Former TNA secretary-general Onyango Oloo on Wednesday said he would spill all the tricks that the Jubilee Coalition used in 2013, including inflating the number of votes in its strongholds to help President Uhuru Kenyatta win the elections.
Mr Oloo, who ditched the Jubilee Party for Raila Odinga’s Orange Democratic Movement, said the “files of secrets” he carried away from the President’s party would help the opposition alliance to defeat Mr Kenyatta in the elections set for August this year.
He claimed Mr Odinga, who ran on a Cord ticket, won the last elections, adding: “I know what happened. Raila was to be sworn in as the President and I have a lot of secrets to that effect which I cannot share publicly.”
“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.” Mr Oloo said during a rally at Kisumu’s Jomo Kenyatta Grounds in a dramatic about-turn by one of the foremost staunch defenders of the Jubilee administration for the past four years.
Mr Oloo’s former colleagues in Jubilee, however, laughed off his claims, saying he had no access to any secrets.
Nominated MP Johnson Sakaja, who was the TNA chairman, said Mr Oloo was not privy to any secrets that he could sell to ODM.
“He has nothing. All he dealt with was administration. There is nothing that we have to hide. We did our job and won the elections. There will be no such thing as rigging, unless he decides to make up stories,” he said by telephone.
Mr Sakaja and National Assembly Majority Leader Aden Duale said Mr Oloo defected to ODM to save his political career and should stop lying to the former Prime Minister.
POLITICAL SURVIVAL
“I think his move is just for his own political survival and to chart his political path. Beyond that, anything that is malicious is totally uncalled for. Political realignments are normal in this season but first of all, to say you have moved with the infrastructure of TNA is false. The merger was never about any individual positioning but what we all believe in. The entire infrastructure understood that and moved to Jubilee,” said Mr Sakaja.
Mr Duale played down Mr Oloo’s defection, saying: “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.”
Speaking in Nyeri during the burial of Archbishop John Baptista Mugecha on Wednesday, Kabete MP Ferdinand Waititu accused Mr Oloo of being a traitor and said Jubilee was content with his defection.
The Jubilee Party was borne out of a merger between President Kenyatta’s TNA, Mr Ruto’s United Republican Party, and other small parties.
Announcing his defection, Mr Oloo, who was received at the rally by Mr Odinga, accused the Jubilee administration of presiding over corruption, saying he would not allow his people to be in a “political outfit that didn’t have 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,” said Mr Oloo.
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 Super Alliance (Nasa) that they are hoping to use to kick out Jubilee in the elections.
MORE DEFECTIONS
Mr Odinga said he expected more defections and put the Jubilee administration on notice that it was living on borrowed time.
In what appeared to be a change of heart on the electoral laws, the Cord leader said even with the changes, the opposition would beat Jubilee emphatically.
He said Nasa was the way to go, adding that even in Ghana, President Nana Akuffo-Addo won with 54 per cent against his rivals 43 per cent even as the country adopted a manual backup system in the polls. The former Prime minister is on a tour of Busia, Siaya and Kisumu to rally residents to register as voters.
“They (Jubilee) are full of insults and their master of affronts is Deputy President William Ruto. We have persevered for long and cannot continue any more. We are approaching this election as a matter of life and death. We know their tricks of rigging and have sealed all the loopholes,” declared Mr Odinga.
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.”
Mr Oloo charged that forces allied to URP had hijacked the new Jubilee Party and claimed that politicians who had not played any role in bringing Jubilee to power had benefited and elbowed out the founders.
“TNA was neutral and was founded on ideologies we believed 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, adding that Jubilee was 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.
-nation.co.ke
