BY WAFULA BUKE

After years of successful gang schemes to deny Raila Presidency, William Ruto is on a final stretch: subjecting Raila to ideological assassination.

It was Mozambique’s Moises Samora Machel who told his countrymen that the day they hear him being praised by their enemies, they should know that he had sold them out. What Machel didn’t tell his people is what they should think of him when his enemies praised him after his death.

As the waves of Raila Odinga’s death manifested in the Jamuhuri day celebrations in Nyayo National Stadium, my thoughts flow to former Zaire, now DRC. President William Ruto did not just request the ceremony attendants to observe a minute of silence, he also endorsed Governor Sakaja’s stage managed proposal that the new Talanta International Stadium be named after Raila Odinga. The proposal was received with wild cheers.

The Raila recognition by President Ruto sounded like a perfect replay of what happened in Zaire (Now DRC) over six decades ago. Field Marshal Mobutu Seseseko, then President of the current Democratic Republic of Congo, on June 30th 1966 similarly isued an Ordinanace proclaiming Patrice Lumumba a national hero in a function attended by international dignitaries. Like happened in Nyayo Stadium, the Congolese masses tearfully cheered Mobutu’s move. More amazing similarities in the two events stand out.

There is global consensus among political and historical analysts that Mobutu Seseseko planned and executed Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba’s assassination. What then pushed him to declare the man he had killed a national hero? Whichever way you look at it, this was a self serving event. It had everything to do with self preservation in power riding on the heroic standing of Patrice Lumumba.

After his murder, Lumumba’s wave of endorsements as a hero swept the entire globe. Children born were named after him accros Africa. In Kenya, the KANU ideological school in Kasarani was named Lumumba Institute. Unfortunately Kenyatta quickly shut it down when he realized that Bildad Kaggia, Pio Gama Pinto and Jaramogi had influenced its curriculum inclining it to socialism. Its this period that national celebrities such as Prof Plo Lumumba were christened after Congo’s Lumumba. Moscow did even better by naming a university after him, Lumumba University.

Mobutu’s ordinance did not honor Lumumba, it was meant to puncture the people’s anger against his regime. It was a deflation exercise. His advisors must have told him: “deflate the People’s anger and stablize your government”.

After capturing the People’s love and attention by publicly making peace with Lumumba, Mobutu would then speak for Lumumba and re-engineer Lumumba’s ideology. By so doing, he would succeed in derailing the struggle for the liberation of Congo from Mobutu’s neo-colonial partners. That way, Lumumba would die twice, first as a person then second, ideologically.

Does the above analysis apply to the relations between William Ruto and Raila Odinga? Perfectly if you asked me, and infact worse at the ideological level.

If death is a process comparable to the construction of a building, then it is legitimate to say that building blocks for Raila’s death were contributed by past regimes with Ruto’s regime completing the construction process. The mzee lived wiping tears whose history was state terror. He survived many assassinations attempts the most viscious being under the Ruto regime when bullets were sprayed on his car after the contentouis general elections. Come to think of it, how come the identified officers have never been held to account? That defines Ruto’s real spirit.

Raila was steadily worn out by tear gas, depression, general state terror by the Ruto state leading to his death ahead of his elder brother Oburu Odinga. The cummulative effects of his suffering ocassionally made him cry like a child as he narrated his nightmares before his supporters. Raila’s death was a process heavilly contributed to by the man who declared him a national hero on Jamuhuri Day.

Whatever anybody thinks, the histories of these two Kenyan politicians show that they were as radically different in beliefs and values as Lumumba and Mobutu of Congo were. What then does Ruto hope to reap from lionizing his ideological enemy?

After the stadium renaming proposal by Sakaja and the endorsement by Ruto, Raila supporters breathied out their anger through the endless cheers similar to Mobutu’s manipulative pronouncement about Lumumba in 1966. Infact I believe, it wont take long before Ruto goes to Kibra to be crowned as the new “Baba”.

Does this renaming fulfil Raila’s dreams for Kenya? Not at all. It creates the environment for Raila’s ideological killing. Here is how.

During the ODM 20 anniversary in Mombasa, Winnie Odinga said something people took lightly. She expressed her lack of believe in any leader in ODM after Raila’s death who could manauvre the Broad Based Government arrangement as effectively as her father Raila could.

Raila has shown time and again that he can create crises on a national scale that he alone can provide a cure to. As we stand today, the nation has numerous institutional and policy crises. Most of these challenges were instituted under the knowledge or endorsement of Raila himself.

Examples to these anormalies are many: extensive controversial privatization without public participation, the manipulated selection of IEBC Commissioners, the emusiculation of the opposition in parliament and the subsequent dilution of the provision of checks on government. Most dangerously to the national aspiration for change of government, he pushed the largest party, ODM into government. How does his death and Ruto’s conferment of heroism status portend for national politics?

Raila died without unequivacally having addressed the issue of successiin within the ODM party and ODM’s 2027 electoral plan. This has led to disagreements within the party. Ruto has since used the perceived goodwill between him and Raila to position sympathisers of the broad based government project in positions of leadership Within ODM.

Given the ideological Rift that has defined their politics, Ruto’s disruption of ODM leads to the second killing of Raila ideologically. With the massive endorsement he received at Nyayo Stadium for labeling Raila as a national hero, he has strengthened the hand of his moles in ODM stablizing himself by controling ODM the same way Mobutu did.

As Winnie Odinga implied in Mombasa, only Raila had the smartness to handle the Governance arrangement with UDA.

However, with Ruto tightening his grip on the legacy of Raila through his friendly public gestures, he is acquiring the locus standi to define Baba’s plot going forward to the detriment of Raila’s known political philosophy.

Is President William Ruto genuine about Raila’s status as a national hero? How else can you determine this other than by obversing efforts made at fulfulling Raila’s known aspirations.

Raila fought for justice, tolerance and transparency. In Raila’s funeral in Nairobil, several people were killed by the blood thirsty police that terrorized him in life. To this day, no statement has been made by the government on this killings with regard to justice for the victim and compensation to the families of the victims.

Ruto’s new found Allies have a conspiracy of silence on the matter. That Ruto pronounced Raila hero weakens the constituency of those who would seek for justice on this matter.

Raila spent his life fighting against electoral malractices. If this aspration made Raila a hero to Ruto, we would have witnessed a change in the manner in which by-elections would have been conducted. We have instead had an increase in the manipulative and coercive hand of the state thus perhaps doing the groundwork for yet another confrontation in the near future.

Raila often identified corruption as Africa’s fourth malady after ignorance dicease and poverty as stated by our founding fathers.

In Ruto’s speech on Jamuhuri Day, Ruto ignored corruption and only mentioned the other three. The crowd that cheered Ruto’s honor to Raila are being treated to ideological revisionism, Raila’s second killing.

If Ruto was genuine, he would have made appointments of people on the list that Raila presented to him before going to India for treatment. The appointments were set to be made around the time of his death.

Among the prospective appointees were Ronny Raburu who was to go to Tanzania as a diplomat. Raburu gave Raila the wild beast fly whisk which was buried with Raila. Raburu was the same person who coined Azimio la Umoja for the opposition in 2022 General elections. Ruto may be celebrating the relief from the pressure of having to appoint Raila’s people into office.

In a nut shell, Ruto’s pretensious embrace of Raila as a hero endears him to Raila’s followers deflating their revolutionary energy as they Simultanoues become vulnerable to ideological revisionism at the hands of William Ruto.

This is despite Raila’s remarks on Dr William Ruto in 2022. He said:
“Even if you give William Ruto one hundred years, he is incapable of addressing the problems if our country”. Lionizng Raila as a national hero and that Raila Odinga died before redefining their political relationship beyond 2027 hands him an opportunity to redefine Raila both in terms of political strategy and ideologically substance.

The ongoing debate and conflict in ODM over what Raila desired for Kenya and his party is comparable to the Congolese war that followed the assassination of Patrice Lumumba by Mobutu.

However, unlike Raila, Lumumba wrote a letter to the Congolese people through his wife defining his vision for their republic as he awaited his assassins to kill him.