Let's Not Put the Burden of Peace on Raila Odinga

What you hear is that this was arguably Raila Odinga's ‘turn to eat’ in Kenya’s presidential elections. This was his last shot at the top job, but once again he lost to Uhuru Kenyatta. Odinga quickly cried foul and rejected the result, claiming the election had been rigged. You also hear that Kenya's stability now depends on whether Mr. Odinga will channel his rejection "peacefully" through the courts or call his supporters onto the streets, with potentially violent consequences, as he did after the 2007 poll. This is a lie. The truth is this: Raila Odinga contested in an election in 2007 he won that election but Mr. Mwai Kibaki (incumbent then) refused to concede defeat leading to a bloodbath that swiftly took and ethnic turn beating the Kalenjin and the Kikuyu nations over accumulated injustices over land resource occupation and control. Raila's supporters protested the theft of votes in Luo Nyanza and parts of Nairobi and the police used excessive force to contain them leaving behind horror and devastation. In 2017 Raila Odinga contested in an election whose credibility remains questionable; he pointed out a number of anomalies and called on the electoral body (IEBC) to comprehensively deal with matters raised before declaring the results but the IEBC would hear none; it went on (clearly through state coercion) to hurriedly declare Uhuru Kenyatta as the winner. Mr. Odinga has since not gone to court to contest the results despite pressure from almost every quarter to do so but also he has not called for any mass action in the country. It is therefore, not right to peg the peace of Kenya or lack of it on Mr. Odinga. The truth is that there are millions of Kenyans out there who feel cheated once again and are pressing for justice; not all of them are supporters of Mr. Odinga, anyway.