The system was against me but I have moved on, says Raila

Former Prime Minister Raila Odinga during the interview at his Raila Odinga Centre in Nairobi on Tuesday. PHOTO/ANN KAMONI  NATION

By ROY GACHUHI. May 24  2013 

 

 

In Summary

• See, it is not that Cord failed to mobilise the people, or to register. It was collusion (involving) the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission. It is the electoral commission that is supposed to get people to register. But the way it was being done was actually selective because it was actually colluding with the administration.
• So if you see an individual acting out of character you must ask yourself what is motivating them. You saw in the court how they started by rejecting our evidence, expunging it from the records then the next thing they did was to allow the Attorney General to be amicus curae and deny the Law Society of Kenya and Prof Yash Pal Ghai of Katiba Institute to be a friend of the court.
• What I detested was the violent part of it when some people organised to hijack returning officers, ballot papers, beating up the returning officers, burning the ballot papers and so on; that is abhorrent. That is not acceptable.

How do you spend your days these days? With the burdens and stresses of being Prime Minister behind you, how does the diary look?

I am writing my autobiography. It is taking a lot of my time these days. As you know, a lot has been written about me. There have been biographies. It is now my turn to tell my story. As you might guess, I know a lot of things that people don’t know. (Breaks into a laugh).

Will it be a big, big tell-all book like say, Bill Clinton’s My Life or Tony Blair’s A Journey? Can Kenyans look forward to knowing the real Raila Odinga? And when will it come out?

(Laughs). It will be the story of my life, told by me, not by other people. It will come out in about two months.

Which book are you currently reading?

Change We Choose. It’s a book by Gordon Brown, former Prime Minister of the UK. It’s a collection of his speeches.

Some people have said that part of the blame for your loss in the General Election should be laid on Ida, your wife. Address this, and also your relationship with your life partner.

(For the first time, he gets agitated) No! No! No! Some people can be very unfair! Ida has played a very positive role in my life and she tried to help in any way she could. But first, I didn’t lose this election. I was rigged out of it. How can anybody accuse her of contributing to a loss that never was? Ida was not part of the Kenya Intelligence, she was not part of the election rigging machinery at the IEBC, she didn’t steal votes in polling stations – how unfair can people get!

Ida is not infallible. She is a human being and like all other human beings, she has her strengths and weaknesses. She has played a very positive role in my life and she did her best for us in the elections. She has been accused unfairly and I am upset about that.
The question in the minds of all Kenyans, your supporters and opponents alike, is what your specific plans going forward are?

Well, as you know, this is not a one-man band. This is a movement that I represent. I represent the quest for Kenyans to democratise their country, to improve their lives. And this movement is almost as old as this country has been independent.

There have always been two forces pulling in two opposite directions - the forces for status quo versus the forces for change. You see the nationalist movement that brought independence to this country split immediately after independence because there are those who now felt that ‘We have arrived; this is Jerusalem.

We are now the new masters, who have taken over from the outgoing colonial masters. Sisi ni wazungu weusi.’ This group of Kenyans wanted to use this new privileged position to step in the shoes of the outgoing colonial masters and to now lord it over their fellow Kenyans.

They were called rulers as opposed to leaders because if you are a leader, you are leading the people. It is what is called servant leadership. But these ones felt that they had taken over from the governors.

On the other hand, there were those who were saying ‘No, let us achieve the objectives of the struggle for our independence, which was emancipation of our people. This was the actually basis of the disagreement in the nationalist movement and that’s what caused the split. It is against this background that you can explain the post independence developments. Ask yourself, why was Pio Gama Pinto assassinated? Because there was a struggle between these two forces and Pinto became the first casualty, the first victim.

Some people say this election was irretrievably lost when Cord failed to register people en mass. They also say there was ineptitude in mobilising the turn-out otherwise the numbers existed. What will you write in your memoires about the cause of your loss?

See, it is not that Cord failed to mobilise the people, or to register. It was collusion (involving) the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission. It is the electoral commission that is supposed to get people to register. But the way it was being done was actually selective because it was actually colluding with the administration.

For example, people were registered bio-metrically in some areas, there were very few BVR kits you find that three or four polling stations were sharing one BVR kit in certain areas whereas in others there was a BVR kit in every polling station and they deliberately gave a very short period of registration to accelerate the registration of voters in some areas and slowing it down in other areas.

And then they only gave 30 days for registration. In 2007, in order to register 12 million people they gave 60 days.

This time they wanted to register 18 million people and they gave 30 days and when the 30 days were over and we appealed for an extension of time, they refused to give it. So it was a deliberate strategy by those who were involved to exclude, to disenfranchise certain sections of society from the electoral process. At that time Cord was not registered as coalition.

So you can see it was a targeted registration.

Second, the issue of mobilising people to vote, that again is a myth. Kenyans turned up to vote countrywide in such large numbers. You cannot say there were some areas that had a higher turn-out than others. There are certain areas where there were deliberate efforts to block people from voting, like at the Coast.

There are some areas where they closed polling stations at 4pm. In some places, they came and threw teargas, to send people away.

Then there was an incident where some police officers were attacked. They used that as an excuse to close some polling stations to stop people from voting, the reason being they knew the Coast was a Cord stronghold and therefore to block people from voting worked in their favour.

But this idea that there were some areas where there was 95 per cent or 100 per cent turn-out is a myth. Because if you look at the records, the average turn-out was 72 per cent for county reps, for women reps, for MPs, for Governors, for Senators but only for the Presidential 86 per cent. What accounts for that difference?

They were stuffing ballot papers and that was the evidence that we wanted to adduce in court that over one million people turned up for the ballot and only voted for the presidency and not for the others.

That is not right. So they should not blame the people, you should blame the forces, the process which was flawed. It was deliberately flawed to achieve the purpose that they did.

When the IEBC announced the results and further when the Supreme Court handed down its verdict, how did you feel. How did you take it?

I was prepared for the outcome. You see if you go to court it’s an either or situation, you expect to win or to lose, so you must be prepared for the worst while being ready for the best.

So I was under no illusion that there would be pressure on the Supreme Court because the stakes were very, very high.

So if you see an individual acting out of character you must ask yourself what is motivating them. You saw in the court how they started by rejecting our evidence, expunging it from the records then the next thing they did was to allow the Attorney General to be amicus curae and deny the Law Society of Kenya and Prof Yash Pal Ghai of Katiba Institute to be a friend of the court.

So now look at this, if you are already rejecting people seen to be neutral, and admitting somebody who is very partisan, is that fair? The Attorney-General is advisor to the government.

The government was not accused. The government was not in court. Yet he is allowed to offer an opinion.

This showed you the intimidation of the court. So, when they did what they did, I said this is a setback; you count your loses and move on. This is just one of the roadblocks; you reverse and move, because this is a movement as I said. It is not an event. It is just one of those hurdles in the race. This is a movement, so must continue.

You can be adequately mentally prepared for a loss of such big magnitude….you were prepared?

You see, the thing is that we are just players in this game. You don’t look at it as an end. If you look at it as an end then you will end up committing suicide politically.

You must look at it as a movement and that you are not indispensible you have got your own life. So this will go on even if Raila Odinga is no longer here. It is not a fatalistic game that you must win at all costs.

You win but you saw what happened in 2007. In 2007, Justice Johann Kreigler (who investigated the conduct of the 2007 election), told me that “Raila, I don’t see my duty as telling Kenyans who won or who lost this election. Any fool knows that. I see my duty as helping Kenyans to avoid a recurrence of what they have been through. So in my recommendation, I am going to be vague when it comes to saying who won or who lost the elections.

But I will make recommendations which will help to carry out reforms.” That is why he said that the election was so flawed that you could hardly tell who won.

So Kenyans moved on with that and thought that sufficient reforms had been carried out so that there will be no recurrence. But we saw these weaknesses in the electoral commission; we saw these weaknesses in the Supreme Court, so we are saying there is still room for further reforms.

So if I had said, no we don’t accept (the results and court ruling), I knew the consequences. The people would have come out into the streets all over the country and there would have been bloodshed because I know that the system was very prepared -- there were orders of shoot to kill. So I didn’t want that bloodbath; there is another tomorrow.

It may not be Raila tomorrow but there will be somebody else. It is a movement.

What is your biggest hope and your biggest fear for Kenya under President Uhuru Kenyatta?

Well, as I have said before, I wish President Uhuru Kenyatta the best because life must continue for Kenyans and they have a manifesto. They made promises that they must keep and they should be given the opportunity to deliver on their promises. I have not taken this personally about Uhuru or his deputy William Ruto because we are talking about a system, not two individuals.

If you try to personalise it you miss the point. It is a system. These two individuals are just beneficiaries of a system and now that they are there, they are Kenyans, they should be given ample opportunity to show their worth. It is easier to make promises, to come up with lofty words and so on but much more difficult when it comes to the actual doing.

What we don’t want is at the end for somebody to have an excuse of saying that oh, we have done ABC, but we could have done XYZ if we were not blocked by the Opposition.

That is why I talked of a constructive Opposition, where you don’t just criticise for the sake of criticizing.

You criticise by offering alternative solutions, that is, you say the government has done this and that but it should have done it this way. That is the way I look at it.

Some of your supporters have moved on, expecting to fight another day while others have given up on you ever becoming president. I want you to talk to both of them.

Yes, you see, the struggle is long as I have already mentioned. Naturally, there will be casualties in the course of it.

There are those who will surrender, and we have seen a number surrendering all along this journey and I will not be surprised if some will be tired this time round.

All that we are saying is that if you feel tired, just step aside, but don’t go and block other people, say oh, this will not work; just exit, allow those others who still feel strong to continue.

So naturally those comrades who are now disillusioned and want to surrender and join the other side are welcome to do so — that is their democratic right. For that we just say, there’s a casualty, a comrade has been injured in the struggle (laughs) but for those who have energy to move on, who still see hope in this I tell them, look, nothing comes easy; there’s always a price.

If, for example, people like the late George Anyona, Martin Shikuku, Mukaru Ng’ang’a, Kamonji Wachira and Ngugi wa Thiong’o, had not taken risks, the freedom that we have today would not be there.

See, today, you can see that people are freer in this country, you can talk, you can criticize the government without fear, without looking over your shoulder that somebody is going to arrest you.

But take a journey down memory lane, 20 years ago, you could not do this. These days you can caricature the president and his deputy and so on. Just imagine the height of Nyayo rule, that would be treason.

So we have this democratic space; the major beneficiaries are those who were comfortable on the other side. Always, it’s the Left which has led the struggle to make life better in the country.

But the major beneficiaries have always been the Right. So my view is that we should not be discouraged because of setbacks, all these setbacks are temporary.

During the Cord nominations for all elective offices there were television images from Nyanza that showed people beating up your banners. Your opponents reacted with glee while your supporters were aghast with horror. How could this happen?

You see we have democracy. Democracy has got its weakness. There were people who were expecting to be nominated. Nomination in some of these areas is like the election itself.

So losing a nomination means that you have lost an election even if you go to another party. So that is why it becomes a matter of life and death in some of those areas. The same thing happened in Central. If you miss the TNA ticket, it was like a kiss of death.

That is why some of these people were angered. So they hired some of their supporters and those who were beating my banners and so on. When I saw it I just enjoyed it (laughs loud and long). So long as it is not violent.

What I detested was the violent part of it when some people organised to hijack returning officers, ballot papers, beating up the returning officers, burning the ballot papers and so on; that is abhorrent. That is not acceptable.

But peaceful protest and demonstration, even somebody carrying an effigy (starts laughing again, loud and long) it’s alright. You know that I used to be a student leader; we demonstrated in London so many times, burning effigies of many people. I have participated in debates in Hyde Park corner, and somebody can be insulting the Queen but nobody can attack him. The police are there to protect him because there is freedom.

So I am looking forward to a time when our society will be that tolerant; that even if somebody is talking disparagingly about Raila, you don’t beat him; you also just insult him, that’s what they do at Hyde Park corner.

Some people say that your politics is born of Left wing idealism that is out of synch with today’s world. The time for the true Left is gone. What do you say to those who say that you are ideologically hostage to a romantic past that cannot win an election today?

First of all what is the Left and What is the Right? The real Right wing are those who believe in a laissez-faire fare society, that is, survival of the fittest. Just like in the animal world where you have the lions and the antelopes and the fitter one eats the weaker one following the law of nature. That is the extreme right.

The extreme Left is the one that believes completely that the State should control everything; that the state should provide for everything; that it owns all the means of production, provides employment for people, housing, and so forth. That is the ideal of the extreme Left. And then we are talking about Left of centre and Right of centre. That means there is a Centre.

The Left of Centre is known as social democracy as opposed to socialism. Social democracy is basically a market economy. We are talking about a market economy as opposed to a controlled economy. A market economy can be centre-right or centre-left which is capitalism with a human face as opposed to laissez-faire capitalism which sees all means of production as privately owned, the gap between the rich and the poor is so wide, that you have people who are completely deprived.

But the social democratic state is where the means of production are privately owned by there is a social safety net and the government ensures there are things like health, education, housing and basic needs, nobody should go without food and so on.

Now these days we talk about a social market economy. A social market economy is now, for example, the Labour Party of Britain moves too far left and then they come up with New Labour pursuing social market economy policies.

Other people say they are to the right of the Tories. So, what we are talking about these days is so relevant. You go to Europe now, for example, it is the centre-left parties that are bouncing back, you see Labour is now rebounding, Social Democrats in Germany are coming up, even in France, the Socialists are now in power.

So the political philosophy that I represent is not irrelevant; it is too relevant today. It is the extreme right that is under siege now.