This Man Raila Amalo Odinga; The Political Genius!!
Bill Clinton, in an article he wrote for TIME magazine in 1999 titled “Captain Courageous,” described one of the best American presidents, F.D. Roosevelt, as an architect of grand political designs.
Raila Odinga can also be described as an architect of grand political designs. He is a great political builder among great political builders. If he remains a commanding intelligence in modern Kenyan history, it is because he works tirelessly to shape some significant events of his time. He has chosen courage over cowardice. He has chosen competence over mediocrity. His legacy teaches us diligence, it teaches us hard work, integrity, fortitude, honesty, self-sacrifice, responsible leadership, and accountability. We are taught by his inspiring example that true leaders must work for the common good. We are taught by him that genuine leaders ought to have purposes greater than themselves. Odinga is a moral force who teaches us to live a life that meets the ideals we profess.
Odinga’s education policy, his investment in Agriculture, his social welfare programs, and a vibrant, productive economy have brought into being a vast middle class that has enough energy, buoyant optimism, and supreme confidence to engage the rest of the world. He is a game-changer who really has made politics admirable and respectable. Compared to his contemporaries, Raila is the most articulate advocate of the rights of the minorities and a clear-headed defender of democracy.
He has become both a symbol of the Kenya nation and its ethnic nationalism, as well as a symbol of the struggle towards a ‘more perfect’ Kenyan nation; a concept that includes the democratic ethos, good governance, egalitarian rule, enlightenment, modernity, bureaucratic rationality, and welfarism.
Give us Raila! Give us Raila! Give us Raila! Who steps into the big shoes of Raila? Ruto? While Raila believes that one ought to mobilize for power on the basis of ideological interests, Ruto has demonstrated that it is only by accessing the power that one can mobilise one’s interests and make one’s vision of society practical.
