The fight over the deputy president slot and the fear of betrayal following broken promises in the past on Saturday threatened to derail the crowning of ODM leader Raila Odinga as the presidential candidate of the Azimio-One Kenya Coalition, delaying the event by close to six hours.
The negotiations had dragged past the midnight deadline the negotiators had set to conclude the talks ahead of the unveiling of Mr Odinga. When they could no longer make any progress, and with the clock running against them, they pushed it to the principals to settle the contentious issues.
And so the principals gathered at State House early Saturday morning to try and unlock the stalemate. For several hours, they remained at State House as the delegates and supporters who had gathered at Jacaranda Grounds in Embakasi East Constituency waited to see the white smoke that could signal a deal: the arrival of the leaders at KICC. It was not until a few minutes past 3 o’clock that the Azimio national delegates conference started, instead of 8am.
In the meeting, Mr Musyoka is said to have raised issues he wanted addressed before agreeing to sign a deal to join the Azimio la Umoja movement, as well as to support Mr Odinga, a meeting that lasted close to six hours, leading to an anxiety and restlessness among delegates and leaders who had convened at the Kenyatta International Convention Centre to endorse Mr Odinga for the presidency.
Deputy president position
The Wiper party leader, sources familiar with the meeting told the Nation , is said to have raised a demand for the deputy president position, insisting that such an arrangement had worked for them in Nasa, and, therefore, there was not need to reinvent the wheel.
Mr Musyoka is also said to have raised concerns over what he termed as Mr Odinga’s failure to honour his commitment with parties in Nasa, including the failure by ODM to share funds from the political parties fund with member parties of the alliance.
To this end, the Wiper leader is said to have asked President Kenyatta to act as his surety in negotiations with Mr Odinga, to avoid what he believed was a betrayal and mistreatment by the ODM party leader in the now collapsed Nasa.
And as the negotiations went on, tensions and unease among delegates convened at the KICC continued to rise, with some accusing the Wiper party leader of hijacking the event.
“We have been told that the delay is because there are still some issues with Kalonzo Musyoka that are being sorted. We have been waiting for the way forward from the President and Raila Odinga,” Nyamira Governor Amos Nyaribo told the Nation .
Jubilee Secretary-General Jeremiah Kioni, however, said the delays had been occasioned by a failure by the parties making up the Azimio coalition to agree on the finer details of the alliance.
“Making up a coalition that brings together all these parties is not an easy thing. The negotiations are still going on, but what we have all agreed on is that Raila Odinga is the presidential candidate, which is non-negotiable, because even if we look at the numbers, he is ahead,” Mr Kioni said.
Eventually they arrived at KICC to witness the signing of the agreement as well as Mr Odinga’s acceptance speech.
The Nation has established that some of the details of the frenetic and hard-fought Azimio deal show that it has provisions on a power-sharing, zoning, whether or not to field candidates on the coalition name and coalition name. The most contentious issue that held up the negotiations for long — the running mate position — is not in the agreement but President Uhuru Kenyatta, Mr Odinga and Mr Kalonzo Musyoka discussed it though there seems to be no consensus on what was agreed.
According to officials allied to the One Kenya Alliance (OKA), Mr Musyoka will for a third time deputise Mr Odinga. OKA spokesman Fredrick Okang’o told the Nation that the State House meeting had settled the matter.
Jubilee has also been eyeing the position so that President Kenyatta can use it to woo the mountain region. Ubuntu People’s Forum (UPF) party leader Lee Kinyanjui said parties allied to Jubilee “expect nothing short of” the deputy president’s position in Azimio.
“We need to be at the table where decisions are made,” he said at the KICC.
Meanwhile, Mr Odinga’s campaign spokesman, Prof Makau Mutua, was talking of “an open contest” regarding the running mate position.
“The person who is best able to work with Baba (Mr Odinga), one who is able to bring us a large voting bloc and a person who will help us govern when we get there, that is the person who will get the nod to be the deputy president. At this point I would say that we are not ruling anything out and we are not ruling anything in,” said Prof Mutua.
“What we are saying is that the pairing of that ticket essentially cannot be different. To expect that a situation would arise that one of them would be a presidential candidate and the other one would have to wait for some other things that nobody knows what they are is to ask too much from people who have worked together from 2013 and done so much together,” said Kitui Senator Enock Wambua.
In the deal is also a power sharing formula where the new coalition will have three main partners (symbolised by a three-legged stool): OKA representing Wiper, Kanu and UDP among others, ODM and Jubilee representing 15 other political parties with whom it has signed cooperation agreements. If Azimio wins the August 9 General Election, each of the three main partners will be entitled to equal number of shareable positions in government, or 33.3 per cent each.
OKA and Jubilee will then share the positions available to them among the parties that have signed their respective cooperation agreements, with the suggested method being based on number of seats delivered. In this case, ODM could be the biggest winner since it has not signed any cooperation agreement with other parties.
“It is a three-legged stool: OKA, Jubilee and the parties they signed co-operation agreement with and ODM. The small parties that were signing today did so to join Azimio-One Kenya Coalition but in terms of power sharing, it is a three-legged stool,” said Mr Okang’o.
President Kenyatta alluded to this in his speech later at Jacaranda Grounds on Saturday saying “no one will be left out” in this setup.
“It will be a government of inclusivity,” President Kenyatta said.
The shareable positions will include cabinet secretaries, principal secretaries, diplomatic postings, and parastatal appointments.
Besides the power sharing formula there is the issue of zoning that proved to be problematic. Small parties were particularly fearful of zoning as they could easily be locked out of the contests. Eventually it was agreed that while there will be no zoning, the candidates will be fielded on consensus without jeopardising the coalition winning the presidential vote or winning a particular seat.
At the same time, it emerged that Azimio principals have decided that only the president will be fielded on the coalition name. The other positions will be on respective constituent party tickets. The justification for this is that allowing candidates to run on the coalition name would complicate the power sharing matrix that only considers three main partners to the coalition deal.
By Saturday, the deal that was signed at KICC had not been distributed to the constituent parties and the legal team and negotiators were still working on tying up the agreement. A person familiar with the tough negotiations said some areas had not been concluded and the negotiators needed to conduct some more rounds of talks.
Again, the President alluded to this in his speech at the KICC when he said that the parties had agreed to meet and discuss the way forward, including the structure for the campaigns.
The endorsement now means that Mr Odinga will fly the flag of the Azimio-One Kenya Coalition and will battle it out with Deputy President William Ruto for the presidency in the August election.
Mr Odinga, on the other hand, thanked the delegates and Mr Musyoka for agreeing to back his candidature, saying that his administration will be an all-inclusive government and promised not to leave anyone out, including Mr Musyoka and other parties.
“You have handed me a strong, broad and unified platform to stand on and additional pairs of hands to help steady the ship,” Mr Odinga said.
