The period starting 1998 heralded a landmark year in the alliance building history of Kenya’s politics. It was a period filled with unseen political dangers as we embarked on novel experiments that were unusual in the country’s governance scene.
I had believed in creating alliances with other leaders across the country since I joined Parliament. It was impossible to grow without sharing ideas, pulling together, and learning from each other. The Sunday Nation issue of July 24, 1994, splashed my image on the front page with the banner headline reading “I’ll Work with Moi”.
The situation was different in 1998 because we were talking to Kanu itself. The President had ordered his men to stop attacking us and they had started saying some very flattering stuff about us in public meetings, even though some of them said the opposite in private.
Moi’s approach towards NDP was both systematic and strategic. We lost the recent (1997) presidential elections and we didn’t feel it was a good idea to continue fighting a president who was on his final term in office. There was a general feeling in our party that the political tone of the current term would be dominated by succession politics.
Our direct competitor, therefore, would not be President Moi. Most NDP legislators thought partnering with Kanu was a good move because Kanu was a larger organisation whose leader was about to retire from national leadership, meaning that we would have many chances fighting for our position in post-Moi Kenya.
I later discovered Moi was serious with having us in his camp through one event that involved two politicians from Nyanza. It happened that a long-standing senior politician had lost his Rongo seat to a younger man Ochilo Ayacko of NDP.
The loser’s sin had been to defend his seat on the hated and abhorred Kanu ticket. Ayacko was an inexperienced neophyte who had just joined politics.
The veteran politician took advantage of Ayacko’s political ignorance to convince him on a scheme that would have completely ruined the younger man’s political career. The older man had convinced Ayacko to stand down for him, in exchange for some favours and mouth-watering monetary rewards. It seemed Ayacko had fallen to the elder politician’s wiles because he moved fast to consummate the deal by taking Ayacko to State House in Nakuru to meet the president. It seemed that, as was customary in Kanu, Moi himself would be counted upon to give the goodies and get Ayacko out of the way.
When Moi was informed about the plans with Ayacko it seems the president didn’t support it. This was unusual for Moi because Kanu had always regaled at buying inexperienced MPs with large sums of money, then manipulating elections to make sure their favoured men won the ensuing by-elections. Unknown to the senior politician, Moi had changed tack and the president wasn’t about to get into another fight with Raila (Odinga) and the NDP.
Moi told the veteran loser quite candidly that he wanted Raila to be on his side and reminded him that NDP was already offering Moi the support he desperately needed in Parliament.
No one in NDP or Kanu could pretend that the union between the two parties was indeed a likely one. Our principles and values were as unlike as chalk and cheese, not to mention our political philosophies. We needed to form a small technical team to meet and discuss our common business with a view of outlining the common policies that could be harmonised.
Kanu chose Mohammed Affey and Dalmas Otieno while NDP selected Dr Adhu Awiti and Oginga Ogego. The latter is not related to me. Oginga Ogego was a long-time political associate whom Raila and I appointed as the executive director of Jaramogi Oginga Odinga Foundation.
I remember the Kanu negotiators included William Ruto, who had been directed to keep a keen eye on me. Someone had told them that I was one of the most difficult NDP members because of the many questions I kept on asking.
I had witnessed many sordid tales where distinguished men from the opposition had been approached by Kanu with high-sounding promises, only to be abandoned after they had left the opposition. One good example was John Keen, the DP secretary-general, who had been promised the seat of Kanu secretary-general after ditching DP. Of course, it never happened. Others had been promised ministerial positions upon union with Kanu, only to be abandoned at the altar.
Therefore, when the president broached the subject of awarding some NDP MPs with ministerial positions, most of us were wary. Raila himself had suggested that I take a ministerial position instead of him.
As a party leader, he wanted to wait and see how the cooperation deal would pan out before taking a substantive position in government. But Moi told him it was either Raila or no one else. Our technical team having finished its work of harmonising some targeted areas of the policies of both political parties, we agreed that we could now form a committee for engaging in a comprehensive cooperation deal with Kanu. The members from NDP included secretary-general Dr Charles Maranga, Otieno Kajwang, Oloo Aringo, Odongo Omamo, Adhu Awiti, Owino Achola, Orwa Ojode and I.
Non-MP members were Kauma Musili and Wambui Otieno. Kanu appointed its own committee and we started the discussions that would lead to the Kanu-NDP merger in a little over two years. In the meantime, the IPPG spirit of the previous parliamentary term had been upgraded and a parliamentary select committee formed to pave the way for the legislative groundwork for the constitutional review process.
When the parliamentary term started in January 1998, I had my eyes fixed on a seat in the PAC (Public Accounts Committee). Since the position of vice-chairman is not elective, we agreed to elect Henry Obwocha as chairman then he would nominate me as vice-chairman. After the elections, Mwai Kibaki, who was now the Leader of Official Opposition, was furious that we had not elected him to be chairman. He declined to sit as an ordinary member of the committee and actually walked out on us. His DP brigade followed him.
Just when we were preparing for the 1999 elections in the committee, Mwai Kibaki invited us to his office on the first floor at Parliament buildings. He served us tea and spoke to us in a very conciliatory tone.
His office as Leader of Official Opposition was located just a door from Committee Room 9, where we were to hold elections in a few minutes. He pleaded with us not to humiliate him again, explaining that the chairmanship of PAC rightly belonged to him. Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, Kibaki said, was the chairman of PAC when he led the opposition, as was Michael Kijana Wamalwa after him. So what was so special in his case that he should be denied the chairmanship? We all agreed that we would vote for Kibaki as the chairman, but on condition that he would retain me as the vice-chairman.
The parliamentary clerk was already in the room when we entered. He read us the rules and regulations governing parliamentary elections and immediately called the vote. After we unanimously voted for Kibaki, the clerk asked him to nominate his deputy. Kibaki eyed all the members, each in turn, looking really pleased that he was now the boss, pursing his lips in his characteristic style, then pointed at David Mwiraria. That was it.
I was disappointed that Kibaki had reneged on our deal. Was he teaching me a lesson because of the deal I had made with Obwocha a year earlier that had scuttled his bid?
When President Moi came to Kisumu at the beginning of August, 2001, he had a broad and conciliatory agenda. We had to rush to the city in advance to tell the people, most of whom still viewed Moi and Kanu with suspicion, to give the President a rousing welcome since, as one elder put it, it was Moi who was with the girl we wanted.
It was all very dramatic as the President mingled freely with the people of the lakeside town and told crowds how he was happy and enjoyed the trip very much. He praised Raila and the NDP everywhere he went, appearing very sincere and convincing.
Finally, when he came to meet elders and leaders, something happened that prompted me to raise my antenna. The President called Odeny Ngure and I aside and confided to us that he thought that Raila was a very popular guy in the country. The President then added that he was in the process of preparing the presidency for Raila to take over from him.
I don’t know whether Odeny believed him but I didn’t believe an iota of the story Moi was telling us. When I later told Raila what Moi had told me, he was a bit sceptical. The Kisumu tour was a resounding success for Moi. When we went back to Nairobi, the ground was now set for deepening our cooperation arrangement with Moi and Kanu. Raila was appointed the Minister for Energy while Dr Adhu Awiti was appointed Minister for Planning. Orwa Ojode and Peter Odoyo were appointed assistant ministers.
The committee that had been formed in August was upgraded to a taskforce in the New Year of 2002. The taskforce now consisted of Raila, Awiti, Ojode and I from NDP. Kanu was represented by Uhuru Kenyatta, William Ruto, Julius Sunkuli and Musalia Mudavadi. We were mandated to work out merger details within the shortest time possible, hold grassroots elections and organise a national delegates’ conference to elect new office bearers for a party that would be called New Kanu. In the meantime, Kanu itself was like a house on fire.
The men who grabbed the Kanu positions in the taskforce were young and somehow inexperienced politicians still in their 30s. Old hands like Nicholas Biwott, Joseph Kamotho and Vice-president George Saitoti felt slighted and they rushed to Moi to inform him that Ruto, Uhuru, Sunkuli and Mudavadi were up to no good. Two weeks later, Moi expanded the taskforce to include the older Kanu politicians. Now we had a group of 17 MPs.
This was the team that prepared the agenda for the famous NDP-Kanu merger meeting of March 18, 2002. Raila was elected New Kanu secretary-general, edging out long-serving SGJoseph Kamotho, while Moi retained the chairmanship of the new outfit. The biggest casualty, however, was VP George Saitoti.
Not only was he thrown out of the executive order, but his position was split to four so that we had four party vice-chairmen. These four positions were taken by Uhuru Kenyatta, Musalia Mudavadi, Kalonzo Musyoka and Noah Katana Ngala. Other positions were shared out between former NDP and Kanu politicians.
Now the President knew he had us in his trap and he moved to execute his plans for the presidential succession. William Ruto had been trying to speak to Raila, struggling to allay any fears that the former NDP leader might have had.
Raila told Ruto to come and speak to me instead. One day, Ruto invited me for lunch at the Grand Regency Hotel (in Nairobi) and started telling me things that I found hard to swallow raw. He also informed me that his Kanu wing, which included Uhuru Kenyatta and Julius Sunkuli, was ready to die for us on the issue of making New Kanu a success and helping us capture the presidency. I had been a bit apprehensive to meet Ruto and truly I started suspecting something politically untoward was afoot.
One day Paul arap Sang, a Kanu friend who was the MP for Bureti constituency, came to see me with a jaw-dropping revelation. He was curious to know what kind of stories Moi told us when we met. I was frank with Sang and he seemed to be amused by what I told him.
He actually laughed a bit then informed me how Moi told them totally different plans when he met their group. It dawned on me that Moi was employing doublespeak with the various groups he met for his (2002) succession plans. Sang asked me to consider which group I reckoned the President was really telling the truth. Of course, I knew the group that Moi was bound to be truthful with.
Sang further confided to me that he had sat down with Ruto, Sunkuli and Kenyatta and he knew their game plan. According to him, their game plan was very different from the stuff Ruto had been trying to tell me at Grand Regency. They had a list of their own men who they thought could become the president after Moi. In fact, Ruto and Sunkuli had already thrown their lot with Kenyatta.
When Sang inquired about Raila’s chances, Ruto and Sunkuli waved the idea away by insisting that Raila was never in Kanu’s list of possible Moi successors. Later, I went to Raila and told him about the information Sang had given me. Apparently, Moi’s propaganda mesmerised Raila and my brother told me how he believed what the President told him. Although he never gave any reasons why Moi would think otherwise, Raila thought Moi would never name Uhuru Kenyatta as his successor, which he did.
TOMORROW IN THE DAILY NATION The MP who wanted to punch Raila Odinga and knock out Moody Awori over Simeon Nyachae; George Saitoti’s sense of entitlement and Narc wars that led to confrontation with President Mwai Kibaki.
