NAIROBI, Kenya, Jul 22 — Azimio presidential candidate chastised the people of Bungoma saying they have let him down after an opinion poll showed his archrival, Kenya Kwanza’s William Ruto, was ahead in the county with 60 per cent.
Raila who spoke on Friday in Kimilili, a town mainly occupied by the Bukusu tribe and minority Tesos, said he deserved better having defended the interests of Bungoma people.
“An opinion poll carried out last week shows Raila is trailing Ruto in Bungoma. He (Ruto) is at nearly 60 per cent and I am at 40 per cent. Shame on you people! Shame on you people! Shame on you! I feel very slighted,” he said.
“I look at the forces of liberation in this community: Masinde Muliro, Kijana Wamalwa and Elijah Musindea, and asked myself are these people even Bukusus? I though Bukusus are made of a different material,” he said during the campaign stop in Kimilili accompanied by Defence Cabinet Secretary Eugene Wamalwa.
Odinga who is making a fifth stab at the presidency is banking on the support of President Uhuru Kenyatta’s central Kenya backyard to tilt the scales in his favour despite little success in undoing Ruto’s influence in the region.
Opinion polls by Infotrak, one of Kenya’s leading pollsters, have give Azimio a six-point lead over Ruto’s Kenya Kwanza Alliance.
Kenya Kwanza has often dismissed opinion polls as misleading terming pollsters as enablers of a wider scheme by the Kenyatta-led coalition to mislead the public.
Azimio has often scoffed at Kenya Kwanza’s coalition deal that allegedly task ANC and FORD Kenya to deliver 70 per cent of the vote in western region saying the parties’ leaders — Musalia Mudavadi and Moses Wetangula — are incapable of attaining the quota based upon which Ruto would assign them slots in government.
