Kalonzo's long and loyal journey with Raila: A tale of trust, betrayal and resilience

The fallen former Prime Minister Raila Odinga, who sought Kenya’s presidency five times without success, leaves behind a political legacy intertwined with resilience and alliances.

For the country’s youthful generation that witnessed Kenya’s last three bruising presidential elections, they will most certainly remember that Wiper party leader Kalonzo Musyoka stood shoulder to shoulder with Raila, twice as his running mate, through the country’s most turbulent moments.

Their partnership and political alliance were marked by loyalty, as well as tensions and even feelings of betrayal.

For 15 years and three presidential elections, when the former Prime Minister actually smelled the presidency and missed it by a whisker, Kalonzo was always by his side as a loyal political partner and mobilizer.

Even in the 2022 presidential election, when Raila bypassed the former Vice President and picked Martha Karua as his running mate, Kalonzo still threw his support behind Raila, although begrudgingly, as he had earlier warned that the former ODM leader would lose the election if he did not pick him as his deputy.

“People know that when Raila takes me on board, he will be the next president of Kenya. But there is a problem when Raila leaves Kalonzo... he will lose,” Kalonzo had said in the lead-up to the August 2022 presidential election.

But the journey to make the two seasoned politicians work together, first in 2013, was not a smooth sail.

Former Kitui Senator David Musila documents in his memoir Seasons of Hope the daunting task he personally endured in the lead-up to the 2013 General Election in convincing Kalonzo to work with the former ODM leader.

Musila notes that there was bitter acrimony between the two, especially after Kalonzo was humiliated by Raila’s supporters at Tononoka Grounds in Mombasa before the 2007 elections, where he was forced to storm out in a huff.

More suspicions between the two would also emerge after the disputed 2007 presidential election in which the late Mwai Kibaki was declared the winner, beating Raila by a small margin.

To stabilise his government, Kibaki hurriedly invited Kalonzo, who had finished a distant third in the presidential race, to his government and appointed him Vice President.

Raila was livid, as he viewed Kalonzo as a betrayer, although he would also later join Kibaki’s government under a mediated power-sharing grand coalition arrangement where he was appointed Prime Minister.

In 2013, Musila notes that it was time for Kalonzo and Raila to work together to face the political juggernaut of Uhuru Kenyatta and his then deputy, William Ruto.

“The question was how to convince Kalonzo to meet with Raila, let alone agree to work with him, as the two were not on talking terms,” the former senator writes in his book.

He says that one day, Raila called and requested him to arrange a meeting between him and Kalonzo, which Musila did at his Gigiri home in Nairobi.

“I needed every lesson from The Art of War to bring these two leaders together. After the humiliations, acrimony, and propaganda that marked their relationship, extraordinary effort was required to re-establish friendship,” Musila says, adding that Raila’s emissary, the late Dalmas Otieno, played a pivotal role in breaking the ice.

Once at Musila’s house, Raila and Kalonzo were left alone to discuss their relationship “freely and frankly.”

“My wife had prepared tea for them. We kept our distance, only inquiring occasionally if they had finished their talk,” Musila, a former Kalonzo ally, writes.

He says that this secret meeting gave birth to the Raila–Kalonzo ticket for 2013, with the former Prime Minister even reluctantly agreeing to sign an MoU that would allow him to be president for just one term, then support Kalonzo’s presidential bid in 2017.

On the secret MoU, which would later become a subject of bitter bickering, Musila writes: “The MoU was hastily drafted by James Orengo and the late Mutula Kilonzo Senior at the lobby of Serena Hotel just moments before a rally at Uhuru Park that was to unveil Raila as the opposition candidate.”

The former senator says that Kalonzo refused to go to the rally unless Raila agreed to be a one-term president.

“Raila was uncomfortable with this MoU but he reluctantly signed it on condition that it would not be made public. The late Mutula Kilonzo Snr kept one copy while Orengo kept the other,” documents Musila’s book.

When the presidential tally was called, the Raila–Kalonzo ticket had narrowly lost to Uhuru and Ruto, but that marked a long journey of opposition politics side by side. The two had to live to fight another election.

Five years later, in 2017, Raila again turned to Kalonzo as his deputy in the NASA coalition, out of political necessity and shared ambition.

The two waged a spirited campaign but again were crushed at the ballot when Uhuru was declared the winner.

Not one given to opposition politics, Kalonzo was inconsolable, but he had hopes in a presidential petition they had filed at the Supreme Court challenging Uhuru’s victory.

“He looked gloomy, distant, and totally crushed but still hopeful,” recalls a journalist who caught up with Kalonzo at his Tseikuru home days after they had lost to Uhuru.

Kalonzo and Raila would, however, get a reprieve when the Supreme Court nullified the presidential election—a first in Africa—thus opening an opportunity for a rerun. The joy was short-lived though.

As the country prepared for another presidential election, Raila’s side announced that it would boycott the poll, something that deepened rifts within NASA. Kalonzo’s side accused ODM of making unilateral decisions.

Despite the political bruises and two election losses, Kalonzo remained politically tethered to Raila. Their partnership, however, was tested again ahead of the 2022 polls.

When Raila unveiled the Azimio la Umoja–One Kenya coalition, he once more sought Kalonzo’s backing. The process was, however, anything but smooth.

For a man who had solidly stood by Raila and campaigned for him vigorously in the 2013 and 2017 elections, Kalonzo and his team in Wiper felt betrayed when the former premier decided to subject him to an interview for the best-suited candidate to be his running mate.

Many felt that Kalonzo would be an obvious choice, but Raila had other plans. To Kalonzo’s supporters, that smelled like the height of betrayal.

This move sparked outrage in parts of Ukambani and forced Kalonzo to briefly bolt out of the coalition.

However, being the diplomat that he is, the former VP finally agreed to attend the interview, much to the chagrin of his fierce loyalists.

In an earlier interview, Kitui Senator Enoch Wambua, a close confidant of Kalonzo, revealed that he decided to face the “humiliation at the interviewing panel” as he did not want to be seen as someone who felt entitled to be Raila’s deputy.

Through it all, Kalonzo has publicly maintained respect for Raila, repeatedly describing him as a “brother and comrade in the struggle.”

It was then not surprising that Kalonzo angrily lashed out at Deputy President Kithure Kindiki and other organizers of Raila’s funeral after he was denied a chance to eulogize his “brother and comrade” with whom he had toiled for 15 years in the opposition.

“Since this was a state funeral service, they should have allowed the opposition to speak. But as you have seen, Kindiki just announced that some of us were around with his usual small voice, but that is okay…” a bitter Kalonzo told KTN.

His political loyalty, even when bruised, has become part of his brand, earning him admiration as a steady ally.