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Confusion rocks Nasa team over creation of two manifestos

Nasa presidential candidate Raila Odinga addresses journalists at Panafric Hotel in Nairobi on July 4, 2017.
Nasa presidential candidate Raila Odinga addresses journalists at Panafric Hotel in Nairobi on July 4, 2017. The allianceโ€™s two manifestos are driving a wedge between members, with some distancing themselves from one of the documents. PHOTO | EVANS HABIL | NATION MEDIA GROUP

Aย quiet yet fraught contest between technocrats and business lobbyists was behind the creation of two manifestos by the National Super Alliance, it has emerged.

Dr David Ndii, who headed the team that wrote themanifestoย launched by presidential candidate Raila Odinga, says a second document also available on the Nasa website was not created by his team.

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It however bears elements of the document presented by the Nasa principals on Tuesday last week.

Guests attending the manifestoโ€™s launch at Ngong Racecourse were asked to register at the entrance and after the document had been presented, a website link was sent to them through a text message.

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NASA WEBSITE

The link led to the Nasa website where there were two documents, one with a green cover titled โ€œA Strong Nation. National Super Alliance Coalition Manifesto 2017โ€; and another with a blue cover titled; โ€œRoad to Kenyan Dream. Implementing Our Manifesto.โ€

The thrust of the green document was Nasaโ€™s ideological and policy platforms, while the blue one gave details on the investment in projects required for the coalition to fulfil its objectives broken down into the first 90 days and onto long-term commitments.

In an interview onย Citizen TVย on Monday evening, Dr Ndii appeared to disown the second document, repeatedly saying, โ€œThat is not our manifesto.โ€

NO TWO MANIFESTOS

Asked about the two documents, Nasa presidential candidate Raila Odinga said at a press conference on Tuesday morning; โ€œThere are no two manifestos.โ€

He said there was a booklet laying out the policy and reforms for key sectors of the economyย and another one on how the policy would be implemented.

โ€œThere are no contradictions. Those documents speak to each other,โ€ he added.

Dr Ndii separately toldย  theย Nationย on Tuesday that the difference was in their creation, which he characterised as โ€œa contest between good and evil, between right and wrong, within Nasa.โ€

IMPLEMENTATION PLAN

โ€œThat document is a bunch of people who were trying to do an implementation plan and they wanted to do specific things, all sorts of things, but itโ€™s not the manifesto,โ€ he said of the blue cover version, adding thatย  since an implementation plan would have to be drawn after the election, the document should not even be entitled as such.

โ€œPeople started working on something. They were trying to put it together, they havenโ€™t done a good job of it but you know the way politics is.

We have a coalition. There is a whole bunch of situations where the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing,โ€ he added.

CONFUSION

He was referring to the confusion within Nasa that had Musalia Mudavadiโ€™s Amani National Congress release its own manifesto two weeks before the Nasa launch, despite being a member of the coalition.

Also at play was an apparent push by various interest groups to include their special interests in the manifesto.

โ€œWe have lots of groups doing various things, as you would in a coalition, and they really wanted to be part of the manifesto launch. We told them it would not be a good idea because it also needed to be audited and taken through an approval process but the time we were doing that, the document got out somehow,โ€ said Dr Ndii.

The economist said that while the document โ€œis causing a fair amount of confusion,โ€ it is not the manifesto that was launched.

BANDWAGONS

โ€œItโ€™s the list of things that every lobby in Kenya was pushing to Nasa, as you can understand. All sorts of lobbyists โ€“ NGOs, youth, people, you name it.

When you are in this sort of process, there is a lot of bandwagoning. We channelled the bandwagons to those people.

This happens in every political process I have been involved in.โ€

โ€œYou know we have become a stakeholder society. So people call themselves stakeholders. Even tenderpreneurs are in there.

ECONOMIC APPRAISAL

In fact they are there in a big way,โ€ he said of the blue document.

Dr Ndii, who is also aย Nationย columnist, led the taskforce that advised the Narc government on the Economic Recovery Strategy credited with reviving the economy in the first Narc coalition administration under President Mwai Kibaki.

He said the proposals by the lobbyists and other interested parties were grand and not well thought out.

Having all these grand projects would have contradicted Nasaโ€™s constant standpoint that Jubilee has not been doing a proper economic appraisal of projects.

Source link-nation.co.ke

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