Raila, DP Ruto in fireworks 72 days to election
It was a day of pernicious political pyrotechnics.
Leading presidential aspirants William Ruto and Raila Odinga on Friday tore into each other, setting off incendiary rhetoric two months to the general election.
It was the third consecutive day of mud-slinging.
They both called each other liars.
Ruto called Raila a stooge, puppet and project unable to make his own decisions or solve problems.
He called him a hostage who knows nothing about port operations or land reforms.
Raila called Ruto a dishonest person, an active acolyte of the repressive Nyayo regime of former President Danial Moi.
He said he sided with Moi to stifle progressive voices and would do it again.
The ODM chief also said Ruto approved of the inland port and instigated land problems and the land mess.
From hundreds of kilometres apart, they fired salvos, trashing and discrediting each other’s pledges, policies and credentials to turn around the country’s economy and reduce the cost of living.
For the third consecutive day, Ruto and Raila savaged each other in whirlwind campaigns.
Raila is the Azimio-One Kenya flagbearer, while Ruto is the Kenya Kwanza standard-bearer in the race to succeed President Uhuru Kenyatta.
The latest opinion by the Radio Africa released on Tuesday showed Ruto has a slight lead of 43.3 per cent against Raila's 42.4 per cent.
Wiper leader Kalonzo Musyoka came a distant third with 4.0 per cent.
While the DP was campaigning in Western since Wednesday, Raila denounced him as an anti-reformist who sided with the brutal Kanu regime to stifle progressives.
He alleged Ruto is a beneficiary of the mess in the land sector brought about by the Kanu regime.
The ODM boss blamed Ruto for farmers’ woos.
He said he manipulated the National Cereals and Produce Board by doing dubious business with it at the expense of hardworking farmers.
“When we were fighting the brutal Nyayo regime [of President Daniel Moi], they were bootlicking Nyayo. They were his attack dogs. One was in YK92. You remember them,” Raila said.
Ruto was in the YK (Youth for Kanu) movement that supported Kanu and Moi’s reelection in 1992.
At the time, a group of leaders, including Raila among others fought off the regime and pushed for a multiparty democracy to free the political space.
“Now they want to pretend that they want to bring reforms. Which reforms can they bring?” Raila asked during a rally in Trans Nzoia.
He said DP was among the instigators of the many problems bedevilling the county, including land grabs and disputes, and thus cannot be trusted to provide solutions.
He dismissed the DP’s pledge to set up a fund to buy idle land and distribute it to landless people at the Coast and elsewhere.
“Land has already been bought by the loan secured by the governments of Kenya and the UK. What is remaining is injustice…land that was grabbed by other people. We will repossess that land and give it to squatters,” he said.
And as Raila fired attacks, hundreds of kilometres away at the Coast, the DP was even more blistering in his assaults.
Ruto dismissed Raila as a "stooge" of unnamed forces keen to manipulate him should he assume the presidency.
While on a tour of Kilifi, the DP said Raila would not be his own man and, therefore, will not offer concrete solutions to issues affecting the region.
Ruto said the former Prime Minister was far from the best placed to solve the Coast region’s problems as he is under the control of "some of the perpetrators".
“He cannot do anything. He is a project. He has been held hostage. He calls no shots. What will a stooge do? Don’t you know he will have to consult faceless people to get anything done?” the DP asked.
He asked Coast not to accept the “lies Raila has told them for years”. He said it was the handshake government that escalated plans to decentralise port operations to Nairobi and Naivasha.
“The handshake government was the one that moved the port operations from Mombasa. Ask them why they moved it to Nairobi and whom does it benefit there?” Ruto asked.
Ruto is, however, on the record defending the decision of the government to open an inland container depot in Nairobi and Naivasha — after the handshake.
But in his tour of Kilifi, the DP shifted the blame to Raila—and by extension President Kenyatta, who is Raila’s new ally in the succession battle.
“Our competitor cannot do anything about the port operations and land issues as his sponsors are the problem,” he said.
The DP dismissed Raila’s land reforms plan, saying the ODM leader had never issued title deeds to the residents despite knowing the severity of the problem.
“How many title deeds has he brought here? I have a track record of sorting land issues in the hundreds of thousands of title deeds we have issued here,” Ruto said.
Campaigning separately in Western, ANC leader Musalia Mudavadi and his Ford Kenya counterpart Moses Wetang'ula – both members of the Ruto-led Kenya Kwanza Coalition –attacked Raila as dishonest.
They asked the residents to reject the ODM for taking the community "for granted".
“They have said Western will be given Speaker and National Treasury positions. We have had speakers and finance ministers from the region before. There is nothing new they are offering yet they want you to vote for them in large numbers,” Mudavadi said.
He said Western had overwhelmingly supported Raila in 2017 and other elections but the ODM leader has never returned the favour.
“Our agenda with Raila is no more. In Kenya Kwanza, there is a 30 per cent stake in government for the community,” Mudavadi said.
Wetang'ula said Raila has never pushed to have projects in Western following his handshake with the President.
“All benefits of the handshake have gone to his Nyanza backyard yet the neighbouring Western region also voted for him in large numbers,” he said. BY THE STAR
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