Top Azimio insider spills the beans on how Uhuru’s CS and PS sabotaged Raila’s dream to State House
Top Azimio insider has revealed the details on how Uhuru’s CS, PS, and Raila aide sabotaged Azimio leader’s dream to State House.
One top Azimio official who worked closely with agents, who were deployed at polling stations, has spoken out on how the election process was bungled to the disadvantage of Raila Odinga.
In an interview with Daily Nation, the official who sought anonymity claims the agents had been identified, given a down payment, and trained, ready for deployment, only for a top official in the coalition to present a new list of agents on the eve of election day.
The official says unlike in the past elections, in 2022, Raila’s campaign team was more organized and the management of the campaign was okay
However, many things happened on the eve of the elections which put everything in disarray. “We had a good programme before it backfired. We trained the agents and prepared them on how to handle the elections. We even made the down payment of Sh1,500, and we were to pay them Sh5,000 each.”
The top Azimio insider says, “I was among the county liaison officers and I worked with the Azimio Secretariat. We had 57 people in charge of the election and they were to manage agents across the country. We have 47 counties, but big counties like Nairobi and Kakamega required two or three people to manage the election there.”
“We had a good programme for the agents, money was available for them. We had structures. Actually, for the chief agents, we employed lawyers to be the constituency and county chief agents. We had 290 lawyers as constituency chief agents and 47 lawyers as county chief agents, and we had the polling agents.”
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When things started to fall apart
The official says prior to the elections, they had an office in Lavington but were later moved to another office in Westlandsthree days to elections.
But on the eve of the elections, one of the top officials, a close ally of Raila Odinga, messed up the agents’ plan.
It was a scenario where you have trained people, let’s say 1,500 in a constituency, then he comes and asks ‘how did you find these people?’.
Then he gives you a different list and says ‘Work with these people; and it is hours to the election, you don’t know who they are, you don’t know where they came from, and then you are being instructed to send the letters to people who are not trained.
We messed up with the agents. He (the Odinga ally) did not misappropriate the money, because he was not handling the money for the agents, but he came with a different list and instructed us to use that list, yet we had four hours to the opening of the polling stations.
How would we have started sending those letters? How were we to train the newcomers?
In the end, the agents were changed at 2 am and there was not enough time to ensure all the logistics were in place, including having their introductory letters ready and accreditation as agents.
As a consequence, on election day, we did not have presidential agents in some areas, including Kisii, Kajiado, Narok, and some counties in North-Eastern and Coast. How do you start calling 1,000 people to start going to those constituencies?
We did not have agents because of those issues. People are saying we did not pay agents. In this scenario, whom were we going to pay? You have two lists – the trained and the untrained.
So, in the morning, the ones we trained reported to their respective polling centres but were not allowed to access polling stations because they did not have letters of appointment. So getting Form 34As became a problem because we did not have agents.
The top Azimio insider also revealed that they worked with a Cabinet secretary and a team from State House who could spend nights at the command centre.
“Two days to the election, you would find the two, the CS and a PS, staying up to 3am. We asked them how safe we were but they said ‘kila kitu kiko sawa (everything is okay).”
The official discloses that the State House team, CS, and the PS revealed to Raila’s team they had a parallel tallying system but was never shown to them, only promising they would win the election.
“For me, Raila was lied to and misled by these people. When I asked him ‘Mzee, is everything okay?’ he would say ‘everything is under control.’ The PS and the CS gave Mzee false hope. We lost because of our ignorance.”
“Raila tried in this election, but he was let down by his closest allies and maybe he also relaxed, thinking the government would play a big role in this election. I asked the PS when the results were about to be declared at Bomas, on whose instructions the police officers were working.”
He said everything was under control and if you have government goodwill all indications are that it should work in your favour.
They were there physically but their hearts were elsewhere. After the results were announced, they all disappeared. Only the CS came once.
Even one of Raila’s closest advisers, the only thing he kept saying was ‘pima suti’ (‘make yourself a suit’, ostensibly, for Mr. Odinga’s swearing-in),” the official concluded.
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