Raila Odinga died a year ago. The question Kenya now faces is not how to memorialize him but whether the democratic architecture he helped build — multiparty competition, devolved government, constitutional checks — can function without the man who forced it into existence through decades of detention, opposition and crisis. Odinga's political biography is inseparable from Kenya's institutional evolution. His role in the disputed 2007 election, which killed more than 1,100 people and displaced hundreds of thousands, led directly to the Kofi Annan-brokered power-sharing deal and, ultimately, the 2010 constitution that introduced devolved government. These are structural changes to the state, not personal achievements — but they were driven by a single figure's willingness to absorb enormous personal cost. The complication is that Odinga's later career muddied the legacy. His reconciliation "handshakes" with Kibaki in 2008, Kenyatta in 2018, and cooperation with Ruto in 2024 kept the peace but hollowed out the opposition. Former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua called the handshake process "nonsense," arguing it eroded democracy by weakening accountability. He has a point. When the opposition leader joins the government, who holds power to account? The Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) now embodies this tension. Edwin Sifuna, a potential 2027 presidential candidate, says the party risks "losing our core support, people who believed in the ideals of ODM, because we were always the party of the people." The party's identity crisis is not about branding — it is about whether an opposition party that repeatedly merges with the ruling coalition retains any institutional function. Winnie Odinga's declared Senate run for Nairobi County in 2027 keeps the family name in play but does not resolve the structural question. The generational dimension matters. Twenty-year-old Beatrice Chebet told DW that younger Kenyans "did not know any form of multipartyism without reading Raila." This is both tribute and warning. If multiparty democracy is understood through one personality rather than through institutional practice, it is fragile by definition. The Gen Z cohort that participated in the 2024 protests has energy but no institutional home. Security analyst Byron Adera frames Odinga as "an institution that rocked institutions" — someone who forced structural reform from outside and then, repeatedly, chose to enter the tent rather than remain in opposition. The pattern is common across post-independence African democracies: the liberation-era figure who builds democratic infrastructure but whose personal deal-making undercuts the independence of that same infrastructure. The real test is not whether Kenyans remember Odinga fondly. It is whether the 2010 constitution's devolution framework, the principle of competitive multiparty elections, and the expectation of opposition accountability survive as self-enforcing norms rather than as artifacts of one man's career. The 2027 election will be the first major test. If ODM runs as an independent opposition force, the legacy holds. If it remains absorbed into the ruling coalition, the democratic space Odinga opened may close behind him.
