Nairobi News

Former TNA secretary general Onyango Oloo has sensationally claimed that the governing Jubilee coalition did not win the March 2013 General Election.

Mr Oloo, who on Wednesday ditched the Jubilee Party for Raila Odinga’s Orange Democratic Movement, alleged that the ruling coalition rigged elections in its strongholds.

According to Mr Oloo, it was Mr Odinga who won the election.

“I know what happened. Raila was to swear by the Bible as the President and I have a lot of secrets to that effect which I cannot share publicly,” Mr Oloo declared when he joined Mr Odinga for a voter mobilisation campaign in Kisumu’s Jomo Kenyatta grounds.

“It is not a laughing matter. I have come with a lot of secrets in several files that I will share with Raila as we prepare to take over the next government.”

According to Mr Oloo, the results declared in Jubilee strongholds did not reflect the reality on the ground.

JUBILEE DEFENDER

This is a dramatic about-turn by one of the fiercest defenders of the Jubileee administration for the past four years.

Announcing his defection, the former secretary general accused the Jubilee government of presiding over corruption. Mr Oloo said he will not allow his people to be in a “political outfit without the interest of Kenyans at heart”.

“The Luo people have a saying that you can do business with a thief and a witch and remain clean, but when you marry them you also become a thief and a witch,” Mr Oloo said.

Mr Odinga and other Cord principals Kalonzo Musyoka (Wiper), Moses Wetang’ula (Ford Kenya) and ANC leader Musalia Mudavadi have joined forces in the National Supper Alliance (Nasa) that they are seeking to unseat Jubilees in the August 8 elections.

Mr Odinga said they were expecting more defections and put the Jubilee administration on notice that they were serving in government on borrowed time.

In what appeared to be Mr Odinga’s change of mind in the electoral laws, the Cord leader said even with the changes in the electoral laws, they will beat Jubilee hands down.

LOST SON

He said Nasa was the way to go adding that even in Ghana, President Nana Akuffo-Addo won with 54 percent against 43 percent even as the country adopted manual backup system in the polls.

The former Prime minister is on whistle-stop blitz to rally residents in his strongholds to register as voters. On Wednesday, he toured Busia, Siaya and Kisumu county.

“They (Jubilee) are full of insults and their master of affronts is (Deputy President William) Ruto. We have persevered for long and cannot continue anymore. We are approaching this election as a matter of life and death. We know their tricks of rigging and have sealed all the loopholes,” Mr Odinga declared.

He added: “Oloo is our lost son who has since left the enemies and returned home. We welcome him. We know he has a lot of secrets from our opponents to share with us. We will make use of them.”

But National Assembly majority leader Aden Duale played down Mr Oloo’s defection to ODM.

“He has joined many other politicians who have defected from their parties to others. Nothing new in him going back to a party from his region,” Mr Duale told Daily Nation.

The Jubilee Party was born out of a merger between President Kenyatta’s TNA and Mr Ruto’s United Republican Party and other parties affiliated to the Jubilee government. However, Mr Oloo charged that forces allied to URP had hijacked the new party.

THOROUGH VETTING

He also claimed that politicians who had not participated in bringing Jubilee to power had benefited and elbowed the founders aside.

“TNA was neutral and founded on ideologies we believed in that would take Kenya to the next level and unite them. However, little did we know we were being led into a vile and vicious political conmanship,” he said.

He said Jubilee is run by an amorphous secretariat led by a man whose party was not part of the Jubilee pact.

The secretariat is led by former Cabinet minister Raphael Tuju, who seems to have edged out Mr Oloo from the Jubilee inner circles and as the chairman of the Lake Basin Development Authority (LBDA)

Elsewhere, ODM chairman John Mbadi and Mr Wandayi warned that the party would subject defectors joining it to thorough vetting before they are cleared as candidates for various elective positions.

The duo said they had put in place structures to ensure that candidates who will be given the party ticket are loyal and deserve to be in ODM.

“As much as we want to reward and promote loyalty, we have to be alive to the fact that some of those who left ODM did so for a reason which we have found to be valid. If you are truly loyal to the party then you should be accommodative,” said Mr Mbadi.

Additional reporting by Rushdie Oudia and Nelcon Odhiambo