Raila Amollo Odinga was the EAC-sponsored candidate for the AU Chairperson. The winner, Mahamoud Ali Youssouf, hails from Djibouti, a country under the COMESA wing. It took a coalition of COMESA and SADC to permanently sink the Raila Amollo Odinga candidacy. The winner was more qualified in every aspect than his competitors, but this was a political process.
Initially, in the first two rounds, when Raila was heading the votes, some analysts predicted that the 10 or so SADC votes would ultimately go to the eventual winner, Madagascar Richard Randriamandrato, who would flip the election towards Raila. The winner needed to secure two-thirds of the attendants’ vote, which in that meeting was 33 votes. However, SADC, after their candidate, Madagascar Richard Randriamandrato, was chopped off, sided with a larger economic block of COMESA. What went wrong for Kenya, EAC and Raila Amollo Odinga? This article will attempt to answer this question and more.
The tug-of-trade war between Kenya and South Africa is legendary but rarely placed in the spotlight. Kenya never wanted to join the SADC out of fear South Africa would flood her market with their goods. Kenya joined COMESA in 1994 and has been there since then. I must add that within COMESA, Kenya is an outlier member, never having the gavel to swerve things to her liking. The lack of leverage within the COMESA explains why most members of COMESA supported tiny Djibouti at the expense of Kenya. One ought to have expected that COMESA’s vote to have been divided in the middle, but it didn’t!
The third candidate, Madagascar Richard Randriamandrato, from SADC, got 10 votes in the first round, but 6 SADC members didn’t vote for him! In the first round, Raila got 22 votes, while Mahamoud Ali Youssouf got 19 votes and 10 votes for Richard Randriamandrato. There was one absentee who stuck to his guns to the end. Absentee voters generally run away from criticism of voting one way or the other, but sometimes, it is a vote of protest. There were a total of 51 voters, falling short of 3 voters. With the exception of Tshisekedi of DRC, who has a bigger fish to fry back home, knowing M23 is slowly but surely making gains and inching towards Kinshasa, the other truants have been suspended by the AU.
There is now a record of six member countries banned from participation in the African Union (AU) after Niger and Gabon were both suspended in August 2023. AU suspensions are almost always a response to a government overthrow in a member country, implying that coups in Africa are now at their highest point in the organization’s 21-year history. The six suspended countries are Burkina Faso, Guinea, Sudan, Niger, Gabon and Mali. In the DRC, it is no longer a matter of if but when M23 will be inside Kinshasa, with the ramifications very clear: toppling the Tshisekedi government is the ultimate prize.
Kenya’s position on the DRC looks neutral, but having peacekeepers may anger Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, DRC and other African countries. But South Africa has a bigger bone to chew against Kenya. President Ramaphosa of South Africa made it abundantly clear the SADC block will prop up their own candidate: Madagascar Richard Randriamandrato, whom we knew was a mere escort. He had zero chance of upsetting the two well-oiled campaigns of Raila Amollo Odinga and the eventual winner, Mahamoud Ali Youssouf. South Africa has never fully forgiven Kenya for dumping SADC for COMESA. It was SADC this time around who picked the winner by denying Raila the majority votes in earlier rounds, leading to his disqualification.
Although many are gonna disagree with me, I also read identity politics based on religion, language and race intruding to determine the voting stakes. The trio variables were not decisive but aided in closing the race for the eventual winner, Mahamoud Ali Youssouf. It is also important to concede that Mahamoud Ali Youssouf was the best candidate by far. I watched all the interviews. The man was on another level, very polished and astute in his vision of Africa. Raila’s age has taken its toll. The Arab League and the francophone acted in one accord to push their candidate, Mahamoud Ali Youssouf, to a finish line. It is also important to remember the Francophone has dominated the AU Chairperson because the Anglophone community is highly divided by lots of issues, mostly trivial but sufficient to upset us.
During the interviews, Raila was not articulate as he used to be akin to an ageing heavyweight boxer who had absorbed too many blows in the head, and his reasoning capacity was slightly impaired. He was struggling to remember words, and his repetition of the expletive “shameful” to register his dissatisfaction with what was wrong with Africa might have put off some voters. We agree Africa needs one visa for her citizens, but that does not make us “shameful”. Raila had tried to showcase his engineering prowess, but personally, I can easily appreciate why many voters did not relate to his vision. Say what you like, but the AU may plan, but the infrastructural impetus is solidly the sovereignty of a nation involved.
Before we explore Raila’s next political moves, I need to tie this one loose end. Despite the Kenyan government fully supporting his candidature, many peered at a different picture. Inside Kenya, some of his supporters were praying that he would lose the AU Chairperson, and their main peeve was they needed Raila more in Kenya than having him in the AU. It was a frivolous excuse because the striplings ought to step up to the kitchen and stop relying on the fatigued septuagenarian. If you look carefully at the Djibouti candidate who went on to clinch the chairperson is an active Minister for Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of Djibouti. Raila is sidelined in Kenyan politics!
Raila Amollo Odinga is not working in the Kenyan government. That predicament carries its own consequences. Most voters who did not vote for Raila had many unanswerable questions: If Raila is such a valuable asset, why is Kenya confining him in the opposition wilderness? Why is he not in the Kenyan government? As for me, the answer has never been more straightforward: The William Samuoi Ruto government was turning the AU into their dumping site. Getting rid of Raila from Kenya’s affairs was more rewarding to Ruto and his allies than having a qualified person running the AU. It was a stature of immorality. Parlaying the AU to stratify the Ruto regime in Kenya was the sad part of this narrative.
Raila, the candidate, has his own personal weaknesses. Raila’s demeanour is more suited to managing opposition politics. He is not a dealmaker, impatient and bent on applying force to achieve his heart’s desires. He is not an errand boy, which this position urgently demands. Raila’s DNA is to give orders but not to obey them. At the AU, the Chairperson charts out the agenda of the AU based on what the bosses instruct. The AU Chairperson is not the boss but an employee. Raila is more used to being the boss. Even if he had won the post, he is too enmeshed in Kenyan politics to let it go. He will keep diving deep into Kenyan affairs while running the AU. That conflict of interest may have eroded his support. His past involvement with the AU led to the Kenyan government asking for his removal because he was exploiting his docket at the AU to advance his political ambitions in Kenya. It was an unforgettable conflict of interest sufficient enough to send him packing his bags.
Before I pen off, there is a need to mull over what Raila’s next political project will be. Raila will dive deep into Kenyan politics as a matter of necessity but will find the political terrain has shifted beneath his tiny feet. Raila’s pragmatism will now be his weakness. He made a major blunder to join the Kenya Kwanza government. Ruto has bribed Raila with senior government positions to his closest sidekicks. That was cheered in Raila’s political stronghold, but it came with the cost of dividing the Azimio coalition into two outfits. Kalonzo Musokya and Eugene Wamalwa claim they are now new kings of the opposition. Martha Karua, too, has left Raila. The former deputy president, Rigathi Gachagua, is now positioning himself as the leader of the opposition, but Kalonzo-Eugene Wamalwa will not accept him as their leader. They would like to use him to bleed the Ruto vote in the mountain of Kenya. The more I think about the future of Raila in Kenya politics, the more I feel I am watching the movie: “ No Country for Old Men.”
Raila Amollo Odinga’s failure to bag the AU Chairperson marks the end of a tumultuous political career. He has no future in Kenyan politics despite his tribesmen beaming smiles that their “redeemer” is back in business. There is no Kenyan business for Raila to transact, which is a bitter pill his supporters will come to swallow, accept, and agonize for many years to come. Raila will unsuccessfully attempt to move in the parliament a motion of “vote of no confidence” against the Ruto government, of which his closest allies are also dipping their straws! He will never garner the two-third impeachment vote to prevail. It will be a frantic gesture to remind all and sundry Raila is BACK, breathing fire on the neck of President William Samuoi Ruto. It will excite his political base as much as it will polarize it: His minions and their supporters now enjoying the perks in the Ruto government will despise him more than ever before.
Whoever said politics are boring really didn’t know what he was talking about! Or wasn’t he?
Read more articles by Rutashubanyuma Nestory
