Muluka's 'wild claims' founded on bitterness

By Kibisu-Kabatesi

For a national newspaper columnist, it is one thing to be an objective commentator and another to be a pundit in your own course, and worse, believe in your own version of lies. Barrack Muluka’s wild claims may be excusable on account of an emotional dilemma, but believing his own incredible statements (Standard On Saturday May 28) is something else.

Painful as this cautionary admonition may be to an intellectual and professional acquaintance, I see the need to correct his mis-statements, for the sake of the innocent public; to dispel intellectual dishonesty; and chastise him for his assault on Musalia Mudavadi.

Muluka and I shared literature classes at the University of Nairobi; worked for the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation, and are both publishing editors in the private sector and academe. Muluka accuses the Luhya community’s ODM leadership of not being ‘visible’ in Parliament and public rallies. He symbolises the radio ‘Salaams Club’ fan, who thinks political rhetoric equals representation. But Parliament’s Hansard (www.parliament.go.ke) shows the MPs’ vigorous and informed original Motions, contributions to Motions, and serious questions that address their constituents’ and Kenyans’ concerns.

When he claims that Mudavadi has had no meaningful impact "on lives of ordinary residents of Western Province ", it is ethnic myopia revisiting the jobs-for-the-boys issue that pre-occupied us at the formation of the Grand Coalition Government.

On the matter of the Western Investment Conference (Wepic), Muluka was one of the few ‘intellectuals’ who opposed it.

Wepic was sponsored by the Kenya Investment Authority. Financial constraints prevented the report’s publication and launch, but the soft copy is in circulation. The idea of a Mulembe Bank is flourishing; a Mr Mutoka has set up a water packaging plant in Kakamega; small-sized entrepreneurs are accessing soft loans from Equity Bank. It is only Muluka’s intransigence that remains stillborn.

In Ikolomani, ODM faced a well-oiled money machine that bought the vote. How else do you explain the impunity of violence and intimidation unleashed, and arrests of voter bribery whistleblowers? In Mudavadi’s Sabatia, people have all-weather roads, can access electricity within a 600m radius – with all public institutions and facilities connected – and health centres within a 2km radius.

It is self-effacing irony for Muluka, rejected twice (2002 and 2007) by the electorate in Kwisero as aloof and elitist to accuse Mudavadi of taking the people of Sabatia for granted.

I keep Mudavadi’s diary, so I know how regularly he visits various parts of the country, including Western.

Muluka would love Mudavadi to "do a Ruto" on Raila, but Mudavadi elected to compete in ODM rather than dump the party.

I’ll explain. Muluka the aspirant took off with Kalonzo Musyoka under the original ODM-Kenya in 2007, and was a conspicuous bride’s maids in attendance at Kalonzo’s presidential launch at Bomas of Kenya. Opportunism made him believe party-less Musalia, under whose patronage he hoped to bag the Kwisero ticket, was of no use to him. But latching onto Kalonzo repelled Western votes and cost Muluka dearly.

In late 2007, I remember one a dark rainy evening at Musalia’s residence in Mululu an anxious, humbled and lone Barrack Muluka nervously secluded in a corner waiting for audience with Musalia and Raila. The newly acquired ODM electoral machine was raving – unstoppable. Was it for a favour or to apologise for his misadventure?

Was Muluka rigged out and by whom, as he is wont to perennially allege? The answer is with the people of Kwisero whom Muluka constantly rubbishes as not knowing what is good for them by rejecting him.

—The Writer is Director of Public Communications and Private Secretary in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Local Government