After losing the African Union Commission elections, former Prime Minister Raila Odinga has been cleared of all responsibility by former UN Secretary-General Mukhisa Kituyi.
Kituyi stated that the defeat was unrelated to Raila’s campaign personally and that he was not overly shocked by the result.
He said that a number of factors contributed to the election’s defeat, even though Mahmoud Youssouf, the foreign affairs minister of Djibouti, was elected chair of the AUC with 33 votes in the seventh round of voting.
In the elections, Raila went off against Youssouf and Richard Randriamandrato, the former Foreign Affairs Minister of Madagascar.
In an interview with Citizen TV, Kituyi stated that the African Union’s voting patterns’ structural inequality contributed to Raila’s defeat.
“To claim that Raila failed is to presume that he had the opportunity to take action. He went above and beyond, in my opinion, but the electoral process’s fundamental issues worked against him. He said that several factors did not work in his favor.
“There was virtual unity across Anglophone Africa when the only non-francophone candidate won the elections,” Kituyi continued. However, he claimed that the candidate’s performance during the period was seen negatively.
According to Kituyi, Raila’s chances were severely harmed by the Southern African Development Community’s (SADC) decision to show support for the candidate from Madagascar.
He also brought up the fact that the francophones (those who speak French) had promised Raila things they had not fulfilled.
“The francophone bloc did what we expected them to do, which is to stick with their own, even after they verbally promised to support Raila,” he said.
Despite this, Kituyi maintained that Raila is appealing to African countries.
“You must not minimize him. Raila is more powerful than President William Ruto when it comes to appealing to Africans. Don’t believe that Ruto was gaining favor with Raila,” he continued.
The winner required two-thirds of the votes, or 33, from the 49 heads of state who participated in the voting.
