Sabina Chege after poll loss: Uhuru is negligent and Raila selfish
Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua (right) with nominated MP Sabina Chege at Harambee House Annex on January 20, 2023.
Jubilee nominated MP Sabina Chege on Sunday asked her party leader, former President Uhuru Kenyatta, to address members on the way forward.
She said the members have sought the former president countless times for guidance, but he has remained aloof.
"As we waited for his leadership, we saw him aboard a truck in Kisumu (after Prof George Magoha's burial) declaring that his party leader was ODM's Raila Odinga," she said on Inooro TV.
She wondered whether the Jubilee party had been pawned to ODM "and when will the official rebranding and takeover be".
Ms Chege reminded Mr Kenyatta that "many of your allies lost the vote, not because they were bad, but because they stuck with you".
She added: "Personally, I had been approached with an offer by the Kenya Kwanza Alliance to be Nairobi gubernatorial seat running mate, but I turned it down for your sake."
Ms Chege said, "You did nothing to build us to become accomplished leaders compared to how we are seeing other party leaders do."
She said the Jubilee party is being shortchanged left, right and centre "simply because our weakest point is lack of leadership".
As a result, she said, the Jubilee party has been taken over by other Azimio la Umoja One Kenya Coalition Party members "to a point that they are now making us collide, especially in the Mountain".
She added that other Azimio parties have been shortchanging the Jubilee party in sharing out positions in parliamentary committees.
Ms Chege said lack of focused leadership had made the government bypass constituencies that elected Jubilee MPs in the employment of teachers.
"The biggest betrayal was prior agreement that we from the Mountain would give Nyeri politician Priscilla Nyokabi the chairmanship of the Commission on Revenue Allocation (CRA) so that she can push for one man one shilling principle of resource allocation," she said.
However, other Azimio affiliate parties ganged up against Jubilee and handed the position to former Wajir County woman rep Fatuma Gedi, she complained.
The former Murang'a woman representative attributed the situation to Mr Kenyatta's lack of seriousness on the affairs of the party, leading to the ongoing upheavals as two groups now fight for its control.
However, she said the Jubilee Party members are yet to get orders from Mr Kenyatta to join Mr Odinga's public rallies to dispute the August 9 General Election results.
She said that "we have only been seeing our former secretary-general, Mr Jeremiah Kioni, attending alone".
She said Jubilee leaders have been interpreting Mr Kioni to be scheming to found his own political party or movement.
Some United Democratic Alliance (UDA) elected members have in the past claimed that Mr Kenyatta supports Mr Odinga's public rallies so that tax evaders can be protected.
Ms Chege said, "Jubilee party leaders have not received such a directive from their party leader and that is why you are not seeing us in those rallies ... Mr Kioni attends as his own man."
She revealed how hard it was for her to accept that Mr Odinga had been defeated in the vote tallying of the August 9 General Election.
"It was hard ... I had to keep out of the public for a while. The healing process has been slow, long and hard but I think I'm almost there in accepting," she told Inooro TV.
But she said she will not join Mr Odinga in the ongoing public rallies to discredit the government.
She said President Ruto has since assured Jubilee elected leaders that he will respect them, and Mr Kenyatta will not be persecuted in his retirement "and we are happy with that".
"Mr Odinga has a way of seeking handshakes after losing. He uses people to achieve those handshakes but abandons them after he benefits. I have accepted we lost but I will not now go his route of using people to gain for himself alone," she said.
She referred to the 2018 mock swearing-in of Mr Odinga as the people's president.
"Mr Odinga abandoned Miguna Miguna to government persecution...to a point he was hounded out of the country. After the handshake, Mr Odinga did not care to come to Mr Miguna's rescue," she said.
She however said that Mr Odinga should count his blessings.
"In retrospect, it has been a learning experience...I congratulate Mr Odinga since this is one election he managed the highest percentage of acceptance in the Mountain," she said.
She said that Mr Odinga's bid was sabotaged by his own support base of Luo Nyanza "because they did not turn out well to vote for him".
She said that "I and our Jubilee majority leader, Mr Amos Kimunya, had camped for a week in Siaya County trying to register new voters and we managed over 50,000 as we pushed for a Mr Odinga win ".
"We had done well in the general structure of our campaigns, though in a very hostile environment, but we messed at the finishing line."
She said Mr Odinga's foot soldiers in his vote basket did not push for a high turnout and only averaged 75 per cent when the ideal scenario would have been 90 per cent.
She accused Mr Odinga's inner circle of not taking his presidential bid seriously and lacking the killer instinct in executing the final kick for him to win.
She said the leaders now have a huge task of uniting three major formations of our politics -- those who did not vote, the ones who voted for President William Ruto and those who voted for Mr Odinga.
She said the three formations enjoy huge numbers that must be treated delicately in pursuing stability of the country.
Ms Chege claimed that she is privy to information that "government has been punishing Luo Nyanza for their political stand when it comes to development projects".
She said that "I encountered a woman in Luo Nyanza who was from fetching water while riding on a bicycle ... carrying two jerry cans and in that ride too was her son wearing tatters and with a parcel containing wet clothes..."
Ms Chege said walking behind the woman were two other children, exhibiting signs of poverty.
"I asked and I was told her village mates draw the water from the lake, use it for cooking, bathing and laundry even when budgets allocated them water projects that would end up being diverted after they voted themselves into opposition," she said.
Ms Chege added that "Mr Kenyatta was sensible and considerate that in March 2018 he reached out for Mr Odinga even after the presidential vote of 2017 had been acrimonious and was nullified".
She said: "Mr Kenyatta had the ability to chest thump and be stubborn in his win, but he did not since he valued peace more than power, the reason he reached out to Mr Odinga for the sake of the country."
Ms Chege urged President Ruto's administration not to exercise "side mirror style of vindictiveness where every other time, you are referring to what the Mr Kenyatta government did bad or never fulfilled".
"There are those people who had been appointed to government positions by the predecessor president...let them not be hounded out of office for mere speculation that they are Azimio loyalists," she said.
"Those appointees should be given a chance to conform to the current government's agenda and proceed to prove themselves," she added.
