NAIROBI, Kenya Aug 18 – President Uhuru Kenyatta is set to meet leaders from the One Kenya Alliance (OKA) after their retreat in Naivasha failed to agree on supporting ODM leader Raila Odinga for the presidency next year.
The leaders, Amani National Congress (ANC) Party Leader Musalia Mudavadi, Kalonzo Musyoka (Wiper), Moses Wetangula (FORD Kenya) and Gideon Moi of KANU, emerged out of a three-day retreat and declared they are still determined to field their own presidential candidate.
The retreat was called following a meeting with President Kenyatta at State House, Mombasa last week where he is reported to have pleaded with them to drop their ambitions and support Odinga who is his prefferred successor.
“We hereby unequivocally state that One Kenya Alliance will field a presidential candidate in next year’s general elections. And the candidate is here,” the OKA leaders declared Tuesday after the retreat.
But sources have told Capital FM News that the leaders have been called to yet another meeting in Mombasa where they will sit with Odinga and the president to persuade them.
“There will be another meeting with the president,” a source in one of the OKA parties said.
Asked if OKA will endorse Odinga, he said, “we need more persuasion because this is something we have done twice before and it did not work.”
An ANC politician said, “Musalia and his counterparts find it difficult Odinga because of mistrust, one those issues are ironed out that is when we will make a decision but for now the position remains what was read out in Naivasha on Tuesday.”
President Kenyatta who has since fallen out with his deputy William Ruto is convinced that Odinga is the most suitable candidate to succeed him in the 2022 polls.
Odinga launched his unity campaign Tuesday ahead of the 2022 polls saying he will soon announce which coalition his ODM Party will team up with.
He made the revelation hours after the Jubilee Party top organ sanctioned a pre-coalition agreement with ODM.
“Let us rise together to fulfil the dreams of our children and reclaim our great destiny. We must fix this country, fix its systems, fix its politics then fix its economy. Inawezekana (it is possible),” he said during a tour of Nakuru County,” he said.
Jubilee Party Secretary Raphael Tuju said that the party will formally write to its coalition partners KANU and Wiper Party with whom they’ve signed a memorandum of cooperation to seek their engagement on the same.
“Following various high-level consultations within the Jubilee Party that culminated in a joint NMC and Parliamentary leadership meeting, the NMC granted permission to the party secretariat to formally engage with the ODM party in drawing a framework agreement on a pre-election coalition agreement,”
Gatundu South MP Moses Kuria who is leading a group of Mt. leaders on Tuesday announced that the regions’ parties will not dissolve and form coalitions.
“I am telling all the Presidential candidates to treat Mt Kenya with the seriousness it deserves,” Kuria said, and warned that “going forward it will not be business as usual.” he said.
Ruto who is also seeking the presidency through his United Democratic Alliance (UDA) Party has scolded the opposition leaders for focusing on forming coalitions so as to scuttle his bid.
Other presidential hopefuls like National Assembly Speaker Justin Muturi are also in talks with other leaders with a possibility of forming coalition pacts.
Muturi on Tuesday met with the former Secretary General of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) Mukisa Kituyi sparking talk of a coalition in the making.
About The Author
