- Meeting seen as a plot by those opposed to the Saturday BBI meeting at Bukhungu stadium
- Mudavadi says he is still consulting on whether to attend the outlawed Mumias meeting
Image: FILE
ANC party leader Musalia Mudavadi has distanced himself from the outlawed Mumias anti-BBI meeting on a day anxiety gripped Kakamega county over the two parallel events.
Yesterday, the ANC boss who was being linked to the Mumias meeting dismissed reports that he organized the canceled Mumias meeting.
"They have even said that a Mudavadi and Wetang'ula (Ford Kenya leader Moses Wetangula) meeting has been canceled. That was not the case," he told the Star on the telephone.
The meeting was seen as a plot by those opposed to the Saturday meeting at Bukhungu stadium.
Mudavadi said he was still consulting on whether to attend the Mumias meeting whose defiant organizers have vowed to ignore the police ban.
He is however openly opposed to the Bukhungu BBI consultative meeting spearheaded by a number of regional leaders led by Governor Wycliffe Oparanya and Central Organisation Trade Union (Cotu) boss Francis Atwoli.
The Saturday BBI meeting in Kakamega town has split the Western leadership down the middle as two factions finalized preparations for their parallel rallies in Kakamega and Mumias towns.
The Kakamega meeting to be held at Bukhungu stadium is being marshalled by Atwoli and Kakamega Governor Oparanya while the Mumias one is organized by former sports CS Rashid Echesa and National Assembly Majority Chief Whip Ben Washiali.
The latter meeting is being planned under the auspices of Western Regional Development Consultative Forum and will be held at the Mumias Boma grounds.
That tensions are simmering ahead of tomorrow was confirmed on Wednesday by Atwoli and outspoken Kakamega senator Cleophas Malala who vowed not to allow the Mumias meeting to go on, terming its organizers sympathetic to Deputy President William Ruto and his Tangatanga team.
Atwoli and Malala alongside nominated MP Godfrey Osotsi and Kakamega woman MP Elsie Muhanda inspected Bukhungu where they issued a stern warning to the rival team. Echesa and former senator Boni Khalwale inspected the Boma grounds, the venue for their meeting.
"All those talking about and planning the Mumias meeting will not attend the meeting. They will not leave their houses and will only be set free after this (Bukhungu) meeting is over. We cannot allow people bidding for outsiders to embarrass the Luhya leadership by holding a parallel meeting," Atwoli said.
Atwoli said that there are only two groupings in Kenya today. “You are either in BBI or Tangatanga,” he said.
Malala said those to attend the meeting will be ferried in buses to Bukhungu from all the 33 constituencies in the former Western province.
The Kakamega meeting billed as a BBI forum to adopt and endorse the report by the Yusuf Haji-led taskforce has attracted largely leaders leaning towards ODM leader Raila Odinga who say over 200 MPs from outside Western will be in attendance.
The Mumias meeting whose agenda, organizers say, is to discuss social-economic issues affecting the region will be attended by leaders in Western leaning DP Ruto.
Lugari MP Ayub Savula asked Mudavadi, his party leader, and Wetang’ula to attend the meeting since all Kenyans were in support of the BBI report.
But Echesa said that the Mumias meeting will go on even after police outlawed it.
“The police have no right to cancel a meeting which they have been notified of because that is a constitutional right that cannot be taken away. Our meeting was permitted by police on January 8. We read mischief in the same police licensing demonstrations by Malala two days later," Echesa told the Star on the phone.
But Savula called on Mudavadi and Wetang’ula to avail themselves for the gathering to defeat ill motives that might have been planned, since the President's move to gazette the BBI technical committee gives the meeting a clean bill of health.
Political scientist and former Medical Services Minister Prof Amukowa Anangwe said the two meetings were unnecessary drama. He said that intimidation of the organisers of the Mumias meeting by the Odinga-led group and its subsequent cancelation was in bad taste and unconstitutional.
“When you see leaders beginning to behave this way, it demonstrates lack of wisdom or loss of direction either way. Kenyans have a constitutional right to assemble and the two venues - Kakamega and Mumias - are miles apart,” he said.
Anangwe said Uhuru gazetted the extension of the BBI team charged with prosecuting the report last Friday and stakeholders should wait to be given direction on which roles they should play in the process.