Late former Prime Minister Raila Odinga’s lawyer, Paul Mwangi, has claimed that divisions within the ODM Party reflect a calculated political strategy rather than an unplanned fallout.
Speaking in an interview on Sunday, March 29, Mwangi explained that the current standoff is rooted in two factions each aligned to Raila.
“What we have today is actually a fight between two Raila factions, a political-diplomatic faction and a militant faction. Unfortunately, the questions that now arise are about legitimacy, who the legitimate representative of Raila was,” he said.
Mwangi explained that both factions, led by Siaya Senator Oburu Oginga and his Nairobi counterpart Edwin Sifuna, are valid representations of Raila’s political identity.
“They are all legitimate because Raila was a complex political character, and all of them represent something he did. Raila would not go into anything without an exit strategy. So even when he began working with President Ruto, he had an exit strategy. The exit strategy was the people who were fighting it, the Sifuna side,” he added.
Mwangi pointed to the faction associated with Sifuna as a deliberate fallback position, suggesting it was designed to counterbalance cooperation efforts if they failed.
“That was his exit strategy. And if things did not work out or if we got it go ahead with the cooperation side, he was going to go and turn into his militant side and tell them, ‘come get me,” he further said.
