Kenyan opposition alliance to name Odinga as presidential candidate

Kenyan opposition leaders from left: Musalia Mudavadi, Raila Odinga, Isaac Ruto, Kalonzo Musyoka, and Moses Wetangula sing the national anthem as they announce their National Super Alliance coalition for the 2017 general elections in Nairobi earlier this month. (Reuters)

NAIROBI: Kenya’s opposition alliance is expected to announce that veteran politician Raila Odinga will be its presidential candidate on Thursday, party sources said, as busloads of cheering, whistling supporters in orange T-shirts began converging on the capital.
“The announcement is on,” said a senior official from Odinga’s Orange Democratic Movement, referring to Odinga and his vice presidential pick, Kalonzo Musyoka. “It is a Raila-Kalonzo ticket.”
A senator from another party confirmed the ticket.
Kenyan voters will go to the polls in August to elect a president, lawmakers and local officials. Devolution means that many of the local races to control lucrative county budgets are expected to be closely fought.
Kenyans hope the vote will be largely peaceful, as it was in 2013. But the country is still haunted by the two months of violence that followed the disputed 2007 presidential poll, when political protests rapidly spilled into ethnic bloodletting. More than 1,200 people were killed.
Odinga, 72, ran and was defeated in both of the last two elections and comes from one of its most powerful political families.
He was prime minister of Kenya from 2008-2012 as part of a power sharing government set up to end the violence after former president Mwai Kibaki’s contested win in late 2007.
A veteran opposition leader who identifies as a left-winger, he named his first son Fidel, after the Cuban leader, and has vowed to root out corruption, reform the public sector and strengthen local government. A hospital that his father helped build in Western Kenya, the family’s powerbase, is nicknamed Russia after its main financial backers.
Odinga has refused to rule out street protests if the elections are “rigged.”
Party primaries were held this month, and parts of the country have already seen low-level violence and protests. Dozens of the primary races had to be suspended and re-run.
In Kisumu, a southern city that is Odinga’s stronghold, party officials declared two conflicting winners of the governorship race on Wednesday before the majority of votes had been counted.
The ruling party also had to cancel and rerun many of its primary races amid complaints over lack of voting materials and rigging.