{UAH} Pojim/WBK: OTIENO: Why Gor Mahia has to lose for Raila to win - Opinion | Daily Nation
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OTIENO: Why Gor Mahia has to lose for Raila to win - Opinion
For the more superstitious Gor Mahia fans, Raila Odinga is so often the elephant in the stadium.
They point to the number of high-stakes matches the club has lost whenever the former prime minister is part of the cheering squad and believe his presence is a bad omen.
Little surprise, therefore, that some fingers were pointed in Mr Odinga's direction after the football club lost its latest big match, the Cecafa club championship final, to some Tanzanian team with a funny name (not Yanga or Simba!) in Dar es Salaam last weekend.
The stigma pinned on Mr Odinga falls very much in the realm of wild local football myths, fuelled by a juju psychology that once blamed the club's misfortune on the odd woman on the terraces or the man in a tie.
And isn't it rather odd that the club's patron can be accused of bringing bad luck and causing its fans so much pain?
A more credible parallel can be drawn between Mr Odinga's larger-than-life stature in Luo politics and Gor's fortunes though.
Some studies have shown that football is actually more than a game; it can be an important avenue for cultural or political expression.
The most popular subject of such studies is Spartak Moscow, the Russian football club whose huge following in the despotic Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union was linked to the anti-establishment sentiment among its founders and fans.
A similar relationship between football and politics was seen at play in Eastern Europe, especially in Romania where a typical stadium attendance at a high-profile match fell from more than 50,000 under the Nicolae Ceausescu dictatorship to around 14,000 after his overthrow and execution in 1989.
As in Russia and Romania, Kenya's football had its glory days under the Moi regime, with Gor particularly enjoying success in the local, regional and continental competitions.
With the Luo largely pushed to the margins of the country's power politics and its elite often at the receiving end of State persecution, the football club rose to fill the vacuum, providing a key platform for political expression and mobilisation.
Every rich man with political ambitions in Luoland then would not think twice about putting his money on the club.
But the freedoms that came with the reintroduction of multiparty politics changed the game for Gor, which had to either compete for attention with the undisputed community leader and his dominant political party or yawne yo (give way).
Now if I aspire to be the next Kisumu senator, for example, it makes a lot more sense for me to spend millions of shillings on securing the ODM party ticket than contribute Sh1,027 via M-Pesa at a Gor Mahia fundraiser.
Little wonder that the club has experienced its longest cup drought and financial crisis during the past 23 years of Kenya's multiparty democracy.
Otieno is Chief Sub-Editor, Business Daily; jkotieno@ke.nationmedia.com; Twitter: @otienootieno
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