Raila factor in Obama contest Story by KEVIN J KELLEY Publication Date: 5/18/2008 SUNDAY NATION Correspondent in NEW YORK Right-wing activists in the United States are attempting to use Senator Barack Obama’s Kenyan links to discredit him. Senator Barrack Obama and Mr Raila Odinga. Photo/ FILE The activists, most of them conseervative Christians, claim that Mr Obama is a relative of Prime Minister Raila Odinga, whom they describe as a “socialist who plans to introduce Sharia Law in Kenya”. Mr Obama is leading his party’s presidential nominations and is almost certain to win against Senator Hillary Clinton. He also stands a good chance against Senator John McCain of the rival Republican Party, thus making history as the first non-white to become a US president. For the past two decades, American presidential campaigns have been conducted with every aspect of a candidate’s life placed under the microscope. Analysts expect the Republicans to scour Mr Obama’s Kenyan links to find anything that they can use against him. Some of the most widely circulated allegations originated last month in a chain e-mail from Celeste Davis, an American Christian missionary who, together with her husband Loren Davis, claims to have worked in Kenya for 12 years. The Davises allege that Senator Obama donated nearly $1 million (approximately Ksh61 million) to the Orange Democratic Movement’s campaign last year. “Obama and Raila speak daily,” the Davises add, claiming that the two men are cousins. Bizarre and discredited Mr Odinga’s spokesman, Mr Salim Lone, dismissed the allegations as bizarre and discredited. “These are bizarre accusations that lack credibility. The allegations that the Prime Minister has socialist and pro-Mulism leanings were discussed and discredited in the last campaign,” he said. “This is the work of right-wing activists who are trying to puncture holes in Senator Barack Obama’s campaign for the White House by attempting to resurrect allegations that were discredited in Kenya during the campaign,” he said. Nairobi-based political scientist, Tom Wolf, an American, said that the Internet smear campaign against Mr Obama was an act of desperation. “It just shows how desperate the Republicans are that Obama is viewed as a serious threat that they would have to use such irrelevant campaign tactics. If the Americans were worried, would they be so close to him? You recall that someone tried to use the Somali robes to discredit him,” he said. If the Cold War were still on and communism were still alive, and Raila had spent a weekend with some communist leader like Fidel Castro, he said, it would be much more of an issue. “But if you criticise Obama because he is related to a Kenyan leader who arrived at a compromise over the disputed election to save his nation, how would that hurt him?” Mr Wolf asked. Mr Lone described the e-mail campaign as one of the last gasp efforts by right-wing activists in the US to dent Senator Obama’s campaign to become the Democratic Party’s standard bearer in the race to the White House. Mr Lone, however, claimed that Mr Odinga and Senator Obama were related by blood and came from the same clan. “It is true that the Prime Minister and the senator are related. Senator Obama comes from a family and clan to which the Prime Minister’s mother belongs, and they are cousins,” he said. In the American sense, a cousin is the child of your parents’ siblings. But in Luo culture, the members of your father’s or mother’s clans are your cousins. A clan would typically have hundreds of thousands of members, and the relationship is more social than biological. Mr Obama is the son of Barack Obama Sr of Nyangoma-Kogelo, Siaya, and Ann Dunham of Wichita, Kansas. He was raised by his maternal grandparents. In October last year, Mrs Lynne Cheney, wife of US Vice-President Dick Cheney, announced that she had discovered, while researching a book on their family, that Mr Cheney and Mr Obama were blood relatives. They were eighth cousins, she said, with a common ancestor, a 17th-century immigrant from France. The Illinois senator is acknowledged as perhaps the most charismatic American politician since John F Kennedy. December election Mr Davis and his wife, noting Mr Odinga’s contention that the December 27 presidential voting was rigged, said in their message, “As we watch Obama rise in the US we are sure that whatever happens, he will use the same tactic, crying rigged election if he doesn’t win and possibly cause a race war in America.” A conservative Internet commentator, Michael Gaynor, speculated earlier this month that Senator Clinton’s campaign might play “the Kenya card” against Mr Obama. Mr Gaynor says “the Kenya card” involves unspecified connections between the Kenyan-American senator and “the radical