There are many people in Azimio who would rather not address Kalonzo Musyoka’s increasing penchant for behaving as if he is the one who now runs Azimio Coalition as he keeps issuing orders on his conditions to work with the coalition.
Many in Azimio may be wishing for the pre-Kalonzo days when there was peace and coherence in the whole Azimio team and everybody was busy working hard to mobilize voters and build support for their team to win the August 9, 2022, General Elections.
Now we have Kalonzo having ten media outbursts every day. It is exhausting. Right now when the coalition’s presidential candidate has been in the UK for the last week, many Azimio Coalition leaders are out there talking to voters.
Uhuru Kenyatta has held two back-to-back rallies in Nairobi and as we saw, the rallies in Kenyatta Market and Korogocho had terrific crowds.
Read: Ruto keeps his losing war as Uhuru finds his spark in Nairobi
Right now there is a caravan of MPs going through Nairobi city addressing Kenyans everywhere and they are set to conclude their campaign blitz today.
And where is Kalonzo Musyoka? If you want to find out check the media outlets and he will be there making bombshell statements most of which are harmful to the team he just joined.
Kalonzo’s latest media foray is to issue a warning that if the coalition is not renamed Azimio One Kenya Alliance to replace what the group has been called before as Azimio La Umoja Coalition, he will run away from the coalition.
Kalonzo signed a deal to join the Azimio team and first he came out with the statement that he did not know what he signed and will consult lawyers to sort it out.
A few days ago Kalonzo told Kenyans through the media of course that he actually knows what he signed and everything is alright. Now can Kalonzo remember the name of the coalition whose papers he signed? If he can’t remember he can call Makau Mutua who was involved in the process to remind him what the name was and still is.
If after that Kalozo wants the name changed. He can have private discussions with the principals of the team and work out what is agreeable to everybody. And for God’s sake, who cares what the name of the coalition is. People want to know what Azimio will do to improve their lives and would care less what name or names the group wants to give themselves.
“I cannot have just Azimio La Umoja. I will tell the whole county that someone wants to mess up and I am sure they will agree with me.”
“The name of the coalition was based on the three-legged stool. And by the way, those were not my own creation. It was a result of consultation between Jubilee, OKA, and ODM. We agreed that we will have a three-legged approach,” he said.
Does Kalonzo even know that there are other principals in the coalition?
Today Kalonzo held a meeting with President Uhuru and Gideon Moi at his home in Karen. That is the place and the venue to talk about internal affairs of their coalition not solo forays into the media.
Kalonzo is fixated on his three-legged stool concept for Azimio which effectively means Kalonzo only considers himself, President Uhuru, and Raila as the three principals in the coalition and the rest are just spectators.
In that arrangement Uhuru is a retiring president, Raila is going to be president from 2022 to 2027 and it is Kalonzo’s turn from there.
It is sad to say this but it is beginning to look like Kalonzo Musyoka right now is running for the presidency in 2027 and he really doesn’t care one bit about what happens in 2022. He made an absurd statement that if Azimio loses the election it will not be because of him.
Who needs this kind of selfish thinking in a team fighting to win the elections and move the country into better conditions of living for Kenyans?
If a win by Azimio would propel Kalonzo to run in 2027 with that Azimio support good, if a loss for Azimio would propel him to run in 2027 to redeem the country from Ruto that is even better.
Maybe that is why Kalonzo this week declared himself as the running mate for Raila which would put him as the next in charge.
I assume Kalonzo is sure Raila would be a one-term president if he wins or he will be maybe dead by 2027. Either way, are those really the kind of issues you want to pop up today for Kenyans to deal with as they approach the elections?
A few days after declaring himself the running mate to Raila, Kalonzo changed his mind and told the media that he is willing to step down from being the running mate which he allocated to himself on certain conditions.
The conditions of Kalonzo allowing Azimio principals to choose a different running mate for Raila than him is that he be given one-third of the government.
How does that even look like. You take one-third of the ministries. Get one-third of the armed forces so you get one-third Commander In Chief and do one-third of the national budget. These are hallucinatory ideas that nobody else in the Azimio team is talking about and they are actually things the team will figure out after they win the elections not before.
Read: Azimio Principals: Please meet and solve the Kalonzo confusion
At some point much sooner than later all the principals need to sit together and work out on what their priorities are at this time in the campaign and get to work without the disturbing sideshows that are only going to confuse and even annoy the electorate.
Azimio getting new principals that has happened. It was meant to boost the group, making it stronger and more visible in the country. That hasn’t happened yet and the holes from within affecting the cohesive nature the coalition had before need to be addressed before things get out of control.
Adongo Ogony is a Human Rights Activist and a Writer who lives in Toronto, Canada
