Former Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission chairman Issack Hassan has lifted the lid on how he made peace with Raila Odinga over a 2013 unsavoury comment made by his lawyer on the opposition chief.
Ahmednasir Abdullahi, Hassan’s lawyer during the 2013 presidential election petition, in a sworn affidavit, referred to the ODM leader who was challenging the election of Uhuru Kenyatta as a perennial loser who never accepted defeat.
The remarks did not settle well with the opposition then under the umbrella Cord – something the former electoral agency chairman now says never came from him.
“The effect of this statement refused to go away. I had the most difficult time trying to dissociate and distance myself from it. I could hardly convince anyone in Raila’s camp that I was not the source of this ideology,” Hassan says in his book, The Referee of Dirty Ugly Game – In the Theatre 0f Kenya’s Elections, an Insider's Account
Opportunity to bury the hatchet came in 2015 – two years after the polls - when both Hassan and Raila coincidentally shared a connecting flight from Dubai to Nairobi.
The now Azimio leader was connecting from Morocco while Hassan was coming from New York.
“He (Raila) asked the flight attendant if the empty seat next to him was occupied. After confirming it wasn’t, he invited me to join him,” Hassan says.
It is at this point that the former Prime Minister confronted him and brought the issue of the remarks by Ahmednassir.
“Your lawyer called me a perennial loser. How could he do that?” He quotes Raila as saying.
“He told me his attention was drawn to this by Maina Kiai and George Kegoro. I apologised for the statement, as I had done immediately after it was made, affirming that it was way out of the line. I clarified that I had not expressly made the statement myself, and that it escaped my attention in the affidavit,” he says.
Hassan say Raila accepted his apology and the two then chatted cordially for the rest of their flight to Nairobi.
As a peace token, Hassan bought cologne for the ODM leader and his wife, Ida Odinga, in the in-flight duty free.
“I had hoped that we would bury the hatchet and it would allay some of the bile against me from him and the Cord team,” he says.
A confirmation that the matter was settled would come a week later when he met Raila and some of his team members who tried to resuscitate the matter but were restrained by the opposition leader.
Former ODM secretary general Ababu Namwamba – now Sports Cabinet Secretary – according to Hassan was the one who wanted to drag the 2013 remarks in a meeting that was also attended by Moses Wetang'ula, John Mbadi and James Orengo.
“Raila, however, cut him off,” Hassan says.
“No, no, Chairman explained it to me; we have already talked about it,” Raila is quoted telling Ababu.
“It was a significant moment for me when Raila acknowledged before his team that the matter was now water under the bridge.”
