Raila Odinga with a young woman in Zanzibar on holiday. [Photo/ NN]
The reason why Raila Odinga will never be president may be because of a series of career-ending mistakes he made in the past two months. After losing the presidential election by more than 1.4 million votes on August 8, Raila was lucky to have the Supreme Court nullify the election. Instead of campaigning to reduce the margin of votes, the now NRM leader went to sleep. He only held press conferences in Nairobi, when President Uhuru Kenyatta was all over the country asking for people’s votes. Some analysts argued that Raila was broke and did not have any money for the fresh election. Soon, the NASA presidential candidate asked his supporters to donate to his campaign. Despite warnings that the money was headed for the pockets of ODM cartels, more than Sh20 million was raised from poor Kenyans. Up to date, there has never been an explanation on how that money — meant for Raila’s campaigns (which he never held) — was spent. Raila’s trip to the United Kingdom, days to the October 26 elections, revealed the coup forces that wanted to get him to State House through the back door. This became clear when he met George Soros’s right hand man, who banking on Raila's support to get the IEBC tender to print election materials. Throughout the two-month period, Raila used all his energy fighting low-key IEBC officials, instead of focusing on President Kenyatta. Most of those officers stepped down, but Raila ended up losing even more miserably. Perhaps the biggest mistake Raila made was heeding to lawyer James Orengo’s advice to drop out of the election. Six other candidates stayed on to challenge President Kenyatta. Instead of keeping off election matters, having abandoned the fresh polls, Raila urged his violent supporters to stop elections in Luo Nyanza. He hoped to use that as a basis to nullify the election, but the Supreme Court later said that argument lacked merit. The launch of the resist and boycott campaign on products of companies perceived to support the Jubilee administration is another wrong turn that Raila has made. The campaign has boosted Safaricom, whose shares reached an all-time high this week.The push to have ‘people’s assemblies’ is yet another move that is set to fail. The idea, stolen from Bunge La Mwananchi’, has been challenged in court and will not succeed in installing Raila as the leader of the country. After the October 26 humiliation, Raila went hibernating in the US, with a plan to meet top American leaders, to try and pile pressure on Jubilee. The West abandoned him, leaving the ODM boss to meet some Kenyan families in the US. His return from the US led to the death of at least 15 people, with property worth billions of shillings destroyed by his militia in the National Resistance Movement. His latest holiday in Zanzibar saw him meet and have a ‘good time’ with a young Kenyan lady, who is reportedly from Central, saw him receive criticism from his supporters for being an hypocrite. He had asked NASA supporters to boycott relationships with women from Central Kenya. The worst mistake Raila is about to make is accepting to be sworn in. This will amount to committing treason, which is punishable by death under the Kenyan law.