By Stephen Makabila              

Former Prime Minister Raila Odinga and his CORD partners have gone back to the drawing board to plot how to re-mould the coalition into an effective Opposition.

The group that brings together ODM under Raila’s leadership, Wiper under former Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka, Ford Kenya under Senate Minority Leader Moses Wetangula and other peripheral parties, has so far failed to flex its muzzle despite strong representation in the Senate and National Assembly.

While political Analysts had cautioned CORD was not strong enough as an Opposition, a team of experts hired to assess the coalition since the March 4 General Election returned a ‘failed’ verdict.

But the CORD leadership has vowed to take bold steps to revamp the coalition to keep the ruling Jubilee on toes.

Raila says a joint Parliamentary Group (PG) meeting held on September 16 at Wetangula’s Karen home cemented unity within the coalition and that what remains is to move forward.

The main focus for CORD is the challenge posed by Jubilee’s use of the ‘tyranny of numbers’ to bulldoze everything through Parliament.

That is why a CORD shadow cabinet is to be appointed. The coalition appeared to have been in slumber until three weeks ago when the Jubilee side adopted motions to pull out of the Rome Statute in the National Assembly and the Senate.

MPs from CORD thereafter engaged in blame-game over their failure to successfully challenge the motions. Worse still, the Jubilee side led by President Uhuru Kenyatta has managed to convince some CORD MPs to work with the Government, thus further weakening the Opposition.

But even as CORD reorganises to deal with Jubilee, Raila has indicated it will work with the Government on issues such as unity and security as was shown during last weekend’s terror attack at Westgate mall, when Uhuru and the former Prime Minister addressed the county from State House to assure Kenyans all was well.

By-elections

And speaking in Makindu while launching CORD campaigns for the Kibwezi West by-election earlier in the week, Raila repeated his pledge to work with the President jointly in fixing the security problem.

Security issues aside, the coalition s pushing on with the quest for a referendum to amend the Constitution.

Raila told The Standard on Sunday how the coalition is plotting to take charge of weighty political developments, including ensuring Kenyans go to a referendum in nine months. “We want to have a plebiscite on devolution at least nine months from now,” said Raila.

Debate on the referendum has slowed down considerably over the last two weeks because the Opposition does not want it to appear it taking advantage of the ICC cases facing the President and his deputy William Ruto at The Hague.

ICC cases

A senior CORD Senator who attended the Parliamentary Group meeting revealed that the coalition does not want to take a backlash over the ICC cases.

“The ICC has been used as a campaign tool by our opponents in the past and we do not want them to capitalise on the same again,” said the Senator.

“Given the current affairs in the country (read the ongoing ICC trials), CORD feels the referendum should be held by earliest in the second half of next year,” said Raila.

On calls for a referendum, the former premier was categorical that the CORD was against parliamentary amendments to increase revenue allocations to counties as advocated by some Jubilee legislators.

Their main concern is that counties have been under funded and that the Jubilee coalition had created parallel power structures in the counties. “They have created those structures to undermine the Senate, which should have oversight powers,” said Raila.

But in an exclusive interview with The Standard on Sunday at his Karen home in Nairobi, Raila remained cagey as to why CORD had gone slow on the referendum campaign.

Political analysts agree that CORD may not want to push for a referendum that may coincide or come hot on the heels of the ICC trials.

Such a crusade, they argued, might not win significant support from a public which may sympathise with the ICC suspects.

Apart from pushing for financial independence for counties, CORD also wants to streamline the power structure in counties and strengthen the Senate.

Raila said devolution has to work at all costs because the unitary system had for 50 years led to disparity in development due to unequal resource allocation, marginalisation of some parts of the country and discrimination in employment opportunities.

“Increase of financial allocations to counties, to have a clear power structure in the counties to avoid duplication of roles between the county and national governments and strengthening the Senate to be above Parliament must all be entrenched in the Constitution. We cannot do that through amendments or leave it to Jubilee to test the waters,” said Raila.

CORD is also concerned that as things stand, there are parallel governments at counties.

Running parallel

“Jubilee has retained the entire Provincial Administration now running parallel with administrative structures being set up by governors. Why should we have Regional Commissioners when we have no regions in the Constitution?” asked Raila.

Raila is also worried that a county like Nairobi has an allocation of Sh9 billion but Sh6.2 billion goes to wages, leaving nothing for development and provision of essential services.

“It’s the same scenario all over because counties inherited heavy debts burdening them given the limited funds provided by the national government,” said Raila.

His fears are that unless the government improves funding to enable counties perform, the public will, in two years or so, feel devolution is unwork-able.

He questioned why only class ‘F’ roads have been left to counties and funds for other classes of roads such as ‘D’ and ‘E’ retained by the national government.

On 2017, Raila denied claims that CORD was using the myriad challenges facing the Jubilee government to kick off early campaigns. “The country has to move ahead after elections,” said Raila.