The expected mother of all rallies that Azimio leader Raila Odinga promised Kenyans finally happen at Kamukunji grounds on Wednesday.
It turned out to be nothing more than an assembly of the remnants of the top brass of the coalition assembled by former President Uhuru Kenyatta to beat William Ruto at the polls.
Curiously, former Kakamega Governor Wycliffe Oparanya was present, despite his protestations that he had abandoned Raila, after declaring this at a funeral in Western Kenya.
Present were a host of MPs from Nyanza led by TJ Kajwang and Babu Owino, despite Luo Council of Elders chairman Nyandiko Ongandi demonizing the move, saying such protests have never helped their community.
The rally seems to have been nothing more than an opportunity for the ebbing Azimio to issue what looked like a list of demands that make it relevant in the eyes of the people.
While the initial threats were about the four beleaguered IEBC commissioners, out of which vice chairperson Juliana Cherera and Justus Nyang’aya have since resigned, taking away the sails off Azimio’s scapegoat. It was evidently clear the four handshake commissioners had been handpicked to aid their masters in winning the last general election. It flopped.
In one of their demands, Azimio is calling for a consultative process in filling the vacancies at IEBC occasioned by the three retiring commissioners led by Chairman Wafula Chebukati, and now the two vacancies occasioned by resignation.
Chebukati will go down history as one of the most outstanding IEBC chairman of our times. Curiously, if only three commissioners had been replaced, the ‘Cherera four’ would have had an upper hand by 2027 since they were already quorate. It’s now we shall have a new set of IEBC commissioners (seven) by latest the end of next year.
A curious demand by the Kamukunji rally attendees was for government to employ all fresh graduates from all universities. This is ridiculous considering the handshake government did nothing of the sorts, neither was this a campaign pledge by Kenya Kwanza.
Secondly, they are demanding that the country goes back to food subsidy, yet in the handshake government this didn’t work.
The Kenya Kwanza administration has instead decided to subsidize production by lowering the cost of fertilizer from a high of Sh6, 500 to nearly half the price at Sh3,500.
The other demand is for fuel subsidy to be re-introduced, an initiative that was gobbling up Sh16 billion every month, thus depleting the whole of our development budget.
The Kenya Kwanza government has decided to allow the pricing to be determined by the market that even in Germany and most of Europe, a liter of petrol is retailing at 1.729 Euros (Sh223).
The demand that public appointments should reflect regional, gender and disability diversity is a welcome move. It is not lost to observers that these are the same demands that the Law Society of Kenya is making in its many lawsuits. LSK supported the Azimio presidential petition at the Supreme Court.
Further, the call for the public not to payback the Hustler Fund is most unfortunate. It speaks to the hollow promise of Sh6,000 that was unattainable.
Clearly the fact that over 13 million Kenyans have subscribed to this game changer unnerves the oppositional forces to the core. Such a call to public disobedience is, therefore, uncalled for, unpatriotic and fairly self-serving.
The aim of the fund is to avail affordable credit to Mama Mbogas and many other Kenyans at the bottom of the pyramid to finance their daily hustles. This is where the power of the real economy is.
In addition, the call by National Assembly Minority leader Opiyo Wandayi that school fees be subsidized is premature, in that no such government policy has been pronounced.
In fact, the divestiture superintended by the handshake government oversaw mega corruption through huge infrastructural projects such as the Expressway, a monument of classism that was highly overpriced. This means monies meant for other priorities that are people-centred rather than advancing the interests of ‘big business’ couldn’t be efficiently appropriated.
The World Bank in its assessment report called out the Uhuru administration for overseeing an economic growth that favored the rich in society.
Due to these underhanded tactics, the Kenya Union Party has severed relationships with Azimio, calling the outfit as a nothing more than a self-serving ‘dynastic enterprise’.
The demands by the Azimio adherents and their acolytes are thus nothing more than an attempt to rekindle a momentum that vanished the moment they lost to Kenya Kwanza. This isn’t born out of patriotism, but a mere thirst for relevance. Otherwise, how do you call a three-month-old democratically elected presidency a dictatorship?
Azimio’s rhetoric is a failure of imagination since they are relying on an old tired script to advance their agenda. You cannot use the map of Nairobi to navigate Mombasa!
December 7 was a normal day with many Kenyans going about their business as usual.
