Former Prime Minister Raila Odinga’s chief of staff and aide Caroli Omondi has revealed that the process which shaped the power-sharing deal between former President Mwai Kibaki and former Prime Minister Raila Odinga was arduous and took a month.
From negotiating an agreement acceptable to both parties to the consequent appointment of leaders to top positions in government, Omondi admits there were numerous snags.
Kibaki and then opposition leader Raila were under pressure to reach an urgent solution following post-election clashes in which more than 1,000 people lost their lives and up to 600,000 were left homeless in 2007/2008.
Raila had accused Kibaki of stealing the election, while the former president said the opposition instigated the ethnic violence that led to the senseless killings.
Former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan was at the centre of mediation talks held at the Serena Hotel in Nairobi. The talks lasted more than a month due to unending disagreements between the two principals and factions from ODM and PNU.
“ODM went into the talks with a firm belief that the election victory had been stolen and their people killed by the police while the PNU side also believed that their people had been killed,” Omondi recalls.
In the middle of the accusations and counter-accusations, Annan, he says, came up with astute techniques to bring the two ‘hostile’ teams together.
“We must give credit to Kofi Annan. It was not an easy situation. He is a sophisticated negotiator way above a lot of people.
“When we first got to Serena, the animosity was intense. Kofi was very clever and he came up with techniques of having us bond – forcing us to have tea together, lunches, creating back channels of talking to different people…
“Basically, he knew how to play his game but the challenge is that the teams were hostile to each other,” said Omondi in an exclusive interview with The Standard.
The three main agenda items that informed the talks were ending sessions of hostility, resettling displaced people and power sharing.
Omondi says the first step was coming up with proposals on how power would be shared. Neither side could agree on a specific deal.
“I ran into a disagreement with ODM leftists when I thought of what eventually came to pass – having a president and a prime minister as part of the power sharing deal. Our leftists wanted a co-presidency.”
The former chief of staff says ODM consequently prepared ten principles of a power sharing pact while PNU did not bring anything to the table.
“Eventually, as ODM, we agreed that there could be a prime minister who would coordinate and supervise government, a 50-50 portfolio balance, a coalition breakup clause and a series of other things,” he narrates.
However, the talks hit a glitch since neither ODM nor PNU agreed on the suggested power principles. The negotiating teams had fallen out over the most crucial point – how to solve the political crisis.
The former UN secretary general suspended the talks, complaining of lack of progress, and said only the two men at the top could make a breakthrough.
Omondi says: ”Koffi pulled a masterstroke and he got various heads of state, especially the US, to put more pressure on talks. Then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was sent to speak with Raila and Kibaki.”
Rice, who also played a crucial role in arriving at an agreement, said there was need for a governance arrangement that would allow real power-sharing.
After her visit, Kofi resumed his talks – this time directly with Kibaki and Raila. Top party leaders were locked out until a deal was reached.