Raila holds the yam and knife to his political career after third time loss

By MACHARIA GAITHO

IN SUMMARY

• How Mr Odinga takes defeat could be crucial. He can take it in his stride as just another stumble to stand up from and soldier on; or he can grow old, bitter, disillusioned and defeated
• If he takes defeat in his stride, Mr Odinga can still remain a formidable figure. He first has to keep his base intact, and there he will be under a strong onslaught from Mr Kenyatta, who will be well-placed to take advantage of incumbency to  lure  key regional blocs— especially Coast, Western and outgoing Vice-President Musyoka Kalonzo’s lower Eastern—away from Cord alliance
• Whatever happens, Mr Odinga’s has cemented his place in history as a fighter for justice and human rights, but now has to seriously consider whether it might be time to call it a day

Mr Raila Odinga must be aware that he will be 73 years old when the next General Election comes along.

That is why the Supreme Court ruling upholding the victory of President-elect Uhuru Kenyatta deals him such a serious political blow, for it might well signal the end of an enduring but ultimately unfulfilled political career.

With a third presidential election defeat under his belt, Mr Odinga has good reasons to ponder whether he is fated, like his father, the late Oginga Odinga, or another icon of protest politics, the late Masinde Muliro, to be eulogised as “the best president Kenya never had”.

Whether it is time to write Mr Odinga’s political obituary, however, might be entirely up to him and how he handles events to unfold in the coming weeks, months and years. This relates both to how the Kenyatta presidency establishes itself and exercises its mandate; and how Mr Odinga himself adjusts to a diminished stature and repositions himself for a comeback.

How Mr Odinga takes defeat could be crucial. He can take it in his stride as just another stumble to stand up from and soldier on; or he can grow old, bitter, disillusioned and defeated.

When he exercised his constitutional right to file a petition to challenge the electoral commission’s declaration of Mr Kenyatta as winner of the March 4 presidential election, Mr Odinga had to overcome a great deal of opprobrium, some of it engineered by the respondents, depicting him as the perpetual sore loser who would never gracefully concede defeat.

Captured the attention

But he had his day in court with the epochal hearings lasting just one week that captured the attention of the nation and demonstrated the role of the Supreme Court established by the Constitution under Chief Justice Willy Mutunga.

It follows now that rejecting the court’s decision was not an option for Mr Odinga. Unless an extremely serious miscarriage of justice could be demonstrated, Mr Odinga really had no choice but to respect the judgment and prevail on his supporters to accept the reality.

Anything else would just have served to confirm that he is indeed the sore loser. Worse, especially if any rejection of the outcome provoked unrest, Mr Odinga would be firmly in the crosshairs of those who perennially accuse him of fanning violence when fails to get his way.

As he accepted the judgment less than two hours after it was delivered, Mr Odinga might have looked at a little irony. A reformed Judiciary that he helped create and now under the leadership of a liberal comrade from the days of agitation for a new constitution is the one that threw out the petition, and at the same time conferred legitimacy on the incoming fourth president.

In the run-up to the hearing, Mr Kenyatta’s foot-soldiers in presidential campaign social media network, including one of petitioners Dennis Itumbi, initiated a smear campaign targeting Dr Mutunga. They accused him of being a known supporter of Mr Odinga and having close links to the civil society movement that had filed its own petition through Ms Gladwel Otieno of Africog.

They made demands that Judge Mutunga recuse himself from the case, but Mr Kenyatta’s legal team did not give attention to the application. Ultimately their fears of bias proved groundless as the court unanimously threw out the petition.

It is probable that Mr Odinga was not surprised by the decision and was prepared for it. At the end of the testimony it should have been clear that both his and the Africog petitions dwelt largely on glaring failures of the electoral commission, but failed to provide incontrovertible evidence of votes stolen, lost, padded or misallocated to such a major extent that the election was fatally flawed.

If Mr Odinga wants to remain a serious political figure, the biggest challenge will be holding on to his support base. He has held solidly on to the ethnic core constituency that he inherited from his father nearly two decades ago.

To that, he added key regional bloc that nearly handed him victory in 2007 when he ultimately lost out to President Kibaki in a flawed election that nearly tore Kenya into pieces.

He still came into government as prime minister with the power-sharing deal negotiated to halt the post-election violence.

From then on he seemed a certainty for State House as President Kibaki served out a tainted final term, but a series of events saw the formidable alliance assembled for the 2007 elections gradually crumble.

The ODM leader approached the 2013 elections pretty weakened with the progressive defections of key regional kingpins from the party. But he still looked like a strong favourite against the Kenyatta-William Ruto ticket hobbled by ICC indictments and the Kikuyu-Kalenjin factor that was initially presumed would have other communities recoiling at the spectre of a  duo-ethnic hegemony. But he might have taken too much for granted, and ultimately was outfoxed and outmanoeuvred by a superior and more organised campaign machinery.

Defeat in his stride

If he takes defeat in his stride, Mr Odinga can still remain a formidable figure. He first has to keep his base intact, and there he will be under a strong onslaught from Mr Kenyatta, who will be well-placed to take advantage of incumbency to  lure  key regional blocs— especially Coast, Western and outgoing Vice-President Musyoka Kalonzo’s lower Eastern—away from Cord alliance.

Mr Odinga’s best strategy might be in defining a role in the new dispensation that is not only geared towards opposing the new regime at every turn.

He came up in politics as a crusader for change and reform, and there might be a vacuum in that area he would be well-placed to own. Mr Odinga could actually have a powerful platform, jointly with civil society groups, if a Kenyatta-Ruto regime sticks  to form and embarks on moves that might be seen as attempting to roll back the gains of reform, including the new Constitution, civil and political rights, and independent institutions.

If the new government also makes moves that might roll back time to replicate the excesses of the Jomo Kenyatta and Daniel arap Moi years — repression, unchecked corruption, land grabbing — that will also provide space for a strong opposition that might well help keep Mr Odinga relevant. The important thing might be for him to focus less on political fights and more on the issues that will remain to be addressed.

A difficulty in the system is that an opposition leader not in political office could easily be reduced to irrelevance. He could also be vulnerable to political challenges from within his own camp, especially if he has been around for too long and there is clamour for change and new ideas.

Mr Odinga might thus be tempted to seek a comeback through an engineered resignation that can create space in the Senate, National Assembly or governor’s mansion through a by-election.  Such a move, however, might diminish his stature if he wants to remain relevant fighting on issues and principles rather than mere political positioning.

Whatever happens, Mr Odinga’s has cemented his place in history as a fighter for justice and human rights, but now has to seriously consider whether it might be time to call it a day.

Before he makes any decisions, he might want to look at President Kibaki’s playbook. The outgoing president appeared down and out when he lost a second successive attempt to unseat President Moi in 1997. But Mr Kibaki rebounded strongly while approaching his sunset years to make it third time lucky in 2002.

If Kibaki’s bowing out after two terms has always been the epitome of patience and unmatched equanimity, so too has Mr Odinga. It might sound strange saying that of a figure who has always stood out for impatience and not a little recklessness. But nobody can bravely go out to fight for freedom and justice against a dictatorial, corrupt, entrenched oligarch unless fully prepared to be in it for the long haul.