The Coalition for Reforms and Democracy (Cord) has warned coast residents not to be lured to support the Jubilee Alliance by being given land title deeds. Former Prime Minister Raila Odinga said titles were a right and not a privilege.
Raila was addressing Lunga Lunga residents in different campaign rallies to drum up support for the Cord candidate in the December by-election, Ford Kenya’s Khatib Mwashetani.
He criticized Jubilee leaders for using title deeds to lure coast people and Kenyans from supporting Cord by using the issue as a campaign tool ahead of the 2017 general election.
Raila said President Uhuru Kenyatta and Deputy President William Ruto are part of the land problem in Kenya and they cannot purport to be solving the issue.
“You are part and parcel of the land problem you cannot solve it. They are just trapping Kenyans to show that they are doing something but it is purely not true they are not. They have a reason for that and they are mainly focusing on 2017,” said Odinga. He spoke at rallies in Shimoni, Mwangwei, Vanga and Lunga Lunga.
He and other Cord leaders castigated President Uhuru for “reducing himself to a clerk by distributing title deeds instead doing other duties which are of important to the country.”
“You know that when you want to catch fish your trap must have something to attract the fish and this is what surround the whole thing of Kenyans being given titles so be watchful,” he said.
Raila said that the issue of distribution of titles and land solutions is supposed to be handled by the National Land Commission and county governments. Siaya Senator James Orengo said that giving title deeds to Kenyans is not a solution to the land problem.
Orengo, a former minister for Lands, said that if the issue of land is to be solved especially in the Coast, the government needs to trace it from Arab rule, British colonialism on to self rule by the President Mzee Jomo Kenyatta government. Orengo argued that all land which was illegally awarded to people to be surrendered so that it can be given to locals.
Others in attendance at the rallies were Ford Kenya party leader Moses Wetangula, Mombasa governor Hassan Joho, Coast parliamentary group chair Gideon Mung’aro, Busia county women representative Florence Mutua and Khatib Mwashetani.The Lunga Lunga by-election will be held on December 2 2013.
Joho said voters should elect leaders who can serve them and not those who failed them before regardless of their religions, race and tribe.
– the-star
