ODM leader Raila Odinga. [Photo/ Kenya Today]
As NASA presidential candidate Raila Odinga starts campaigning to become the president of Kenya, it is not hard to predict how he is likely to perform should he defeat President Uhuru Kenyatta in the August 8 general election. Raila has been in senior government positions for more than 20 years, just like his running mate Kalonzo Musyoka, who served as MP for Mwingi North for more than two decades. He, therefore, has a long record that voters will have to scrutinise before deciding whether to back his presidential bid. For 20 years, Raila served as MP for Kibra, the part of Nairobi that is home to the largest slum in the world. After all those years, Raila did little to upgrade the dwelling place of more than 600,000 residents — who always supported his quest to ascend to higher power. Because of the requirements of the 2010 constitution, after Raila lost to Uhuru in the 2013 presidential contest, he went home. Soon, the president’s then Devolution cabinet secretary, Anne Waiguru, started cleaning up Kibera through the NYS project. She set up modern toilets and the residents heaped praises on her and the Jubilee administration for the new light they were seeing. Raila, fearing the potential loss of his voter base, jumped in and started accusing CS Waiguru of wrongdoing, without tabling any evidence. He finally succeeded in having her removed from the ministry. The great projects of transformation that were going on stalled. And the ODM leader seems happy with this state of affairs. One of the biggest scandals to hit Raila is the Kisumu Molasses Plant. It is a decades-old family business, which on two rounds collecting money and got land from poor people in Kisumu as a move to have them empowered economically. Raila told them they were investing in the company. It’s still unclear the grounds in which Raila transferred the people’s land to his family and never paid the people their investments in his private business. People don’t forget such things easily. Raila likes to bring up historical land issues during presidential campaigns. But when he was prime minister in the Grand Coalition government with Kibaki, the Lands ministry was his, and he made Siaya Senator James Orengo to be the minister in charge. For more than five years, between 2008 to 2013, Orengo did not solve any land issue. He never gave any title deed to the people of Mombasa. In less than four years under the Jubilee administration, hundreds of thousands of title deeds have been given to the people of the Coast and other areas. So it is hard to expect Raila to do anything on this matter should he ascend to power. Throughout Raila’s terms as minister for roads, a member of parliament and even as prime minister, a time he controlled half of the government, it is difficult to point any major achievement done by Raila. So why should anyone expect the ODM leader to be any different this time round? You don’t expect a 72-year-old man to wake and suddenly change his habits.