• On Monday, it emerged that Raila and Kalonzo (Wiper leader) held a crunch meeting with the Senate leadership to address the concerns.
Image: JULIUS OTIENO
Azimio principals Uhuru Kenyatta, Raila Odinga and Kalonzo Musyoka have moved to quell wrangles threatening to tear apart the opposition coalition.
The move comes in the wake of fierce infighting, with Uhuru’s Jubilee and Gideon Moi’s Kanu threatening to decamp from the coalition over alleged mistreatment by Raila’s ODM.
This is after ODM edged out Jubilee from the Parliamentary Service Commission slot and a push by a section of party members to kick Senator Fatuma Dullo out of the Senate Minority Whip position.
On Monday, it emerged that Raila and Kalonzo (Wiper leader) held a crunch meeting with the Senate leadership to address the concerns.
They include Minority leader Steward Madzayo (Kilifi), his deputy Enoch Wambua (Kitui), Dullo and her deputy Ledama Olekina (Narok).
“We have had discussions and consultation with our principals and we want to make it clear to Kenyans and the public at large that as Azimio in the Senate, we are one and working as a team,” Madzayo said.
Raila and Kalonzo will Tuesday meet all the opposition senators at the Jaramogi Oginga Odinga Foundation to iron out the differences that have threatened to spiral into a full-blown fallout in the coalition.
"Any communication in the Senate touching on the minority side will come from me,” Madzayo said.
The leader denied reports that some Azimio senators had hatched a plot to pass a vote of no confidence on Dullo following her differences with her Nyamira counterpart Okong'o Omogeni, especially on the allocation of committee slots on the representation to PSC.
Addressing a press conference at Parliament Buildings on Monday, Madzayo said only he can speak on behalf of the Azimio Senate leadership and no one else.
This came after Nairobi Senator Edwin Sifuna asserted that 22 out of 29 Azimio senators had signed a petition to remove Dullo from her Minority Whip seat.
“She knows what she has done. Her conscience should direct her to resign. If she does not, we will use legal means to weed her out,” Sifuna said.
But the former Senate Deputy Majority leader said she was the most qualified person for the job.
“He wants the position for himself. But he should know that it is not a matter of life and death for me. If I am to leave, it is not him to decide. It is the Azimio principals who gave me the job,” she said.
“I was in the leadership in the last House. I have a masters in law. Who else could be more qualified than me when it comes to experience?” she added.
However, Madzayo clarified that as the leadership the purported list of signatures ought to have originated from his office, urging the senators and other stakeholders to treat it as null and void.
“We hear that there is a list of signatures going rounds. That list did not come from me or from the leadership. It does not carry the picture of Azimio team in the Senate. It is null and void,” Madzayo held.