My view was that Azimio needs to get out of this DP noise-making which has become the only topic of discussion for UDA where the entire leadership including Ruto thinks an interview for Kalonzo is the biggest concern Kenyans face today.
No more bottoms-up talk and all that just Kalonzo. Ruto of course never talks about the UDA DP job. He is the king and he will pick whoever he wants. That is for him and his party and nobody cares.
“I want to tell all Kenyans that I will not attend the said process. I find the entire thing demeaning to my person and will therefore distance myself from it,” Kalonzo said.
When Kalonzo says he will not go to the interview because that will be demeaning to him he is insulting everybody else who is going for that interview as well as the “simpletons” doing the interviewing. Those conducting the interview are too insignificant for Kalonzo to talk to and those attending to be interviewed are little babies who need to be interviewed because they have done nothing for Kenya.
Noah Wekesa the chair of the Azimio DP panel is actually a very well-respected person in Kenya just like all his colleagues on the team. Why dismiss the team as consisting of nobodies?
I find it difficult to comprehend how a senior politician like Kalonzo Musyoka would disparage others in such a gross way and still expect to work with them. Is Martha Karua a political little nothing? Is Peter Kenneth in the same mode? Then why even work with them in a political outfit that wants to run our country.
On Wednesday, the Azimio DP panel came up with a balanced approach where they said those who want to come for the interviews are welcome to do so and those who do not want to come is fine with them and they will deal with that as it happens. They are not excluding anybody from the process. Interviews will happen but they are an option for the candidates. Very mature leadership.
This should not be a superiority contest. Nobody in the Azimio leadership should ever behave like they are superior to others. Even Raila their presidential candidate is not superior to anybody. He is just lucky that he has been chosen by his equals because they trust him to lead the team and help deliver victory at the polls. That is the exact same thing with the DP. One of the candidates will be entrusted with the job from among their equals and they have to work together.
It would be OK for the regular noisemakers like Maanzo to keep issuing their endless threats since they have nothing else to do but Kalonzo would help his case and help Azimio by respecting his colleagues and the process of choosing the DP.
If Kalonzo refuses to go for the interview because he is too important for that then he will not be picked because it would make a mockery of the whole process. Maybe Kalonzo is actually too important to be anybody’s DP.
It would be much more productive for the Azimio big guns to go out there and campaign for the coalition instead of this circus of petty fights about the DP. Uhuru had a DP who specialized in fighting him. Look where that ended. Kenyans do not want anything like that and they have an opportunity to fix that on August 9, 2022.
Meanwhile, Mutula Kilonzo said Raila’s potential running mates should have been allowed to negotiate among themselves to settle on a suitable candidate.
That is what should be going on now and the candidates do not need anybody’s permission to be talking to each other and strategizing on how they move the coalition forward after the DP nomination is done.
Throwing mud at each other would be the worst thing to do and I am hoping the other candidates like Martha Karua who is also a prominent leader in the team will reach out to Kalonzo to talk things over and start holding joint rallies and put this quibbling business behind.
You have a gigantic election staring at you in the face. That has to be your only priority and nothing else. As we can see UDA has actually run out of anything to tell Kenyans and things are going to get worse for them. This is the time to turn the heat up one notch and put them away.
Ruto and his UDA mob now have reduced themselves to just heckling the president. Today Ruto and his boys were in Kisii holding an Economic Forum where the topic of discussion was Uhuru for the whole day. That is not going to take them anywhere. If Azimio is focused by the end of this month this election will be settled.
Read: Free Advice to Azimio: Please allow all your DP candidates hold joint rallies now
There was a time Ruto thought just attacking Raila every day would help him. That is why they were so mad that Uhuru and Raila had joined hands and there was no more ODM to tribalize.
Now Ruto is on a permanent run that Uhuru fired him and that is why Kenyans face the same problems the whole world faces. Ruto should stop worrying about Uhuru firing him. Kenyans are going to fire him big time on August 9, 2022. And they won’t even give him any firing letters to cry over. That is coming.
Lets hope we are soon going to see the Azimio Kenyans saw at the beginning of the year which was vibrant and focused on real issues that Kenyans want to be addressed and resolved after the next elections. That is when Azimio changed the political landscape in Kenya where Ruto was dancing thinking he had already won the 2022 elections. Azimio came out and nothing has been the same since.
Kenyans will not tolerate an Azimio fighting superiority wars within its leadership and all the leaders know that pretty well. It is time for them to show the country that they understand what voters want for the whole country not what leaders want for themselves. This is supposed to be simple and basic stuff. There is no need to make it difficult and stressful for voters. They have enough stress already and that is why they can’t wait to go to the polls on August 9, 2022.
I think Kenyans are going to trust the DP selection process by Azimio and the real deal for them would be how that DP hits the ground running. That is what should concern all DP candidates. Have a plan in place to go to battle right off the bat and we don’t want to hear anything else about who is better than who.
If the day after the DP nomination all the candidates come together and start going around the country in the final lap of this marathon, Kenyans will show them their love and will vote for them to take over the government come August 10, 2022, early in the morning.
We keep saying this could be the biggest election ever in Kenyan history and leaders are going to realize that as we approach two months to the election date. Don’t screw it up for everybody. Please.
This looks like a good start. Kalonzo is taking his team on a road trip to Mombasa to campaign for Azimio. That is the way to go and wipe out those UDA smiles who were expecting internal fights to jump on.
Wiper Party leader Kalonzo Musyoka has released an itinerary for a three-day Azimio One Kenya Alliance campaign tour of the Coast.
The itinerary indicates that Kalonzo will be accompanied on the Ukambani-Mombasa campaign tour by KANU party leader Gideon Moi from Thursday to woo the Coalition supporters before the August 9 polls.
“We are going to do a run on the Mombasa highway beginning from Mlolongo tomorrow at 9.00 am,” Kalonzo said.
From Mlolongo, the team will campaign at Makutano Chumbi, a junction of Machakos road and Mombasa road.
The team will then move to mobilize voters at Konza City before proceeding to towns along Sultan Hamud road, including Salama, Sultan Hamud, Emali, and Makindu.
“We hope to get to Mombasa in the late afternoon,” Kalonzo added.
The Ukambani kingpin has invited the coalition leaders and Ukambani governor aspirants to join the campaign caravan.
“All candidates particularly those with the Wiper tickets are welcome to join us. We will be drumming support for our presidential candidate Raila Odinga.”
The Wiper boss added that the team might end up in Tononoka but that has not been confirmed.
“We must do things differently in order to deliver a big win for Azimio-OKA,” he said.
This is a great job by Kalonzo and he should be applauded for that when things were getting so sticky. This in fact is the first time Kalonzo is doing rallies for Azimio since joining them two months ago.
Now if the entire team of principals can hit the road with everybody in the battle, UDA is dead and deader. That is just what it is. UDA’s only hope is that Azimio kills itself with internal fights. If that doesn’t happen Azimio will be our next government and even Ruto knows that. Well now put it on the road and get the job done.
I don’t think there is anybody out there trying to kill Azimio from within because that will be the end of their political life. Even Ruto wouldn’t want such a person.
The stakes are too high and nobody within the team wants that cross of killing the Azimio Coalition to hang around their necks.
If you want to be a future president in Kenya like Kalonzo rightfully does, you screw up Azimio now it means you are telling president Uhuru and his supporters to go to hell. You are telling Azimio candidate Raila Odinga and his supporters to go to hell. Then what will you have going for you in a presidential race in this generation?
There will always be frictions in politics. It is how you manage them that makes the difference. For example in the proposed Kalonzo rallies in Mombasa, he is going to have issues to deal with.
He is bringing Sonko with him and the Mombasa Azimio team already have made their choice for the governor’s job as they united the two big rivals in a very smooth team cooperation. Azimio and Kalonzo have to respect that and they can work that out with Sonko without putting up an unnecessary show which helps nobody.
If you are going to organize political events in Mombasa you need those guys to help you, it is their city and they are political heavyweights there. Kalonzo cannot afford to walk over the Azimio team that already exists in Mombasa but organizing rallies in Mombasa should not be a problem for any Azimio group.
I think Kalonzo bringing Gideon Moi into the picture could help. He has been very calm and laid back. Azimio could need that kind of leadership sometimes.
You can make it all-inclusive and just have the Azimio family have events in Mombasa where both Joho and their team can attend with Sonko as well without any trouble. How you manage that is really the issue and that requires patience and accommodation from all sides.
That is why we keep saying Azimio needs to get where they were before all these internal manenos cropped up but my political friends from El Salvador have one saying they taught me. “You make the road by walking it”.
That is what Azimio will have to do. Just walk the road as you make it. That works all the time.
Personally for the interviews, I am hoping that James Mwangi of Equity Bank gets a fair chance to be Azimio’s DP.
There are very few Kenyans who have done what he has achieved for the country very quietly and efficiently. Sometimes it is smart and better to think and act outside the box. Azimio choosing James Mwangi would actually be a big shock to Kenyan politicians who think they are the only ones who can lead our country even though all most of them have done is to rob the country for decades.
A Raila Odinga and James Mwangi ticket could be a stunning success and I don’t see anybody complaining if that guy becomes the Azimio DP. There is nothing Kenya needs more than somebody to fix our finances so we can have money for all those projects Kenyans are being promised.
This could very well be the right person to help Azimio government figure that out. Ruto has been promising Kenyans Shs. 100 billion kitty maybe for his cats (whom he wants to run the country) but where the heck will he get the money? He has no clue about that. That is why he is losing this election.
Adongo Ogony is a Human Rights Activist and a Writer who lives in Toronto, Canada
