Raila Odinga has been Kenya's prime minister and longtime
opposition leader, but with results in from Tuesday's General Election,
it seems he has once again failed to get the one job he's always wanted:
the presidency.
This may very well be the end of the
line for the 72-year-old, a mainstay of Kenyan politics since the 1980s,
who many think will not run for office again.
However
his legacy is at stake, with all eyes on how he will react after
claiming Tuesday's vote was massively rigged, which prompted violent
protests in his strongholds.
He has urged calm among his supporters while ominously repeating: "I don't control the people."
Mr
Odinga's doggedness is matched among Kenya's political class only by
that of his father, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, who led the opposition for
three decades but never the country.
Victory
In his fourth shot at the presidency, Mr Odinga felt certain to
pull off a victory against 55-year-old incumbent President Uhuru
Kenyatta with a newly formed coalition called the National Super
Alliance (Nasa) that was intended to overcome traditional opposition
divisions.
However he lost with 44.7 per cent to Mr Kenyatta's 54.2 per cent.
Mr
Odinga now finds himself back in a role all too familiar to him: crying
foul at a vote he claims was rigged while Mr Kenyatta and his Jubilee
party celebrate a second term in office.
Mr Odinga and
Mr Kenyatta know each other well, and both men's fathers did, too. A
generation ago, Jaramogi Odinga lost out to Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya's first
post-independence leader.
Born into political royalty,
a member of Kenya's western Luo tribe, Mr Odinga entered parliament in
1992 under the rule of president Daniel arap Moi. He had spent much of
the previous decade in prison or in exile during the struggle against
Moi's one-party rule.
Observers
He ran unsuccessfully for the presidency in 1997, 2007 and 2013, claiming to have been cheated of victory in the last two votes.
And many observers agree with Mr Odinga's view that the 2007 election was stolen from him.
That result triggered widespread politically motivated tribal violence that left more than 1,100 dead.
To
stop the killings, international mediators forced a deal that saw the
incumbent, Mwai Kibaki, continue as president, while Mr Odinga took the
specially created position of prime minister in a power-sharing
government.
He held the post until 2013 when he ran for
president, losing to Mr Kenyatta by a very narrow margin — and losing
his court challenge of the result.
Outright win
In rallies and public statements before the election, Mr Odinga repeated that he was "poised for an outright win".
When
the electoral commission (IEBC) began releasing results that did not
match up with that prediction, Mr Odinga was quick to claim rigging,
first by alleging hacking of the election system and then fabrication of polling data.
Those allegations were batted away by the IEBC, and international observer missions said they hadn't found any evidence of manipulation on the level Mr Odinga claimed.
While
his supporters consider Mr Odinga a much-needed social reformer, his
detractors see a rabble-rousing populist unafraid to play the tribal
card.
He is renowned as a firebrand speaker capable of
galvanising a crowd with his oratory. But he also has a reputation for
being described as stubborn and sometimes short-tempered.
Prophet
For some observers, he has lost some of his crowd-pleasing skills, which some attribute to ill health and advancing years.
With
his speech notes in hand he often stumbles and labours over his words —
especially in English. Speaking off-the-cuff in his native Swahili,
however, he still has the ability to inspire.
Raised an
Anglican, he later converted to evangelicalism. In 2009, he was
baptised in a Nairobi swimming pool by a self-proclaimed prophet.
He
studied engineering in communist former East Germany and named his
eldest son Fidel. He died in 2015, after the Cuban revolutionary.
However,
observers say the "socialist" and "communist" labels he was given were
more an attempt to discredit him by the Moi regime than an accurate
reflection of his leanings.
After returning to Kenya in 1970, Mr Odinga set up as a businessman before following his father into politics.
Nowadays he describes himself as a social democrat who wants to fight inequality.
Married, Mr Odinga has three surviving children: Rosemary, Raila Junior and Winnie.
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