The 10-Point agenda that some ODM leaders are yapping about cannot be fully implemented without taking the country through a referendum.
Full implementation of NADCO Report, which is part of the 10-point agenda, means entrenchment in the constitution of executive positions created by NADCO, which necessitates a referendum.
The Orengo/Osotsi/Sifuna groupies will not discuss that. They will keep yapping about the 10-point agenda but will not comment on what it takes to fully implement it. Are they ready to pursue referendum?
The reaction to Mudavadi’s comments on referendum tells you Kenyans are not ready. The bastardization of BBI is still fresh in people’s minds.
The legal defeat of BBI and the threshold for a future constitutional change makes it impossible to conduct a referendum before 2027.
If Orengo/Osotsi/Sifuna and groupies want to exit ODM they should do so but to make demands that they cannot convince Kenyans on is to take ODM in the same slippery path that ended with a big failure and embarrassment during handshake.
Raila Odinga is dead and so are some of the unworkable politics that he pursued— politics which stagnated his supporters and impoverished their regions.
The ODM Party in the post-Raila world must pursue easy politics, or like an ant trying to mount an elephant, it shall fail again and again.
The group reworking ODM to fit its politics in the realpolitik of our country must defeat the lazy intellectual theorists who still think Raila is around to carry them on his backside.
I challenge them to come out and say the ODM Party can lead the country to a referendum to fully achieve the 10-point agenda, before 2027.
It is not for President Ruto to ensure ODM survives in a post-Raila world. Ruto has his party which he is willing to commit to a post-2027 working arrangement with ODM, a position he has stated publicly all the time.
The group opposed to ODM-UDA working arrangement should first come up with their pathway to the future, and that should not include scaring us with nonsense.
We all built ODM and we all demand it plays normal politics, not utopia all the time.
Dikembe Disembe is a Political Researcher and Writer
