cheering from the opposition as loud as the abuse he suffered on his way in. He took some of Moi's most long-standing lieutenants with him.
Now, with a new constitution in preparation and unprecedented internal criticism and division weakening Kanu, Odinga says his strategy has been successful. As Narc's candidate for prime minister (veteran politician Mwai Kibaki is Narc's presidential candidate) he is in pole position for power - if the opposition can be prevented from fragmenting as it did in the past. But key opposition figures Simeon Nyachae of Ford People and James Orengo of the Social Democratic Party are already rocking the boat with separate bids for the presidency and there are still six weeks to go - plenty of time for the best laid plans to come unstuck.
In Washington, DC, he has visited the State Department, and the National Security Council as well as meeting members of Congress and Kenyan nationals living in the U.S. He meets business people in Houston, Texas, before moving on to London. Akwe Amosu spoke to Raila Odinga after he made a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
I'm sure you're encountering support but I wonder whether you also get asked how you could have gone from being a strong opponent of the Kanu government, to being a senior member of President Moi's team and now, back again to being a leading opponent. Do you find people asking you to explain how that could have happened?
No, most people understand the reasons because there's nothing that I've done that has not had a purpose.
I was in the opposition and I said the time had come for us to practise the politics of cooperation and constructive engagement; then we eventually ended up with the merger which was aimed at democratising Kanu from within; the experiment was short-lived, it did not work, we went our separate ways and have assumed our roles of trying to change things from without. And we see that these elections present the best prospect for democratic transition in our country.
You say you hoped that by going into Kanu you would be transforming it; what did President Moi think you were doing in his party?
President Moi thought he was going to use us, like he's done with other people in the past, use us and then dump us at the appropriate time. And they thought that once we were inside Kanu we would be like his slaves, that we would not be able to have an exit out. I had said that we were never translocating ourselves and that we remained very much ourselves and we could not be dumped.
It was widely considered that you were one of four people from among whom he would select a successor. But what you say implies that there was never any prospect that he would select you as his successor. Is that so?
I did not expect that would happen, that was far from my motive in going into that arrangement. My objective was to try and democratise Kanu and make it a force for change in our country by uniting with other democratic forces inside the party. If that did not work, then my second option was to weaken Kanu sufficiently so that it would become ineffective in the coming elections. I think that has happened already, in the sense that we have come out of Kanu with very many people who were like the pillars of the party and who helped Kanu to win the last two general elections.
I suppose that if he had selected you as his successor, we wouldn't have seen this opposition coalition get off the ground so energetically. In other words, is Narc's present vigorous challenge partly your response to not being chosen?
It's not that I was not chosen. What I was trying to tell President Moi was that he should not see it as his responsibility to choose a successor, that he should allow the democratic process to take place and allow the members of the party to nominate the most popular candidate. If I was nominated in that way,that would be fine. If I was not nominated and someone else was, I would have backed whoever was nominated; but he insisted on trying to impose his project on the membership and I found that unacceptable. So he must have contributed [to the present situation] by acting undemocratically, contributed to creating this force which is now Narc, which we want now to replace him, in a way that he never expected. We would have offered him a safe exit and peaceful retirement but he opted to go down fighting, which is unfortunate
But is there a danger that your colleagues in Narc might feel a bit uneasy about you? That they might feel, well, he hasn't stayed faithful to the opposition, he went into Kanu in a bid to win power and now, because he didn't make headway there, he's come back to us; can we really trust him?
Not really, you will understand that many of the people with whom we are, were with us in the phase of cooperation (with Kanu). And I think everyone appreciates the contribution that we made when we initiated the politics of cooperation which then moved on to become partnership, coalition and then merger. It was like an evolution. Its time had come.
We managed, through that, to bring about the constitutional reforms by setting up the Constitutional Review Commission through 'constructive engagement' and everything that we have done, we have done transparently. So no-one can accuse us of treachery, betrayal or anything like that. What we have done, we have done out of conviction, and we have explained to our people why it was necessary to do those things.
So now you've got an opposition that looks more united than at any stage in the past decade; but you, yourself, have talked about the way ethnicity has become a profound factor in Kenyan politics over the past decades. Is there real unity among Narc members? Or is it really that each group is manoeuvring for its share of the spoils? How durable is this unity?
We think that the best guarantee of this unity are the people themselves. The people of Kenya have been cheated in the last two elections. They voted overwhelmingly against the government but they have been denied victory through opposition disunity. That's the reason why, wherever we went as Rainbow Alliance, or Narc, the call all the time out there, was "Unite, you people, unite and give us one presidential candidate!"
The people of Kenya have come to belive that it is only through unity and a single candidate for the opposition that they will be able to get rid of Moi from their lives. That is what we have done. Those who the people now see as spoilers are the people who are again trying to run on their own! They all run the risk of being rendered irrelevant by this force for change that has the support of the majority of the people of Kenya.
But nonetheless, have you got enough senior jobs for all the people in Narc who need to be given them, and enough nominations for parliamentary seats to hand out? And if you haven't, won't it be easy for Kanu to buy off disappointed Narc members?
You can never give jobs to everybody. Jobs must be limited. In any case, we are coming out with a trimmed down cabinet because we want to reduce public expenditure and spend money for productive purposes.
But everyone will have a responsibility. We have got space for everybody who want to serve the people of Kenya and my view is that people should be prepared to serve in any capacity - as backbenchers, as deputy ministers, cabinet ministers - all those posts should be seen as opportunity to serve, rather than opportunities to enrich oneself.
Those who are not nominated to run for parliamentary seats should see that they have other roles to play. After all we have only 210 parliamentary constituencies - not all of us must be MPs. We can serve our country as managers of parastatals, civil servants, business executives, in the diplomatic service, and so on. All that we want are dedicated, committed people who want to serve this agenda for change.
What really went wrong between Narc and Mr Nyachae, and with Mr Orengo? What is motivating them? There are claims from some MPs that Mr Orengo is being paid by Kanu to run for president.
There are, of course, reports that Mr Orengo had two private meetings with President Moi. I will not put it past President Moi that in pursuit of his survival politics he will go to every length to entice these people who are supposed to be disaffected by this unity to do his bidding.
I think that his strategy is to try to whip up ethnic nationalism in the hope that he can divide ethnic votes. So for example, he's calculating that maybe if Mr Orengo is running, maybe some Luos will vote for him instead of voting for Kibaki. And with Nyachae he hopes that maybe he will be able to split the Kisii vote.
But I want to say this, without fear of contradiction, that the people of Kenya will see these schemes for what they are, aimed at helping the regime to survive and the people of Kenya want to see change. So these people are going to be seen as agents of disunity, as the fifth columnists in the pay of President Moi and they will be rejected with the contempt that they deserve.
But there are six presidential candidates so far, and maybe more will emerge. How sure can you be that Narc will win the bulk of popular support and that the vote won't get split, as in the past?
Kenyans know who are the serious candidates. There can be a hundred but I can assure you that Kenyans know who are the real candidates, because you remember in the last general elections there were 15 presidential candidates; the majority of them never went anywhere. Only five of them managed to make it as members of parliament. The rest did not even make it to parliament and their performance was dismal. These elections that are coming are going to be a duel between President Moi's project [Uhuru Kenyatta] and honourable Mwai Kibaki. Those, in my view, are the two serious candidates and the votes are going to be split between those two. But I am confident that Honourable Kibaki will get more than 75% of the votes.
And what about rigging. It's been a feature of the past and there are still some weeks to go; what can be done to stop it undermining the vote?
We know that rigging is a common feature in Kenyan politics. It was used in '92, and in '97 and they will try to use it again.
We have tried to guard against it by introducing counting at the polling stations to guard against substitution of ballot boxes in transit to constituency centres, but we know they will come up with some other tricks. Already they are buying voters' cards to try to disenfranchise voters. Of course, we have gotten the Electoral Commission to agree to replace the cards that have been lost or sold. But we know that they are going to come up with several other tricks, We will deal with them as they come along.
But I want to say that the kind of strategy that we have designed is one that will win in spite of any amount of rigging.
Nonetheless, you are asking for some international help; you've just been to South Africa. What are you asking for from your international allies?
We're asking for moral support to try to bring pressure on President Moi to facilitate free and democratic elections. So we've asked the intervention of ex-president Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu to come to Kenya and try to request President Moi to become an elder statesman by facilitating free and fair elections.
Here in the U.S. I'm trying to reach ex-president Jimmy Carter of the Carter Foundation which has been doing election monitoring worldwide, to also agree to come to Kenya and I'm also talking to the various governments, including United States, to apply diplomatic pressure on the Kenya government to see that there is no need to revert to other undemocratic methods to cling to power like using the military and things like that.
Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters
Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox
Where does Narc get its money - it's a very expensive thing to run a campaign. Is the coalition well-endowed?
No, unfortunately not, by comparison to the [Moi] project [to elect Uhuru Kenyatta].
You know that they are deploying an enormous amount of money in their campaigns. We do not need even one tenth of the money that they need, because we have got the goodwill of the people. We do not need to buy support of the people.
All that we need are funds that will enable us to access the people. We need mobility of all our candidates so that they can move within their constituencies and sell the message of our party. We need to be able to put some adverts in the newspapers, radio and television because you know that the government monopolises the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation and it is actually blocking us out. They have hiked their advertisement fees by 300%. So we need to reach all the people with our message.
Where are you going to get the money?
We are appealing to well-wishers, individuals, foundations, the business community to give any little donation that they have. It will be put to good use. We eventually are going to pay them back by running transparent and accountable government.
You obviously can't ask people to vote for you just because you're the opposition; what are you offering Kenyans, what are the most important planks of your platform?
Number one, economic revival and reconstruction. We want the economy growing again. We want to address those factors that have led to economic decline, like investor confidence; we want to create a conducive environment which will attract people to come and invest in Kenya.
We want also to have access to foreign funding which is cheap, so that we move away from domestic borrowing which is denying the productive sector access to capital and is also contributing to high rates of interest and inflation.
We want to revamp our agriculture and make it rewarding again for our people. We want to rehabilitate the collapsed infrastructure of the country, improve the communications system.
We want to deal with the crucial issue of corruption which is a big impediment to development, by inducing institutions to control corruption and also coming up with a leadership code of conduct and ethics which will require that leaders do declare their wealth and the sources of their wealth, and that of their immediate family.
Then we want to continue with the legal and constitutional reforms which Moi has shelved by dissolving parliament. So we have signed a Memorandum of Understanding that once the Narc government comes into office in January, we shall immediately commence on the task of completing the constitutional review, by reconvening the national constitutional conference and by ensuring that the matter is completed within three months from the date of elections.
That will help us to create proper institutions of governance that will help us to be able to protect human rights and freedom, real freedom of expression, and of the press. And that will also help us to devolve power to the periphery, to give people more power to plan and manage their development.
In summary, we want to give Kenyans the Kenya that they have been yearning for for a long time, rid of inefficiency, corruption, nepotism, ethnic discrimination. A Kenya that offers opportunity for our children, for upward social mobility, quality education and good medicare.
