Raila vs Raila debate: ex parte debate in Kenya not a disappointment

By Kato Perez

A Raila Odinga against Raila Odinga presidential debate beat all odds of negative expectations from the Kenyans and the world.

At 8:30pm on the 24th date of 2017, Rt. Hon. Raila Odinga presented himself to the Kenyans who made it to the auditorium of the Catholic University Of Eastern Africa (CUEA) to be reassured by the candidate who was already in presence of his plan of changing and transforming the country he thinks veered off the right direction and needless to say, to sway the 5%-6% undecided voters according to the infotrac opinion poll.

With his composure and equanimity, he turned the lemon of questions thrown at him into a lemonade, specifically issues pertaining his erstwhile corruption scandals, regional affairs, economy, integrity and so on. To me it was a highlight when he avowed to vanguard the struggle of the riffraff people of Kenya and the 40% unemployed and underemployed youths in their fight to cope with the current standards of living.

“I will enforce the Rent Restriction Act to make sure the less privileged people of Kenya access affordable housing”, he said.

Though, the audience was very quiet for the bigger portion of the 90 minutes of the debate, except in a few instances where the sole speaker made recurrent mistakes in addressing the two debate moderators, but, it is highly probable that the audience was carefully consuming the outlook and the highly technical utterances of the man who claims to be different from the incumbent regardless of having grown in the same political environment.

Yesterday’s debate, you will agree with me contributed tremendously to the Kenyan hung election in favor of Jaramogi Odinga’s son. It is a one man debate worth watching for a repeat.

Kato Perez, is a social commentator, and law student at Uganda Pentecostal University.