Western fear of Raila Odinga’s Presidency was based on bogus theories
Kenya is a playground of Western imperialism, especially Britain, the ex-colonial master, and the United States of America. Because of the huge interest the West has in Kenya, anybody seeking to become President of our Republic has traditionally had to get the green light from the West. Mwai Kibaki won elections in December 2002 and took over from Moi through an unstoppable mass movement that had formed around the National Rainbow Coalition (NARC). Imperialism did not have any control of the situation or the political process, nor did the West have a lot of time to know and understand Kibaki before he became President.
What was known from his political profile was that Kibaki was not a communist. To ensure that the new President would follow the footprints of Moi when it came to perpetuating pro-Western, pro-liberal policies in Kenya, Kibaki was accorded a lavish State visit by President George Bush soon after he seized power, a high-profile visit that Bush had not accorded other African leaders who preceded Kibaki. The point was to underline to the new boys who had taken over at State House that Kenya belongs to the United States and its allies.
Western powers feared Raila Odinga, not because of his politics but because he was the son of Oginga Odinga, “a communist”,459 and under the circumstances, trusting Raila could be difficult. This fear came up in several leading Western publications that questioned Raila’s ability to lead Kenya, given his background. When Raila Odinga was waging his campaign for State House in 2007, he understood the concerns of the Americans together with those of other imperialist powers. The main fear of imperialism was that once he seized power, Raila’s unpredictability could include opposition to pro-Western, neo-liberal policies in Kenya that had been implemented by Kenyatta, Moi and Kibaki through massive privatization programs of profitable State enterprises, implementation of pro-capitalist reforms that had weakened the Kenyan State and left the country’s economy in the hands of Western multi-national companies.
The three previous Presidents had implemented measures that had deprived the Kenyan government of its ability to generate revenue internally to finance vital public services that were either in a state of disrepair or had collapsed altogether. In his campaign speeches and interviews, Raila went out of his way to assure Kenyans and the West that he was committed to privatizations and that his politics leaned more on “Social Democracy” as opposed to communism that his father and himself had come to be associated with.
Quoting Raila, The Nation wrote: “On whether he was a communist and adhered to teachings of the forefather of communism Karl Max, the Lang’ata MP said he was not, and has never been a communist”.460
When addressing Western concerns during campaigns, Raila’s strategy was to dissociate himself from his “communist past” or “radical profile” that is believed to have taken him to detention under Moi. At the domestic level, Raila enjoyed mass support but he understood that this grassroots support was not enough to deliver victory at the polls, especially if the West was uncomfortable with him. His response was to try to sooth the West by sending signals to the effect that the leading banks and huge Companies that were in charge of the Kenyan economy (including the Nairobi Stock Exchange) would not be tampered with under his leadership.461
The West knew and trusted Kibaki more than Raila because of two reasons: Kibaki was a known capitalist who built his business empire while playing golf and associating with the big fish in the high seas of capitalism. Secondly, by December 2002, when Kibaki won Presidential elections, he was already too old while the government was in the hands of the Mount Kenya Mafia, which held the real power under Kibaki’s Kenya. It was therefore unlikely that Kibaki would pull any revolutionary surprises in the cause of his Presidency and although he rigged elections through ECK in December 2007, imperialism was much more comfortable with another Kibaki presidency, the Kibaki they knew and not that of Raila, the “communist” whose leadership had never been tested in government.
Western media propaganda
Raila’s so-called “ruthlessness” had allegedly been witnessed when he was Minister of Roads, Housing and Public Works. He earned the wrath of many members of the Kikuyu upper class when he pulled down houses that were illegally constructed on road bypasses that the government had decided to reclaim.462 There is no literature or political Program linked to Raila that suggests that his political thinking leans towards communism. His “communist past” is purely by association to his father, his studies in East Germany, his naming of his son after Fidel Castro and a radical past that is believed to have been responsible for his detention by Moi. In reality, there is absolutely little documentary evidence that can be associated with Raila and that could be used to argue effectively that he has been a communist.
Even in his biography, which was released shortly before the December 2007 elections, there is nothing to suggest that Raila has been associated with a communist Party anywhere or published material that could point to a communist or Socialist thinking. It is possible that Raila may have had interest in communism or even harboured communist ideology. However, he has not been able to express these beliefs publicly either willingly or unwillingly.
What is known is that Raila is currently a property owner and one of the few millionaires in Kenya with vast business interests inside the country. If one examines Raila’s property-owning profile, he fits more into a bourgeoisie democrat than a daredevil communist ideologue who could seize power and nationalize property of the rich and powerful in Kenya as the basis of wealth re-distribution. Western fear of Raila as a communist was thus unfounded or based on a bogus theory that may have sprouted from the fear of the unknown.
Compared to Moi or Kibaki, Raila Odinga was relatively a new comer in Presidential or power politics and it is true that the West did not know or understand him. Oginga Odinga, Raila’s father, was blocked by imperialism from ascending to the Presidency through divide-and-rule tactics that saw him fall out with Kenyatta who later sent him to detention, and put him under house arrest before confining him to political cold storage. Raila is more or less like his father, fiercely independent minded, strategic and farsighted. Having gone through baptism in prison and detention without trial and with the profile of a former “coup leader”, could the United States trust Raila with Kenya’s Presidency?
Prior to the election date in December 2007, the Western media ran a series of articles highlighting Raila’s alleged past connections with communism. His education in Eastern Germany, which was considered a communist country, was linked to his father’s socialist ideology to pin him down as a “Leftist” — why? Because the West is not comfortable with communism, which has routinely been subjected to battering at every opportunity. At the family level, the fact that Raila named his son after Fidel Castro was used by critics to further paint him as a bona fide communist who was now seeking to become Kenya’s President with the consequence that several Western interests could be threatened.
My view is that this fear could have been behind America’s early congratulation and acceptance of Kibaki soon after Raila’s Presidency was stolen. When Imperialism noticed that Raila was actually part of the solution to the crisis following the stealing of his Presidency, they refused to support him openly with the United States government proposing that he share power with Kibaki “in a Government of National Unity”. The tenets of democracy were thrown out of the window as Raila, the winner, was encouraged to share power with the loser because of imperialist fears.
Raila Odinga’s Stolen Presidency (pgs 310-313)
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I understand your argument and its a valid argument, but what the west feared most about Raila is his cosiness to the westerns vowed enemies openly and provokingly. They seem to qualify their fears or analysis with pictures of Raila and Ahmedinajad in Kenya and in Tehran. Do not also forget another factor, the Jew factor on the world stage(they played the leading role in Obams election) and you are not going to be Ahmedinajads buddy when he wants Israel anhillated. See Popes woes, its his past as a Nazi Youth taht is eating on him. Raila has played it wrong in his campaigns, by always acting and enhancing these warped western beliefs.Obvious he has had wrong advisors on international political scenes, his internationality too has not helped his cause.
KSB: Correct. Your views are well covered in the next installment (Part 3) so keep tuned.
While you are right on some of the desriptions of Raila Odinga’s character, you are totally ou of touch with truth that made him lose his 2007 bid for precidecy. The asssocition with yestr thiefs of the Moi era was hi main undoing!AND WHILE YOU KEEP TALKING OF A STOLEN ELECTION, HE TRULLY DID NOT HAVE THE NUMBERS RIGHT!I monitored his stonghold voting zones and he would ganner 120% and 101% in some parts or Rift Valley and Nyanza. Who could he convince among the informed Kenyans that he can win while he pulled a baggage of fraudisters like Ruo, Murderors like Zakayo Cheruyot and alll other thieves and munderors of the Moi era. To get the image of Raila right in the eyes of Kenya and the World,tell the good he has done for Kenyans and convince Kenyans that he did not participate in the planning of PEV as we know that he agreed with Kalenjins to remove Kikuyus from Rift valley and kill a million of them. Tell us that he did not influence the Ligale Commission recently on tribal and party divisions. Just convince us, Iam one of his supporters who keeps swaying because of some blanders he commits either knowingly or unknowingly. I would be happy to see a genuine change in Kenyan leadership, please convince me. Thanks
KSB: Nina, thanks for your views. These are excerpts of a book about the 2007 elections and not new articles. Some of the issues you raise are well covered in the book while others (like the Ligale commission) are post-coalition issues that came up after the book’s publication. Raila’s association with thieves in the Moi era is covered in a chapter titled “Raila Odinga’s Alliance with political opportunists”. In these blog tit-bits, the highlights are limited to a chapter dealing with the reasons why the U.S. government congratulated Kibaki after a problematic election so keep this in mind.
The naivasha massacre of the luos was well planned in a meeting attended by politicians like uhuru kenyatta and jayne kihara among others, and top businessmen such as chris kirubi, jimna mbaru, and george muhoho.
They were annoyed that it is the luo who had made things elephant for them. They hence came up with a plan that hitting at the luo would be the best thing. They did not look at the fact that it is the kalenjin who removed them mostly from the rift valley.
They thought that it was the luo who had made the kalenjin do that. Biased red cross and mungiki paymasters the kenya red cross society that has been acclaimed as one of the best relief support agencies, did not come to the aid of the internally displaced persons (idps) at naivasha prisons for a whole 3 days, yet, they were in burnt forest and eldoret within hours of the fracas breaking out.
It came out that the red cross, just like the government, was partisan in addressing the problems. In the case of naivasha, the red cross and the government were looking at it as a luo affair, not a kenyan affair. This partisan approach to the massacre has exposed the red cross as a dishonest agency.
When the mungiki youths went to kabati cemetery for oath-taking, the police were very much in the picture. When they ransacked kabati estate, the police looked helpless.
The world must know the truth. And it is this truth that will set us free. Why were kikuyus hell bent on eliminating luos from naivasha, when it is a known fact that luos never killed any kikuyu in nyanza at the beginning of the evictions?
why were kikuyus in naivasha cheering and telling luos that they wanted majimbo (regionalism), yet now had to be evicted? why were the police under instructions to safeguard mungiki, and to shoot to kill at any show of resistance, people who stood helpless as their houses were being burnt and their people killed as they watched?
it is time to make clear distinctions; those who shout loudest about crimes against humanity, are the main paymasters of the murderous mungiki sect.
Nina, Kibaki and a whole gang of other political thugs like Thief Saitoti were once in KANU with Moi. The current Kenyan political coalition system is about whom you can team up with to win other than who has morals and ethics, so don’t assume Raila’s failure in 2007 was because he had teamed up with former Kanu members like Ruto.
Before 2007, Kibaki had a past record of stealing elections:
In 1969 Kenya’s General election, Kibaki, a previously London school of Economics student, having joined Kenya’s politics six years before, Stole the then BAHATI CONSTITUENCY in Nairobi from one Jael Mbogo, Currently a popular head of Kenya’s biggest women’s association.
Kibaki was said to have rigged that election, having won by a wafer-thin margin in remarkably similar circumstances to December’s election.
Like 2007 election, Kibaki was behind in the early tallying, the verdict was delayed for days and a crack squad of GSU Para-Military in those days of KENYATTA swarmed around the vote-counting centre when the result was announced.
She says ‘I was so far ahead in early vote counting that even the BBC even reported that a young woman had felled a government minister,’ Mbogo, now a civil society activist in Nairobi, said.
‘Kibaki stalled the result, and then robbed me of victory. Because he looks so holy, people are still asking if he really was capable of stealing this election. What I say is “Of course, he has done it before”.’
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/03/kenya.xanrice
To Western imperialism and all capitalist exploiters in general, Kenya has always been a model stability and democracy. “Kenya has been the acceptable face of Africa: a safe destination for million tourist a year, from Europe, Asia and North America to the country of Surf and Safari, a reliable base in a tough neighbourhood, for a bourgeoning aid industry, regional headquarters for the United Nations, and – less well known – a country whose military pacts with the US and Britain have made it a crucial ally in the “war against terror” (Financial Times (London) January 2, 2008).
Unfortunately however, this “imperialist paradise” has only left the vast majority of Kenyans in an ever more socio-economic devastation. Reputed as the most successful market economy in the whole of East Africa, Kenya before the controversial December 2007 general elections, claimed 6% growth in GDP for the years 2005 and 2006 respectively.
Nonetheless, the gap between the haves and the have-nots has been the widest ever. In 1990, about 48% of the population was living below the poverty line. Today, 55% Kenyans are subsisting on a couple of dollars a day. One of the reasons why Kenya has remained a star pupil of imperialism is as a result of its highly exploitative labour relations.
Most industries operate without the slightest observance of elementary labour laws. This ruthless exploitation is presented as the needed tonic to help grow the economy. But far from being a stimulant to growth, the wholesale adoption of neo-liberal policies since 1993, have actually only added to the impoverishment of the working masses. Overall, this policy has only created mountains of unemployment and an atmosphere of unbearable hike in cost of living for the vast majority of Kenyans.
Far from prosecuting the masterminds of the Moi-era corruption, the Kibaki regime soon became embroiled on a graft scandal of its own. Very rapidly, differences between the Kibaki’s and Moi completely disappeared! Way back in 2002, Kibaki and Moi were perceived to be political opponents. However, a few days before the ill-fated December 2007 general elections, former President Moi had had to rally voters for Kibaki. “If you love me, vote President Kibaki for a second term”. This of course underlines how corrupt the Kibaki government itself had become.
Way back in 2003, waves of industrial strikes swept the country. Many poor workers who had voted for Kibaki in the false hope that he represented change, started to take practical actions, when it became established that Kibaki runs a government that maintains “a hands-off” approach to the private sector. Series of industrial strikes broke out in sectors dominated by non-unionized workers in the so-called Export Processing Zones (EPZ).
Again disappointing its electors, the Kibaki government cast its lot with workers exploiters in all of these struggles. Thus, the irredeemable breach between his government and the working masses occurred.
Deservedly hated by the ordinary masses, Kibaki equally lacked any enthusiastic support from the business community. The general perception was that he ran a highly ineffective and corrupt government.
The entire world was shocked by the ferocity and intensity of the violent protests that had greeted the announcement of Kibaki as the “Winner” of the disputed elections. Kenya, which in all the past years had acquired the image of stability and peaceful multi-ethnic co-existence, precariously sat on a Rwanda-like, ethnic cleansing, tinder box. Expectedly, the Kibaki government accused Odinga and the opposition as the masterminds of these acts of violence.
On its part, the opposition accused the government of acts of genocide deliberately targeted at opposition supporters. In reality, the sectarian, violent character which has dominated the protest against the declaration of Kibaki as President is fundamentally a reaction against Kibaki’s anti-poor economic policies and nauseating corruption in governance.
The blatant manipulation of the votes in order to ensure his victory at all cost, was merely the proverbial last straw that broke the camel’s back. However, the fact that the masses justifiable anger against the thieving ruling elite had degenerated into an orgy of violent killings and maimings of innocent working class elements from different ethnic backgrounds, clearly revealed the ideological porosity of the Odinga led opposition movement itself.
In their daily propaganda and public pronouncements, the imperialists and their neo-colonial allies would want the working masses to believe that they are fighting corruption. In reality, their unjust system only thrives on permanent corruption. From time to time, special Anti Graft bodies are formed to fight corruption but this is more of a formality than real.
More than ever before, the position and the role played by Western imperialism and the so-called business community, (in the Kenyan debacle) once again underlined the utter rottenness of capitalist democracy. Well before the elections, it had become very, very obvious that President Kibaki runs a very, very corrupt and highly nepotic government.
Things became so bad that one Mr. John Githongo, Kibaki’s Anti-corruption Authority Chief had to flee to Britain, on self-exile, because the Kibaki government refused to fight corruption. For the first time in Africa’s post independence history, an insider was ready to reveal how corruption worked with evidence that included secretly tapped conversations with cabinet ministers! However, imperialism and the so-called business community in Kenya flatly refused to combat Kibaki’s kleptomania government but instead went ahead to do all they could to thwart the emergence of Odinga as President.
While conceding that Kibaki’s second term would be unlikely to yield big improvements in the business environment, they were however strongly persuaded that Odinga’s victory could only herald radicalism and uncertainty. This is one reason why imperialism leaned towards the ideas of a coalition government that would involve Odinga in controlling and demobilising the masses. From this perspective, imperialism bore direct responsibility for the 2007 political disaster in Kenya.
Thus, because as at the time Kenyans went to polls on December 27, 2007, the vast majority had withdrawn all political supports for Kibaki. But fortified by the unjust support of imperialism and the so-called business community, Kibaki decided to steal the presidency instead of bowing to the electoral verdict of the ordinary Kenyans.
Whatever political formulae are implemented to resolve national issues in Kenya, on the basis of capitalism, the government will continue to be corrupt while the economy remains primarily run to make the rich richer and the poor, poorer.
Kibaki in his first five years in office showed that he was primarily an ally of capitalist exploiters. Odinga in opposition, had understandably been able to indulge in more populist rhetorics. His rhetorics however, do not add up to his realities. Firstly, he himself is a substantial property owner. In addition, his ODM comprises a large number of elements who held sway in the Moi’s corruption ridden era. Equally important is the fact that Odinga and his ODM, centrally subscribe to capitalism and neo-liberalism. Their vitriolic attacks against the ruling party and Kibaki during the 2007 campaigns, were due more to the fact that they personally lacked the opportunities to be the ones looting and selling Kenya in the name of privatization and liberalization.
Though it is clear that many Kenyans take Odinga’s populist rhetoric seriously, it is however, only an independent movement of the working class and poor that could begin to implement a serious programme that will meet the interests of the masses and not just the elite.
Nevertheless, the sole way to arrest and reverse the socio-political tragedies in Kenya and other African countries, is for the Kenyan working masses to come to the central control of the economy and polity. Presently, the economy is run to pamper the whims and corruption of the capitalist elites.
Right from time it became clear that Kenya would win independence, its politics had been skewed to pamper to the Kikuyu elites who collectively themselves are just pawns in the hands of British and US imperialism. Therefore, to forge a genuinely harmonious multi-ethnic future for Kenya, the working masses need to come to power to institute a government primarily formed to meet the needs of all Kenyan masses, as opposed to the prevailing divisive capitalist agenda of promoting the supremacy of one ethnic group over another. But this precisely is the missing link in the Kenyan, nay African, situation.
By Segun Sango
http://www.socialismtoday.org/115/kenya.html
The unresolved issues of land, ethnic rights and constitutional reform are all questions that Marxists describe as being tasks of the bourgeois revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries.
But since the French revolution of 1789, the bourgeoisie has proved itself to be a cowardly class, one that is incapable of even solving its tasks. This is even more so in the third world or global south, where the capitalist class is weak, and acts as an agent of imperialism, attacking the workers and peasants.
Kenya, since independence, is an excellent example of this; the freedom fighter Jomo Kenyatta was vilified when he was imprisoned by the British, yet as president became a loyal servant of imperialism rewarding himself and his clique with large tracts of land and stolen wealth. Other leaders have done, and will do the same.
The Russian Revolutionary Leon Trotsky pointed out in Permanent Revolution that only the working class can solve these democratic tasks, and only then by being completely independent of the bosses and by leading the urban poor and peasants in a socialist revolution.
There is no democratic stage, i.e. whole historic period of the revolution: the petit bourgeois and Stalinist parties that have adopted this as their strategy have led the working class to defeat and in some cases to slaughter, such as in Indonesia in 1956.
Trotsky posited instead the strategy of permanent revolution, where the working class takes power, expropriates the multinationals and big capital, and helps the peasants seize the land. The constitutional questions can only be resolved by adopting the most democratic state structure: that of the workers’ state, based on democratically elected councils, as there was in Russia in 1917.
The working class must deal with questions of ethnicity by constructing a socialist state with full democratic rights to all peoples, including the right to self-determination.
Such a state would also make huge steps in eradicating poverty by “the expropriation of the major industries, banks and finance houses, the imposition of a strict state monopoly of foreign trade, sustained efforts to spread the revolution internationally: these must be the first steps of every victorious revolution in a semi-colonial country.” http://www.fifthinternational.org/index.php?id=20,53,0,0,1,0
Protest to Power: Manifesto for World Revolution[/INT]
This should be the strategy of Kenyan socialists. However, we recognise that the current agreement is a victory for imperialism and gives Kibaki and Odinga and their close supporters renewed chances to enrich themselves at the expense of the masses.
Therefore the main focus for socialists should be to convene a constitutional assembly. This is the most democratic form of the bourgeois state and can carry out measures to deal with many of the issues which the Kenyan agreement outlined as needing “further discussion”: land, poverty, constitutional reform and ethnic rights.
Such an assembly operates in Bolivia where, despite being hamstrung by the right and the government’s conciliation, it has produced land reform and a constitution to hand some power to the working and popular classes; in Ecuador where it has made itself sovereign over the national assembly and is also discussing land reform and returning power to the people; and in Nepal, it will convene in the spring to rid itself of the monarchy.
Socialists demand constituent assemblies be open rather then leave negotiations to secret cabals of politicians under the auspices of the United Nations. But the recent elections and the proven capacity for both Kibaki and Odinga to divide workers and peasants on ethnic lines underlines the importance of forming popular committees to both campaign for such a an assembly, to oversee its elections and to convene it.
Workers and peasants’ councils should be formed from all ethnic groups, which can then campaign for candidates committed to radical reforms and a socialist transformation of society. The councils can also be used as a defence force against politicians’ hired thugs to stoke up ethnic hatred, and as forums in which policies are debated and from which a workers party can be formed. Such a party, armed with the programme of permanent revolution, is a burning necessity.
Reforms within capitalism will not be enough; a revolutionary party would have to counterpose a worker’ and peasants’ government to take measures against the bosses and internationalise the revolution. It would base itself on the armed might of the working class and on the popular councils, where all delegates are democratically elected, earn the average wage and instantly recallable by the voters if they fail to carry out the mandate of the masses. Compare that with the Kenyan MPs of today, who enrich themselves and do deals with multinationals, while the poor starve.
We in the League for the Fifth International believe the Kenyan masses can throw off their chains of exploitation and misery when they throw off their corrupt, rich leaders.
• For a Constitutional Assembly to solve the burning issues of land, poverty and constitutional reform
• For independent trade unions
• For a revolutionary workers’ party
• For a workers and peasants’ government
http://theanticapitalist.net/content/kenyan-power-sharing-business-usual
The Internet has become the natural outgrowth of the power of the free press that has continued to accelerate that change in the world.
One recent example of how the free press — supercharged with the power of the Internet —continues to change the world is the story of the whistle-blower website WikiLeaks.org essentially overturning a corrupt Kenyan government in 2007. WikiLeaks spokesman Julian Assange explained how it happened to TED TV’s Chris Anderson:
Julian Assange: The Kroll Report. This was a secret intelligence report commissioned by the Kenyan government after its election in 2004. Prior to 2004, Kenya was ruled by Daniel arap Moi for about 18 years. He was a soft dictator of Kenya. And when Kibaki got into power — through a coalition of forces that were trying to clean up corruption in Kenya — they commissioned this report, spent about two million pounds on this and an associated report. And then the government sat on it and used it for political leverage on Moi, who was the richest man — still is the richest man — in Kenya. It’s the Holy Grail of Kenyan journalism. So I went there in 2007, and we managed to get hold of this just prior to the election — the national election, December 28. When we released that report, we did so three days after the new President, Kibaki, had decided to pal up with the man that he was going to clean out, Daniel arap Moi. So this report then became a dead albatross around President Kibaki’s neck.
TED TV’s Chris Anderson: And — I mean, to cut a long story short — word of the report leaked into Kenya, not from the official media, but indirectly. And in your opinion, it actually shifted the election.
Assange: Yeah. So this became front page of the Guardian and was then printed in all the surrounding countries of Kenya, in Tanzanian and South African press. And so it came in from the outside. And that, after a couple of days, made the Kenyan press feel safe to talk about it. [I]t ran for 20 nights straight on Kenyan TV, [and] shifted the vote by 10 percent, according to a Kenyan intelligence report, which changed the result of the election.
Anderson: Wow, so your leak really substantially changed the world?
Assange: Yep.
Though Kibaki claimed victory regardless of the election tallies, in an election that was mired with fraud, he was forced to share power with his electoral rival, Raila Odinga.
http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/tech-mainmenu-30/computers/4458-the-power-of-the-internet