A Tribute by Kiraitu Murungi.
It is with a profound sense of sorrow, deep loss, and sadness of heart that I convey my most sincere condolences to Mama Ida, the family, and friends of the late Rt. Hon. Raila Amolo Odinga, the former Prime Minister of the Republic of Kenya.
The cruel hand of death has robbed Kenya of its most illustrious, progressive, and transformative leader.
I have known Raila for the last forty years and I have had the honour and privilege to work with him as his lawyer when he was detained without trial, during the struggle for the second liberation in the 1990’s, as fellow Members of Parliament (1992-2002), as ministers in Kibaki’s government (2003-2005) and as our Prime Minister (2008-2013).
We campaigned together for the 2010 constitution and the BBI, and I supported him as the Azimio Presidential Candidate in the 2022 general elections.
Raila, more than any other person in Kenya, has made very heavy personal sacrifices to liberate our people from dictatorship, oppression, ethnic chauvinism, petty politics, and poverty.
Raila’s political journey has been a pilgrimage of pain, trials, triumphs, and tribulations of Kenya’s democracy.
It has been a journey of struggles, zigzags, setbacks, difficulties, and broken dreams.
It has been a journey painfully interrupted, frustrated, and sometimes ridiculed, but for Raila, it was always a journey to be reimagined, redirected and resumed but too important to be abandoned or given up.
Raila’s history of courage, selflessness, creativity, and resilience as a veteran leader of opposition politics makes a lilliputian of the opposition in Kenya today, which remains noisy, hopelessly divided, with no unified vision and no concrete solutions for our myriads of social and economic problems.
Our politics remains stuck in a shallow game of the angry and the disillusioned, of betrayal and backstabbing, of alliances made and alliances unmade.
Raila was a patriot with an enduring vision for a radical transformation of this country.
He went down struggling with numerous contradictory forces in his ceaseless combat with the backward forces of dictatorship, corruption, and ethnicity.
He has immortalised himself in our minds and hearts. Raila will always be remembered and celebrated as a hero of democracy. He will always inspire Kenyans in their march towards a united, progressive, and democratic future.
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