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Azimio La Umoja party presidential candidate Raila Odinga addresses the crowd in Kisumu, wearing a traditional Luo hat, on August 4, 2022 in Kisumu. ED RAM / GETTY IMAGES VIA AFP
Will the fifth application be the right one? Raila Odinga has reason to believe so. At 77, the veteran of Kenyan politics is the favorite in the presidential election this Tuesday, August 9th. In polls, he is not only a few points ahead of his competitor, Vice President William Ruto. But “Baba,” as his fellow citizens call him, has the backing and influence of outgoing head of state Uhuru Kenyatta. within institutions and business circles in Nairobi.
The eternal opponent, who was imprisoned for nine years after a failed coup in 1982, must take revenge. As a candidate in 2007, he had seen his victory stolen after vote-rigging. Fraud led to the reappointment of President Mwai Kibaki and plunged Kenya into a bloodbath. Ten years later, it was the Supreme Court, seized by candidate Odinga, that annulled the election.
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“Thank you for always standing by my side during the long years of fighting for the liberation of Kenya. The road has been long,” admitted the eternal candidate on Saturday, August 6, during their last meeting at Nairobi’s Kasarani Stadium, a mythical place of Kenyan politics of the past decades.
Will Raila succeed where his father Oginga Odinga failed? The ambitions of independent Kenya’s first vice president were trampled on by then-President Jomo Kenyatta. Offended by history, today it is the son of the former head of state who serves as a springboard for the hereditary adversary. A Byzantine alliance between two men who are sometimes allies, often bitter rivals.
Glass roof
Raila Odinga’s base understood this well: 2022 presents itself as both her best and her last chance. Hope is high among his supporters, at the head of which we find “his” community, the approximately 6 million Luo (about 12% of the population), who are present en masse, particularly in the highly politicized slums of Nairobi and on the shores of Lake Victoria .
“The time has come, it’s finally up to us to take the lead,” summarizes Caroline Atieno, dipping her feet in a tub of hot water at her beauty salon in downtown Kisumu. The port city in western Kenya with around one million inhabitants is the stronghold of Raila Odinga, the mzee (“patriarch”) of the Luo. For decades, the province felt marginalized by the central authorities in Nairobi.
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