Uhuru: Handshake with Raila was about peace for millions of Kenyans

It was not weakness that led me to reach out to the leader of the opposition, Raila Odinga, retired President Uhuru Kenyatta has said.

Outlining situations that led him into the infamous Handshake, Uhuru said he reached out to the opposition leader for the sake of peace in the country.

He said it was about millions who felt excluded and marginalised by the brand of politics after the 2017 General Election and the imperfections of the country’s democracy.  

“It was not weakness that led me to seek out Raila; it was the appreciation that it was not about him, but rather the people whom he represented,” said Uhuru.

He made the remarks in Abuja, ahead of inauguration of the 16th President of Nigeria Bola Ahmed Tinubu. According to Uhuru, the 2017 elections proved to be yet another milestone moment in his political life when for the first time in Kenya’s history, the courts overturned the outcome of a General Election.

“Whether on account of judicial activism or plain ignorance, the decision of Kenya’s Supreme Court to overturn my August victory and order fresh elections was all that was needed to put the country on an extremely dangerous footing,” he said.

He said the constitutional lacuna surrounding lack of defined or codified rules of engagement for operations of Government in the event of a repeat election, worsened the situation.

According to Uhuru, it was further difficult as the country prepared to go back to the polls for the second time on October 26, 2017 and main opposition parties decided to boycott the polls. Although victory of his party, the Jubilee Coalition was assured, he said it came at a price.

“The Kikuyu and Kalenjin had got their way, yet again and the much- touted tyranny of numbers had delivered another victory with staggering efficiency,” said the former President.

He added: “Intelligence reports in the days and weeks after election and my subsequent inauguration pointed towards growing inter-communal and inter-ethnic unrest, more so in some hot spot areas, particularly in the mass urban settlements of Nairobi and in the lake side region of the country.”

Uhuru explained that the security services adopted a containment posture and did their best in preventing the situation from escalating and was assured that normalcy would be restored. “However, as has often been said by leaders across the world ‘Peace is not informed purely by the absence of conflict’. By the time Christmas of 2017 was approaching, it became clear to that the calm that had returned to the country had been replaced by an inexplicable sadness and a tangible despondency that had seeped into the hearts and minds of large sections of our population,” he said.

According to him, some communities felt defeated, had nothing more to lose and that they no longer wanted to associate with ‘the country known as Kenya’ because they felt that they had no stake in it.