Azimio la Umoja One Kenya Coalition has developed a seven-point action plan following a dossier by a whistle-blower showing its leader Raila Odinga won the August 9, 2022 presidential election.
Mr Odinga is expected to jet into the country tomorrow.
From the airport, he will head to the Kamukunji grounds, Nairobi, for a people’s baraza as the engagements he promised citizens after the General Election resume.
“Mr Odinga appeals to Kenyans to show up at the Kamukunji baraza, in the interest of the country,” reads a statement by his spokesman Denis Onyango.
A political storm is already brewing after President William Ruto recently said there was an attempt to abduct and kill Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) chairman Wafula Chebukati and overturn the election results at Bomas of Kenya.
According to sources in Azimio la Umoja One Kenya, Mr Odinga intends to use the dossier – which the IEBC is yet to issue a statement on – to push for a comprehensive audit of the August 9, 2022 presidential election.
On the issue of reconstituting the electoral agency, the opposition coalition wants President Ruto to resort to the Inter-Parties Parliamentary Group (IPPG) in having new commissioners in place.
The IPPG deal brokered in 1997 provided for every parliamentary party to have a representative in the electoral agency.
The Sunday Nation has also learnt that the coalition intends to use the “evidence” from the whistle-blower to push the international community to reconsider its stance on the legitimacy of President Ruto’s victory and government.
Azimio la Umoja One Kenya wants the international community, especially the West, to make an independent interrogation of the document and state its stand on whether President Ruto won in a free and fair election.
According to sources working on the programme, the coalition also wants the dossier to form the core basis for a comprehensive audit of the election last year.
It wants this done by an independent commission with equal membership from the two major political alliances.
“We are very keen on the audit. We want to expose the truth that President Ruto did not win the election,” the source working on the plan said.
Jubilee Secretary-General Jeremiah Kioni said the Azimio la Umoja One Kenya team would go to the people and engage them, based on the new document.
“We now have facts that Mr Odinga won this election with more than two million votes. We are going to engage the people on what they want,” Mr Kioni said.
The former Ndaragwa MP added that upon the arrival of Mr Odinga from South Africa, the Azimio leadership would make a final decision on whether to recognise Dr Ruto as the legitimate president of Kenya.
“We will call on the international community not to work with an illegitimate government. We want to see if they will recognise that the election was not free and fair,” Mr Kioni said.
The Sunday Nation has also learnt that the opposition coalition is putting up a team made up of the civil society and political formations to engage the people on the content of the dossier and come up with an action plan.
“We will dispatch teams to every county to engage the people, taking them through the document. Thereafter, the people themselves will give us way forward,” the source told the Sunday Nation.
The experts are looking at the numbers of other elections – governor, senator, Member of the National Assembly and ward representative.
The team has been given two weeks to finalise a report on a synthesised data that is expected to be presented to Mr Odinga.
Sources in Azimio told the Sunday Nation that the team had finalised the analyses of constituency elections by Friday and is drafting the final report “but preliminary trends show Azimio la Umoja One Kenya won in some areas its candidates are deemed to have lost”.
Moi University lecturer, Masibo Lumala, said though the document has been made public late, the opposition coalition can use it to counter the narrative that has been propagated by President Ruto’s administration that they Azimio wanted to usurp people’s will in the presidential election.
According to Dr Lumala, the document could have been useful had it been presented at the Supreme Court during the petition challenging the 2022 presidential election, but Azimio la Umoja One Kenya coalition can still use it for self-introspection.
He added the coalition can understand why it lost the election and explain to its supporters what transpired.
“Truth is that the water is under the bridge. It is difficult to tell people that Dr Ruto did not win the presidency. He has already been sworn in and accepted by all. It would be difficult to go back to the elections because we don’t even have IEBC in place,” Dr Lumala said.
Makueni senator, Dan Maanzo, said Azimio la Umoja One Kenya can only use the document to sensitise its supporters to vote wisely next time and overwhelmingly for their candidate now that elections are over.
He added that the document would form the main agenda the coalition will have in its countrywide engagements with the people.
Centre for Multi-party Democracy (CMD-Kenya) Executive Director Franklin Mukhwana said though the document by the whistle-blower has come late, it should give Kenyans an opportunity to have a conversation on whether the period provided for consideration of the presidential petition is enough to execute all matters presented before it effectively.
“The timelines provided are unreasonable. It does not provide opportunity for matters to be properly adjudicated,” Mr Mukhwana said.
He added that the document by the whistle-blower has shown that the problems facing elections in Kenya are no longer about laws but the moral behaviour of voters, political players and the referee.
