Raila Odinga's recent endorsement at the Ofafa Memorial Hall in Kisumu is confirmation that the Cord supremo will not play second fiddle to anybody when it comes to seeking the country’s top seat next year.
Led by chairman Willis Otondi and Secretary General Owino Nyadi, the Luo Council of Elders confirmed that the endorsement took place to avert any doubts about the Raila candidature.
In an interview by a leading newspaper this week, Mr Nyadi reiterated that calls for Odinga to support other candidates were “farfetched" and that "it would mean that he is retiring from active politics. Raila will run for presidency".
Several reliable sources from the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) have confirmed that Raila’s name will be on the presidential ballot in 2017 come rain or sunshine.
Edwin Sifuna, an advocate of the High Court and Chair of the ODM national appeals tribunal, could not have put it more aptly in his article in one of the leading dailies when he said that Raila’s preference for the Cord presidential ticket is Raila Odinga.
“As far as I know, there has been no offer extended to Musalia to be the flag bearer, although I am aware that discussions are ongoing to build a broad-based coalition of like-minded leaders in order to increase the certainty of removing this corrupt regime from power in 2017,” Sifuna said.
The false narrative of Jubilee and their propaganda-driven pollsters are the ones fanning this talk of a “Raila preference for Musalia.”
The Musalia talk is meant to cause discomfort among the former Premier’s co-principals in Cord and to a larger extent push them into disembarking from the Cord ship whose indisputable captain is Raila today, tomorrow and in the future.
A popular and influential Cord blogger by the name Dikembe Disembe was spot in laying bare the truth.
“For most of us who support Raila, the real question is who is best suited to be the next leader of our country. That to me is Raila. The alternative is unimaginable,” the blogger noted in a recent post.
And that is the truth that everybody in Cord and ODM carries around every day.