Choice of NASA flag bearer calls for sacrifice by principals

An opinion piece in The Standard on Sunday on March 17, by Enock Wambua cannot go unchallenged. He argued that should NASA pick Raila Odinga as their flagbearer that would hand a win to Uhuru Kenyatta on a silver platter. According to Mr Wambua, Raila elicits repellent passion from majority of Kenyan electorate. He did not cite recent African examples where incumbents have been hounded out of power by Opposition aspirants who had previously been let down several times.

 I see Wambua‘s opinion as an attempt to deflect attention from the more explosive split in the Wiper house, where non-Wiper aspirants such as Charity Ngilu, Wavinya Ndeti, Kivutha Kibwana and Mutua Katuku are pitted against core Wiper lieutenants led by Senators Johnson Muthama, David Musila and Mutula Kilonzo Jnr. The former group wants an automatic Wiper ticket handed to them while the latter wants them to go through nominations.

 Wambua went on to reveal his preferred candidature which is Kalonzo-Mudavadi as the best posed to oust Jubilee government. By overpraising the qualities of Kalonzo as a preferred presidential candidate as a man without an iota of taint in his past, Wambua displayed obvious bias which can only be dismissed. He appeared more at war with those who he believed were supposed to be fighting hard for Kalonzo, whom he accuses of being dead silent.

 But what makes Wambua‘s opinion look like a late find of exoplanets is the fact that he is an aspirant for Senate in Kitui County. He comes across as trying to elicit sympathy in the nomination process among Kalonzo supporters.

 He dismissed all local opinion polls which have consistently put Raila ahead of the pack as the best NASA bet to take on Kenyatta and Jubilee. Thus Wambua overlooked such well publicly documented facts about the Brexit and US pollsters. Never were the Brexit opinion polls wrong, as they were exactly within the accepted margin of error, whereas the American opinion polls were extremely accurate that Hillary Clinton would eventually win the popular vote, and rightly beat her rival Trump with over 3 million popular votes, which in turn made Donald Trump to make unsubstantiated claim that it was due to voting by aliens.

 Wambua ought to inform his readers that Trump‘s electoral college win has been attributed in many quarters to foreign hackers‘ interference with American democracy and not true picture of voting pattern: a fact demonstrated by the masses that came out to protest against Trump in different US cities, only one day after his inauguration.

 Finally, the NASA call for sacrifice applies to all the co-principals including Kalonzo, and not just to Raila, Moses Wetang'ula or Musalia Mudavadi.

 

, South Eastern Kenya University