By The Weekly Vision
Azimio leader Raila Odinga has announced his plan to lead a signature collection drive to remove President William Ruto from office or secede. The announcement has caused panic among the president’s inner circles that discovered to their horror that the signature collection drive was aimed at collecting over 10m signatures from registered voters to petition the United Nations as part of a Secession process. Secession is the act of withdrawing from a territory and sovereignty from part of an existing state to create a new state.
The move to collect signatures according to well-placed sources is a result of President Ruto’s hardline stance against demands made by the opposition. Raila Odinga and his team in Azimio now seem to have hit a dead end with their push to remove the president from power, the last bullet in the store for them is to push for the split the country into two, to create a new state for Kenyans unhappy with Ruto’s leadership. According to Azimio, the new state will be known as the People’s Republic of Kenya while President Ruto and his supporters will be left with the Republic of Kenya. This is not however the first time calls for secession are being made in Kenya. Opposition groups also made secession calls after Kenya’s 2007-08 post-election violence. The same calls were repeated in the run-up to the previous elections. Then in 2017, a bill tabled in parliament proposed creating a People’s Republic of Kenya from 40 of the country’s current 47 counties.
Raila Odinga and Azimio can collect over 10m signatures from Kenyans across the country to push their agenda. As things stand now, Azimio controls half the counties and should they make good their threat of secession then Kenya will split. During the Kamkunji rally, Raila Odinga also called for a boycott of paying taxes. Political analysts however say that implementing the call will be difficult as most of the taxes are not paid directly to the central government.
It can however be done in county governments where taxes are sometimes paid in cash. The game plan however is to paralyze tax collection by counties and the next target will be the transport sector. The plan is to call for the withdrawal of private-public transporters from offering services. Aware that with such calls, matatu operators will be in fear of taking their vehicles to the roads. The transport system in the entire country will be paralyzed denying the government billions of shillings in fuel levy. It has also been noted that Azimio plans protests on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays each week. This will paralyze government operations and loss of taxes. During previous demonstrations, Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua claimed that traders in Nairobi had lost about Ksh. 2 billion in a single day.
With the Saba Saba protests looming, it is believed President Ruto may reach out to Raila Odinga for yet another round of talks to salvage the country from the looming split.
