Born on 7th January 1945, Raila Amollo Odinga is a history maker. Raila has followed the path of his late father Jaramogi Odinga who helped the country during the pre-colonial era. Raila has lost Elections five times in a row from 1997, 2002, 2007,2013,2017, and recently 2022.Before this year’s elections, the son of Jaramogi has been claiming rigging claims by his opponents.
2007 elections witnessed political skirmishes with Raila and his allies accusing the government of stealing votes from him. He claimed that the government was holding identity cards from his ststrongholds in a bid to help MwaI Kibaki rig the polls. It took the intervention of The United Nations with Koffi Anan to help ODM and PNU reconcile. Many people were left displaced while others lost their lives.
Fast forward to 2013, Uhuru Kenyatta joined hands with William Ruto forming the Jubilee party from their two individual parties, TNA and URP. The duo would win the elections with Raila Coming in second. Uhuru Kenyatta garnered 12,221,053 with Raila getting 6,173,433 votes. The jubilee party won the elections in the first round hence no run-off was required.
The 2017 elections would witness a similar situation that has been for years with Odinga allies claiming the elections have been manipulated and thlawyersyer James Orengo, Otiende Omollo, and Clifford Ochieng stated that Uhuru Kenyatta had hacked the Electoral body’s system and had tampered with the database.
Raila wanted to be declared president claiming he had won the elections claims that the electoral body was quick to dismiss. The Supreme court would then nullify the elections thus requiring a fresh election to be carried out within 60 days.
Raila would then swear in himself as the people’s President with television stations being taken off the air. Raila and Uhuru made a public appearance in which they shook hands claiming to have put their political affiliations behind them.
In the just concluded polls, Raila Odinga was confident of an Azimio win with opinion polls placing him ahead of Kenya Kwanza’s flag bearer and announced President-elect William Ruto. Raila was cleared to vie by IEBC and launched his ten-point manifesto. Despite a disagreement between the electoral body’s commissioners Chebukati declared Ruto the president.
Raila’s fate remains unknown with political analysts claiming he might move to court to challenge the results.
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