Mudavadi sharply differs with Raila in public

Amani National Congress party leader Musalia Mudavadi has differed with ODM’s Raila Odinga over the need to have fresh elections which Raila wanted done in August 2018.

Speaking when he appeared on NTV, Mr Mudavadi quashed the ongoing pursuit for fresh election by his co-principals in National Super Alliance a few weeks after Mr Odinga told the BBC that he wanted fresh elections in August.

The former Deputy Prime Minister, who has spoken a day after he claimed that Mr Odinga tricked them to stay out of the controversial swearing-in, said that the country is not ready to hold another election, “as there are no funds and the legal parameters do not hold.”

“I was asking our MPs, have you made provision for a fresh presidential election? They said no. Issues like this, in my view, need to be financed 90 per cent by the citizens themselves, and that can only be through the budget,” Mr Mudavadi said.

“The people who made the people’s assembly look like the swearing-in was an end to itself are the ones who have been misleading Kenyans, because that was not the end to itself.

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It is these issues that we have to deal with,” he said, maintaining that there are issues of great importance which require dialogue with the ruling Jubilee to resolve.

Mr Mudavadi, however, maintained that it is possible for Nasa to push for transparency in the manner in which elections are conducted to ensure every vote counts before 2022.

Supreme Court ruling

Mr Odinga boycotted the October 26 repeat presidential election after the Supreme Court ruled in his favour to annul the August 8 election citing irregularities and illegalities.

In protest of what he said was a sham repeat poll, Mr Odinga marshalled his supporters to ‘swear’ him in on January 30, as well as boycott some select products, and lead a resistance movement against the government.

The sentiments from Mudavadi comes amid rising tension in Ukambani regions, with the Mau Mau War Veterans Association members from Machakos County demanding that Mr Kalonzo Musyoka, yet another Nasa principal should decamp to Uhuru Kenyatta led Jubilee.

The elders, who on Wednesday claimed that Mr Musyoka is being misused by the former Prime Minister, now want him (Kalonzo) to join Jubilee, as a move to hoodwink the Jubilee administration for water projects in Ukambani.

In a joint statement issued on Wednesday and read by Mwala Sub-County Chairman Johnstone Kiiti in Mwala town, the elders said that Kalonzo should reconsider his stay in the opposition.

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“We love our son Kalonzo but we want him to work with President Uhuru Kenyatta. Initially he was doing well politically but we do not understand what went wrong,” Mr Kiiti said.

Both Musalia and Kalonzo missed ten mock swearing-in of Nasa leader Raila Odinga who was inaugurated as People’s President at Uhuru Park on January 30 in Nairobi.

The other two missed after reports emerged that their security details were withdrawn by State at last minute.