Antony Mwangi, Luke Awich and Victor Raballa @PeopleDailyKe
The fate of the National Super Alliance will be known in the next seven days after Wiper Party declared it will be walking out unless its leader Kalonzo Musyoka is named presidential flag bearer.
Opposition minority leader in the National Assembly Francis Nyenze, who also sits in the National co-ordinating Committee, said yesterday time was running out and Wiper Party was ready to go it alone should the delay in naming the candidate continue.
“If the committee will not have named Kalonzo as the alliance flag-bearer by next week, then they should count Wiper party out of it. The alliance should change its name to NYASA, to mean that it is made up of people from one region,” declared Nyenze.
“This is the position of Wiper Party and we are not ready to change. Take my word.” Addressing a press conference at Parliament Buildings yesterday, Nyenze added: “We are declaring that should the alliance fail to name Kalonzo the presidential candidate, we will have no option left but to walk out. Kalonzo will not again play second fiddle to anyone.”
The Kitui West MP said his party read malice in the manner in which the co-ordinating committee was delaying the naming of the flag bearer. “This is a ploy to lock out our candidate from running for the presidency.
They want to declare themselves at the last minute. We are aware of their machinations and will not allow them to succeed,” said Nyenze. ANC party leader Musalia Mudavadi, however, cautioned that the move by Kalonzo to pronounce that he is best placed to be the Opposition’s presidential flag bearer should not be misconstrued as causing division in Nasa.
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Nasa co-principals Raila Odinga and Kalonzo Musyoka address supporters. Photo/File[/caption]
“Our supporters should not be worried by the declarations and our resolve to remain united is intact. Kalonzo may be digging in to up his stake and people should not read mischief in this,” he said yesterday during a press conference at Amani House. “Our main aim is to remove the Jubilee government from power and make the changes that Kenyans have been yearning for since 2013.
Failure to support each other would automatically lead to Jubilee winning the August 8 polls,” he added. But in what appeared to be solidarity with Nyenze’s position, Wiper National Executive Council (NEC) defended Nyenze, saying as one of their negotiators in the Nasa co-ordinating committee, he had the full backing of the party to use any method and means to make the Wiper candidate the coalition’s flag bearer.
“There are many comments made by Senator James Orengo vouching for Raila (ODM leader Raila Odinga), Wetang’ula has also been vouching for himself. Why are those not taken to mean that ODM or Ford-Kenya is bolting out of Nasa?” posed Wiper secretary general Hassan Omar after a NEC meeting chaired by Wiper leader Kalonzo Musyoka.
“We have full faith in Nyenze and the reason why he was fronted to the committee is because he can deliver. The task of Nyenze, (Johnstone) Muthama and Farah Maalim is to deliver the ticket to us and we are giving Nyenze and the rest of the team the latitude to negotiate for us,” Omar added, insisting Wiper would not bolt from Nasa.
Nyenze said the committee had not held any meeting in the recent past due to the differences within, and that even if the committee held hundreds of meetings nothing would come out of it.
Asked if his position was the same as that of Muthama, Nyenze said the senator had a long history with the Odinga family and was free to take a different position but should be warned that whoever goes against the Kalonzo wave would be wiped out.
Muthama has been pushing for the Raila candidature in the committee, prompting calls to have him replaced with Makueni Governor Kivutha Kibwana.
Nyenze said he had during the coordinating committee meeting raised the matter of the 2013 Memorandum of Understanding, but the ODM team had resisted any move to address the thorny issue. “When I insisted on an answer, I was told that the MOU died the day CORD was replaced with NASA,” Nyenze said.
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