The day Raila wept and shook uncontrollably

 Miguna theatrically reveals how Raila wept one afternoon after a meeting with President Kibaki at the apex of the friction sparked by the pronouncement of the 2007 disputed presidential results. 

“Eeeeh … eehhhh … eiiii… Please save me from Kibaki! Eeeeeh… eiiiii … Please don’t let me go back to that man … I don’t want to go back to Kibaki!  Please save me from Kibaki!” Raila cried, tears ?owing freely down his cheeks. He was shaking uncontrollably,” the publisher, notes in one of the excerpts.

“It was about 3:30pm on April 6, 2008. Everyone in the room was stunned. They had never seen Raila cry before. We looked at each other, unable to move. No one was prepared for this heart-wrenching scene. I guess we had assumed that Raila was ‘superhuman’,” the excerpt continues, noting that the ODM supremo was not just crying, but also sweating.

According to excerpts from the publisher, Raila had just returned from a face-to-face meeting with Kibaki over the formation of the Coalition Government following the signing of the National Accord and Reconciliation agreement on in February 2008.

The excerpts note Prime Minister attended numerous meetings and most had ended in stalemate or “Raila’s capitulation”. They also narrate the events that characterised the night of the disputed 2007 General Election results.

Miguna recounts his personal exchanges with then Electoral Commission of Kenya Chairman Samuel Kivuitu when he stormed forward in protest as the tension between ODM and PNU supporters exploded.

“Mr Miguna, you will not intimidate me. I know you … I know you are huge, but I’m not scared of you!” the publisher quotes Kivuitu as saying, while squaring up to the lawyer.

But in the book Miguna explains this response from the chairman was “completely gratuitous, since I was not trying to intimidate anybody; all I was trying to do was demand – very strongly – for the results to start being announced,” he notes.

The publisher highlights how Miguna was dismissed from his job.

From the excerpts, a sealed suspension letter marked ‘top secret’ was delivered to him 28 hours after the media started reporting its contents and that Miguna had never been served with particulars of the supposed ‘misconduct’ that led to his dismissal.

“I had been accused, disgraced, judged, and hanged without due process,” Miguna is quoted saying.

“Odinga has always billed himself as an ‘agent of change’ and as a ‘progressive leader’ who believes in the rule of law and constitutionalism. Yet here he was publicly humiliating his most senior personal advisor and friend,” the publisher highlights in the excerpts.

Miguna, a former student leader at the University of Nairobi, fled Kenya and went into asylum in Canada where he finished studies in law before returning home in 2007.

In the excerpts Miguna recounts his ordeal at the hands of Government operatives after he was arrested as a student leader, and which forced him to flee into exile.

“What followed can only be characterised as frenzied violence. As if thirsty for my blood, seven torturers jumped on me, kicking, punching and hollering. Some reached for my testicles and tried to squeeze and pull them as hard as they could while I writhed in pain. They mocked me, saying that a true revolutionary did not have to cry. “Remember Che! Eh? Remember Che?” one kept yelling,” 

Peeling Back the Mask: A Quest for Justice in Kenya by Miguna Miguna