I am still waiting to hear from you, Mr President, Raila tells Uhuru

CORD leader Raila Odinga says he is still waiting for President Uhuru Kenyatta to respond to his Wednesday challenge — that he “get up and report back on duty”.

In an exclusive interview with The Standard on Sunday, Raila said the issues he raised in his Wednesday statement were weighty and cannot be responded to by a “pack of MPs on instruction”.

He said he directed his statement to his worthy competitor in the 2013 General Election, the President of the Republic of Kenya.

“I directed my statement on Wednesday to the Executive. I addressed the President directly. Now, I am being replied to by Members of Parliament whose institution is completely different from the Executive. I expect an answer from the President,” he said.

He added: “The answers cannot come through MPs, the (Adan) Duale’s of this world. He is the Majority Leader in the National Assembly. Since when did he become a spokesman for this government?”

Raila said MPs do not have solutions to the difficulties in which they themselves are victims. He said the fact that Parliament itself cannot pay electricity bills is a pointer to its vulnerability.

“The issues I am raising are very weighty and the government cannot afford to trivialise them by asking a pack of MPs to go address a hurriedly prepared press conference and to gloss over issues,” he said.

Raila defended the figures of growth he presented during his Wednesday press briefing and which were disputed by some MPs led by Duale. He said the MPs hurried to respond to him and forgot that the World Bank had recently revised its growth figures.

Question: What is the magnitude of the economic crisis facing the country at the moment, in your appreciation? Have we been there before?

Answer: I don’t think we have really been at this point before. The nearest we got to this was post-election crisis period of 2007, because of the upheaval we went through and the destruction that followed those events. Also, in the 90’s following withdrawal of donor support over the Goldenberg crisis. Those are the comparisons that come to mind.

One of the things your competitors have been asking you is to, at the very least, offer solutions to some of these issues. As a national leader what are your solutions to the current cash crunch, volatile currency and runway corruption in government?

My role as leader of the Opposition is to basically oversight government and to be constructive in doing so. It does not include being a consultant for the government. If they want that, I am ready... but you will remember I invited them for dialogue and they rejected. If I were to help them it would be, basically, a complement, not really my duty. It is their duty to govern.

You seem to believe the President is deliberately tolerating corruption in his government. Comment.

If he was not doing so he would not be defending suspects without justifiable reasons. I have given the example of this lady (Anne Waiguru). I have provided facts. Now you see they have admitted. At first she said no money was lost, that she is the one who invited the Banking Fraud Investigations Unit to investigate, and that she forestalled the theft.

Once investigations were done, she came up and admitted to massive loses. She did not even apologise to the country for misleading the public. You would also remember the manner in which she fired Mr (Kiplimo) Rugut, and brought in Mr (Nelson) Githinji without following due process. Thereafter she brought Mr (Adan) Harakhe and removed Authority to Incur Expenditure from Githinji and gave it to the Harakhe fellow. That, again, is a position which should have been competitively procured. That was not done.

If you look at the way she is running the ministry through correspondences, you would appreciate that she’s micromanaging the ministry. She’s dealing with administrative issues which are in the domain of the PS. Ministers deal with policy. And then the height of it, the President has gone out of his way to specifically defend her, which he has not done with respect to other CSs, basically showing he is condoning corruption.

He cannot be oblivious to the fact that contracts are being inflated, and awarded corruptly, that procedures are not being followed. Look at the Eurobond saga, where you raise money and bank it in a foreign account side-stepping the Consolidated Fund account. And then you begin to spend it from there. Nobody knows how much interest was earned while the money was there. He has been minister for Finance, he knows these things. We cannot say the President is not aware. He is very much conversant with what is happening.

A moment ago you talked about your dialogue offer. Isn’t this the time to press for dialogue, in light of all the uncertainties obtaining in the country?

When we made the offer for dialogue it was misconstrued to mean that we were merely looking for jobs. We were dismissed and portrayed as beggars. The window was shut as soon as they showed reluctance to take advantage of it.

There is no chance to review it.... even in these times?

We wouldn’t want to open it unless they knock our doors. We do not want to be ridiculed again. Let this be understood well. We are not desperate. We will not go and beg. We will stay where we are and remain on course. We will continue to do our duty. We were basically going beyond our call of duty by offering our hand but we were ridiculed. We will not open it again.

Do you believe President Uhuru Kenyatta and his team are up to task of getting Kenya back on track?

If I did not believe that they could redeem themselves I would not make the appeal I made on Wednesday. When I told the President to wake up and report on duty, what I meant is that he is absent. He is not working. That is why he has allowed things to get to crisis point. There is still time to rally his troops. At the moment they are in disarray. They are more concerned with PR than root causes of issues. When he talks about forming a council of elders to address issues of ethnicity, he’s basically running away from his problems. The issues are of his own making. Through skewed appointments Uhuru has resurrected the animal of negative ethnicity.

According to him, this country is composed of only two communities. How does these other communities feel, being bypassed every day? If you are vomiting then inviting these elders to clean your vomit, what are you telling the country? The elders have no solution. Surrounding yourself with members of your own tribe does not help.

And when you are travelling out of the country to New York, you carry along MPs from different parts of the country as joy riders to appease their communities. This cannot and does not appeal to those communities. You are bypassing their kin all the time, in government. And they see it. You are yourself, your worst enemy, and your advisers. Just do an analysis of recent public appointments and you will see how skewed it was; and this for a government which is way past its mid-term.

What is the fate of Okoa Kenya initiative to amend the Constitution?

Just watch this space, okay? I saw Jubilee people asking me to tell Kenyans what happened to Okoa Kenya yet it’s not really their cup of tea. They have opposed it all the time. Why are they concerned about its fate? If it’s dead they should come and bury it, but.... watch this space.

What became of the Teachers Pay Bill initiative? How much did it collect?

You know, the strike is over. However, a number of Kenyans, innocent people rallied behind us through their small and humble donations. To me the most important thing is not how much was collected but the spirit demonstrated by the people of Kenya across the country. The secretariat is dealing with that account and we will shortly hand over whatever little we have to Knut. Again, that is not a Jubilee issue, it is a gesture of sympathy and we only provided a platform. It will all be handed over with a complete list of who contributed what and so on.

In the interview, Raila said neither Deputy President William Ruto nor former broadcaster Joshua arap Sang have picked on his offer to testify in their support at the ICC.

He said it would be unfair to have the pair carry the burden for the post-election violence when the side on which they are charged (ODM) was the victim. Raila claimed the cases against PNU side collapsed “not for want of evidence but because witnesses were interfered with”.

“As ODM we never planned any violence against anybody. If that is what is required of me, I am ready to go to the ICC and say that as a leader and as a candidate at the time we did not plan any violence,” he said.

He reiterated his push to have the government recall some of the evidence it gave incriminating Ruto. He explained the evidence he wants recalled is the evidence gathered by the National Security Intelligence Service (NSIS). “I myself could never have been responsible for concocting evidence against my people. They cannot say I am the one who fixed Ruto without contradicting themselves. The NSIS evidence did not come from our side. They are the ones who were in government.”