Mudavadi now offers new explanation on why he stayed away from Raila’s swearing in
Nasa co-principal Musalia Mudavadi has said he did not attend Raila Odinga’s controversial swearing-in because the process was ‘unconstitutional’.
In a tell it all interview on Citizen TV on Tuesday night, the Amani National Congress leader also suggested his move to stay away from that event at Uhuru Park on January 30, 2018 was his personal decision even though he had been quoted severally asking Kenyans to turn up in large numbers.
Odinga took oath of office as the ‘People’s President’ on the day against the government’s wishes and several warnings.
The incident which was arranged as a protest to what the opposition termed ‘massive rigging’ of the August 2017 elections, was graced by tens of thousands of Kenyans, led to massive arrests of opposition leaders.
UNCONSTITUTIONAL
“I did not want the swearing in at Uhuru Park to happen. We as Nasa co-principals discussed the merits and demerits of a parallel oath. My position then and now was that we could not have a former Prime Minister, two former Vice Presidents and two former Foreign Affairs Ministers engage in a process that is unconstitutional,” Mudavadi said during the interview.
Mudavadi’s latest proclamation contradicts that of his party’s secretary general Barack Muluka who announced in March his team was ‘tricked’ by Odinga into not attending the function.
“I was there and waiting. Even Boni Khalwale was there alongside other principals (including Mudavadi. Raila knows in the name of God that what I am saying is the truth. He told the gentlemen to switch off their phones and that he would reach them with a foreign number from Nigeria. That call never came and they were not foolish enough to switch off their phones,” Muluka claimed back then.