By Lavin Atieno
Bitter exchanges have continued to engulf the Azimio La Umoja One Kenya coalition following their party leader Raila Odinga’s loss in the general election. A section of Azimio MPs including Suna East MP Junet Mohammed has accused former President Uhuru Kenyatta of letting the party down.
On his part, Embakasi East MP Babu Owino attributed Mr Odinga’s loss to failure by Mr Kenyatta, who is also the chairperson of Azimio, for having failed to rally residents of the Mount Kenya region behind the ODM boss.
“Thank you Uhuru Kenyatta for keeping your word to William Ruto. Your body language tells it all. It was a long con. We will reach where we are going. If we could not hunt with a dog, we will use a cat,” Babu Owino said on Twitter on the eve of President Ruto’s inauguration.
According to Rarieda MP Otiende Amolo, Mr Odinga’s failure is a result of dishonest individuals surrounding him. “We as the Orange party must go back and ask ourselves where the rain started beating us. Some people cheated Mr Odinga till the last minute, we know them and we shall ask them hard questions,” he said. Mr Odinga has however continued to blame the IEBC and the Supreme Court for the election blunders and the Supreme Court for throwing out the presidential petition.
According to sentiments echoed by Boniface Mwangi, a member of the Azimio campaign secretariat, the team failed due to the involvement of Mr Kenyatta which made it hard to shed off the ‘projects’ tag.
“Because of Uhuru’s incessant and ill-advised utterances, Raila and Martha struggled to shake off the ‘projects’ tag. Far from being ‘state projects’, Raila and Martha’s reformist credentials needed no emphasis. Unfortunately, Uhuru was the chairman of Azimio, a position that I stated publicly that he should resign from,” said Mr Mwangi.
“The secretariat ignored feedback on how to make the campaign resonate with Kenyans, including withdrawing old men and people facing criminal charges from our rallies, getting more youthful voices on the campaign stage, and having local leadership at the centre stage instead of having one man run the show at all rallies. Politics is local,” he said.
Early this week, Mr Odinga defended his campaign secretariat which has come under sharp criticism for not protecting the coalition’s presidential votes. Mr Odinga through his presidential campaign spokesperson Prof Makau Mutua said his team delivered on their mandate and hence should not be attacked for the presidential loss.
