FACTBOX - Kenyan opposition leader Raila Odinga

(Reuters) - Opposition leader Raila Odinga was formally launching on Saturday the election campaign of his Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) ahead of a December vote.

Here are key facts about him:

* The 62-year-old was born on Jan 2, 1945, in Maseno, west Kenya. He comes from the Luo tribe, one of Kenya's largest.

* Raila is the son of Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, a nationalist hero and Kenya's first vice president after 1963 independence from Britain. His father later became a key opposition figure against the governments of both founding President Jomo Kenyatta and his successor President Daniel arap Moi.

* Viewed as a firebrand by many Kenyans, Raila's confession in a book that he masterminded an attempted coup in 1982 instilled the perception further. Now he is trying to project a more moderate, business-friendly face.

* Educated in communist former East Germany, Odinga named his first-born son Fidel Castro. Representing Nairobi's Kibera slum, one of Africa's largest, Odinga projects himself as a champion of the poor. But he has a large business empire and falls squarely into Kenya's wealthy elite.

* Analysts say his policies would differ little from Raila's, though his style could be more confrontational than incumbent President Mwai Kibaki's laid-back style.

* Odinga was jailed for a total of eight years on separate occasions by former president Moi for protesting against one-party rule. After the coup bid, he was briefly charged with treason, before fleeing to Norway for a brief period of exile.

* A former ally of Kibaki, he helped him win power in 2002 and served for three years in his cabinet before being sacked for campaigning against him in a 2005 constitutional referendum.

* That plebiscite saw the emergence of Odinga's Orange Democratic Party, currently ahead in polls. Odinga's flamboyant style has seen him driving to rallies in a bright red Hummer H2 -- said to be Kenya's first -- that has drawn gawping crowds.