Governors James Orengo (Siaya) and Anyang' Nyong'o (Kisumu)
Opposition leader Raila Odinga was right to defend Siaya Governor James Orengo and his Kisumu counterpart Anyang’ Nyong’o in the face of attacks from a bunch of largely anonymous fellows attacking them for allegedly bucking the party line on the marriage with President William Ruto.
Mr Odinga clarified that his veteran comrades-in-arms only spoke the truth and in accord with the 10-point cooperation pact signed with Dr Ruto. He repeated for the umpteenth time that the Memorandum of Understanding contained no clause joining ODM up in a coalition with UDA (Kenya Kwanza Alliance), and did not come with any agreement to support Dr Ruto’s 2027 re-election bid.
The ODM leader emphasised the democratic culture of the party and the right of any member or official to speak freely.
Mr Odinga’s firm statement of last Friday should hopefully silence those short-sighted and self-serving politicians in his party who have transformed themselves into Dr Ruto’s loudest defenders.
Attention seekers
A grouping of ODM fellows is desperately seeking to attract attention by even outdoing the Kenya Kwanza podium dancers singing themselves hoarse in support of the President. The latest issue goes back to a fortnight or so ago when Mr Orengo and ODM secretary-general Edwin Sifuna boldly stated some home truths in front of Dr Ruto and Mr Odinga.
Mr Sifuna cautioned the President against surrounding himself with fellows whose actions and utterances only serve to paint the government in a bad light. He made reference to the ban and aggressive police action to halt a performance of ‘Echoes of War’, the Butere Girls High School entry at the National Drama Festival. The ham-fisted action brought back memories of the one-party dictatorship and depicted a government afraid of a gaggle of schoolgirls. Mr Sifuna has previously faced attacks and threats from some ODM officials for his forthright rejection of utterances suggesting that the party had committed itself to supporting every government action and Dr Ruto’s 2027 campaign.
For his part, Mr Orengo openly stated that he would never become a praise singer, expressing fear that the country would go to the dogs if the sentiments of those who had spoken before him at the funeral of Mr Odinga’s long-serving bodyguard George Oduor held. On those who had lavished fulsome praise on the President for lavishing goodies on the Nyanza region since the cooperation pact, Mr Orengo offered that distribution of development resources is a right, not a political favour.
At a separate forum a short time later, Prof Nyong’o delivered a scathing indictment on the culture of ‘primitive accumulation,’ which he said undermined gains of transition to multi-party democracy.
Mr Odinga’s defence of the two politicians who have been with him in the trenches from the inception of the fight for human rights and democracy should hopefully set the record straight, and shut up all those shrill voices in his party who have become Dr Ruto’s shock troops.
Many of them are willingly pushing a sinister political scheme, clearly hoping to attract attention and favours from Dr Ruto by taking war to his presumed enemies.
The opposition chieftain, however, must also cease speaking out of both sides of his mouth on the true meaning of his pact with the President.
He cannot deny that ODM is in government, and yet at the same time laud the broad-based government by which his party nominees were incorporated in the Cabinet and other key state offices.
It is true that the MoU signed with the President does not contain a formal coalition clause, but ODM is, for all intents and purposes, part of the Kenya Kwanza coalition government.
Collective responsibility
The ODM Cabinet ministers, under the principle of collective responsibility, are bound to promote and support the government they are working for.
Then there is the hypocrisy in which ODM holds on to key oversight committees in Parliament, which, by custom, should be led by the Opposition but now in reality provide defence lines for the government. Mr Odinga cannot have one leg in government and the other in opposition. He must, therefore, cease the duplicity and go the whole hog into government; or walk out and assume the real role of an opposition leader.
Under the broad-based government arrangement, Mr Odinga must accept that he will share the credit, or the blame, for the Ruto administration’s successes or failures. And right now, it is largely a story of failures in unchecked corruption, rampant human rights abuses, ethnic profiling and gross maladministration. That cannot be the legacy Mr Odinga wants.
[email protected]; @MachariaGaitho
