Kenyan polls: Raila Odinga goes down fighting

What you need to know:

The end? It is too early to write Mr Raila Odinga’s political obituary, as the 72-year-old politician has demonstrated ability to re-emerge from devastating storms.

The decision to prepare for another contest or not is very personal, one that Mr Odinga will make after several considerations, Allan Chekwech & Ibrahim A Manzil write.

Between the election day on August 8 and announcement of results on Friday evening, Martin Kamotho, trending as #Githeriman, and IEBC chief executive officer Ezra Chiloba seemed to be the two figures uniting Kenyans on social media for peculiar reasons.
For Githeriman, his was purely comical as social media users blew the Internet with memes of him chewing away the mixture of beans and maize as he queued up to cast his ballot. On the other hand, the ladies thought Mr Chiloba was attractive to the eye and made jokes, asking his hand in marriage if he was still on the shelves.
Flanked by his wife Margaret and deputy president William Ruto and wife Rachel, Uhuru – soon after being declared winner of the hotly contested poll – seemed to bend backwards and extend an olive branch to his political rival Raila Odinga.
Amid wild celebrations from the Jubilee supporters camped at the Kenyatta International Conference Centre, Mr Uhuru asked Raila to “come and we build this nation together”.
“To our worthy competitor, we are not enemies. In every competition there shall be winners and losers. I extend a hand of partnership, of cooperation. This country needs all of us to succeed and Kenyans want it to succeed,” said Mr Kenyatta.
“I reach out to you, to all your supporters and to all those elected to the opposition bench. We shall work together to build this nation.”
However, the chilly Nairobi evening directly symbolised the events preceding the declaration of Jubilee candidate as winner and the mood across town in the Pentagon House. The opposition had turned their back on the election outcome, citing irregularities.
It was a busy day. The Nasa camp fought to the last minute. Mr Odinga had earlier in the day made his way to the tallying centre at the Bomas of Kenya accompanied by his running mate Kalonzo Musyoka, Machakos Senator Johnson Muthama, ODM chairman John Mbadi and a host of other leaders, including Mr Odinga’s chief agents Musalia Mudavadi and James Orengo.
They immediately went into a meeting with Mr Chebukati and are also reported to have met religious leaders and envoys.
After the meetings, Nasa gave a fresh set of demands, top of which was that the electoral commission should open up its computer servers to allow them and any other interested party to scrutinise it.
“Give us access to servers where the results have come from. We should be allowed to look at the hacking that took place, particularly between noon on August 8 and on the morning of August 9,” said Mr Orengo.
The Nasa leaders said some of the presidential results being relayed were from polling stations that had not been gazetted.
According to them, many of these were in the Rift Valley.
Mr Mudavadi and Mr Orengo also explained that their claim on Thursday that Mr Odinga was the winner of the presidential contest did not amount to a declaration of results.
Asked about the demands later, Mr Chiloba said: “We don’t have a formal request. They had a meeting with the chairman and the chairman has not briefed the commission.”
Asked whether the demand on the servers would be met, he said: “The process has been transparent enough.”
IEBC denied claims that its servers were hacked and dismissed a document produced by Nasa purporting to show logs on their server.
They said while the Nasa document indicates that IEBC was using a Microsoft SQL database, the commission was actually using a platform run on an Oracle database.
Mr Chebukati on Thursday evening described Nasa’s claim regarding the commission’s servers as “grossly incorrect and premature” and the document they submitted as “plainly falsified” and containing elementary mathematical errors.
At about 7.30pm, Mr Odinga’s chief agents stormed out of the National Tallying Centre and hinted that they may opt for mass protests to force the electoral commission to declare the Nasa candidate winner of the Tuesday’s poll.

Addressing concerns
Mr Mudavadi and Mr Orengo accused the commission of disregarding their concerns and insisting on declaring president Uhuru Kenyatta as the winner of the presidential election before addressing the concerns they had raised over the transmissions of results.
“The issues we raised have not been adequately addressed and basically it was like a PR exercise that we were going through in the afternoon when the commission was telling us to put our concerns in writing,” Mr Mudavadi said.
“For the record we are storming out and we shall not be party to the games being played by the commission. We shall not be party to this declaration,” Mr Orengo said.
During the day, senior members of the presidential escort team had also arrived and were shortly joined by others in plainclothes from the General Service Unit that guards the president.
Two chairs covered in red had also been carried into the building outside with a banner titled “Presidential Candidates Only” placed.

William Ruto
Deputy president William Ruto arrived about 15 minutes after Mr Odinga and was received by a group of the newly-elected Jubilee Party MPs as well as their unlucky counterparts who were defeated at the polls.
At least 10 cabinet secretaries, five principal secretaries, Nairobi governor-elect Mike Sonko, the president’s brother, Mr Muhoho Kenyatta, the president’s private secretary, Mr Jomo Gecaga, speaker Justin Muturi and chief of staff Joseph Kinyua were also present.
After Mr Odinga’s team addressed the press at 4pm — Mr Odinga did not attend the press conference — the Nasa boss left the venue.
Mr Ruto departed shortly after and reappeared at the Jubilee headquarters at KICC where a podium had already been erected.
Mr Ruto now faces the future more confident than his competitors, having cemented his place in the Jubilee house.
His only internal headache is that of former president Daniel arap Moi’s son, Mr Gideon Towett Moi, who is seen by some as a possible successor to Mr Kenyatta.
Whereas Mr Ruto by and large stands ahead of Mr Moi who is considered by many to be a political green horn, anything is possible in politics-and like it is said, a day is too long in politics.
The 2017 elections were much about the political future of top contenders Mr Odinga and Mr Kenyatta.
As elections approached, talk by pundits was that Mr Odinga’s gun has one last bullet left, and that if he doesn’t use it to strike the bull’s eye, it could as well signal an end to the controversial politician’s career.
A few hours before the elections, Mr Orengo declared that court action is not an option “because we have been there before”.
In effect, Mr Odinga now lives the most critical moment in his life, having to make a crucial decision.
Will he prepare for a comeback in 2022? Quite far-fetched, for the race will be a statement about generational shift in the politics of Kenya.
It will certainly be ugly for Mr Odinga to compete with Mr Ruto or another combination of youthful politicians in a political landscape that is fast gravitating towards the young people.
The last time he spoke to the press, Mr Odinga called for calm, promising his supporters that the Nasa team would get on top of the situation.
“We are telling our people not to accept results, stay calm as we get deep into this. We have caught them. Hackers gained entry into the election database through [Chris] Msando’s account and directly into chairman Wafula Chebukati’s account,” said Mr Odinga, with disappointment easily seen in his face.
The impact of the elections, after all the writings and analyses are made, will have a lasting impact on Mr Odinga’s life story.
With persistent claims of rigging, will his opposition Orange Democratic Party, the largest in the Nasa coalition, prepare for a post Raila future?
Will he take a back seat role and anoint one of his trusted lieutenants to carry forward the difficult mantle of leading the opposition in a country almost divided in two political halves?
Like his father before him, Mr Odinga has battled the system, giving his best shot at every opportunity he gets.
In one of his political commercials, Mr Odinga rallied Kenyans to stand up against “a system that is rigged against them”.
Whereas the laws of Kenya do not bar an individual of advanced age, it is apparent that Mr Odinga wouldn’t want to return to polls he believes will be rigged against him after all.
Therein lays the greatest dilemma of his life, as any decision he makes now will be of extreme significance to his political career and that of his political organisation, the ODM party.
The difficult but no less essential decision to make is to have the National Super Alliance-an opposition coalition, merge into one political organisation to consolidate their base and rid themselves of intra-opposition squabbles that seemed to have paid off for their competitors the Jubilee.
Whereas it is clear that they managed to stick together after choosing their presidential flag-bearer against the nay-saying of political pundits, it is better to, in show of unity, completely merge to leave no room for rivalry from within.
If there is anything this disputed election should teach Mr Odinga and the opposition, it is that their fate- from whichever political organisation is tied together.
It is better that they unite after all, and fly the turbulent political skies under the captaincy of Mr Odinga – whether or not he will contest again – as the heirs apparent work their profile up to come to pace with Jubilee’s heir apparent Mr Ruto.
It is, however, too early to write Mr Odinga’s political obituary, as the 72-year-old politician has demonstrated ability to re-emerge from devastating storms.
The decision to prepare for another contest or not is very personal, one that Mr Odinga will make after several considerations, having in mind the undeniable sacrifices he has made in his three-decade political career.
Like his father before him, he has been a captain of the opposition ship, making compromises that have not been returned.
When he made the famous Kibaki tosha declaration – endorsing now former president Stanley Mwai Kibaki, many widely expected Mr Kibaki to return the favour by anointing Mr Odinga successor, a thing that never happened in the end.
Going home with 6.7 million voters – at least according to the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission, Mr Odinga retires as a hero to many, who perhaps will forever admire his style and take inspiration from the engineer.
Even when he chooses to read the second book of Timothy Chapter four verse seven and say “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race and I have kept the faith,” history will still pass a fair judgment on the late Jaramogi Oginga Odinga’s son.

Additional reporting by Daily Nation