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Raila: I will easily defeat Ruto

By Mercy Simiyu January 18th, 2022 2 min read

Opposition leader Raila Odinga insists his supporters are not violent.

Odinga spoke in Nairobi on Tuesday, following repeated claims by Deputy President William Ruto fingering his political outfit as the source of Odinga the crowd trouble witnessed at Nairobi’s Jacaranda grounds at the weekend.

In his rebuttal, Odinga hit back at Ruto in public for the first time, suggesting the DP had panicked after sensing defeat.

“There are people saying ODM supporters threw stones to disrupt their meetings, we want to say none of them did that,” Raila said.

“We will face them and beat them with votes, they have seen a tsunami coming and that’s why they have become like a monkey that is seated on a tree seeing the wind coming, I want to tell them to wait we will deal with them face to face.”

Raila also urged Kenyans to come out and register as voters in order to have the power to vote in their leaders, promising to facilitate the process.

“There is no sleeping. Go and register and even the (Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission) IEBC want to work till night time, it is okay. Money is there and we shall release it, “He said.

The ODM supremo further claimed he is the most popular politician in Nairobi.

“In 2017, here in Nairobi, I got over 900,000 votes and Uhuru got 700,000. If you add the two you get around 1.6 million votes. We want that number to get to over two million plus,” He said.

IEBC this week launched the second mass voter registration, an exercise scheduled to run until February 6, 2022, after a similar one in October achieved just 25 per cent of the six million youth the agency targeted to register.

The commission attributed the low numbers to a disinterested youth population that does not see voting as important.