By John Ikani
Veteran Kenyan opposition leader, Raila Odinga has ended months of speculation and announced that he will run for President in next August’s elections.
Voters in East Africa’s biggest economy are due to go to the polls in August but Kenyatta will not be on the ballot due to a constitutional term limit of two, five-year terms.
“I do hereby accept to present myself as a presidential candidate for the presidential elections of the 9th of August 2022,” the AFP news agency quoted Odinga as telling cheering supporters at a Nairobi stadium.
Odinga is a popular politician despite having lost presidential races on four previous occasions – 1997, 2007, 2013 and 2017.
His last three runs for office in 2007, 2013 and 2017 were marked by high drama after he led his supporters to protest at the outcomes or challenge them in court, saying his victories were stolen.
Odinga’s main rival for the top job is likely to be the current Deputy President, William Ruto. The current President will be constitutionally barred from running as he will have served two terms.
Ruto has presented himself as being on the side of the “hustlers” against the “dynasties”.
Hustlers refer to those – especially young people – who struggle to make ends meet in an economy that is said to be no longer working for them.
The word dynasties, on the other hand, is a moniker to describe wealthy families, like the Kenyattas and Odingas, who are seen to have dominated politics – and the economy – since independence from the UK in 1963.
Kenyatta and Odinga, 76, have been working together in Parliament, where lawmakers from their parties have taken over key posts at the expense of those who support Ruto.
Over the past year, the President has also urged people from his own populous Kikuyu ethnic group not to support Ruto.
Ruto belongs to a different ethnic group in the Rift Valley, which produced the nation’s second President, Daniel Arap Moi, who ruled for 24 years from 1978.
