Cleophas Malala remarks in Voi, Taita Taveta County that Gachagua and himself assisted President Ruto to steal votes in the last General Elections have critically undermined the credibility of the opposition.
Malala is the Deputy Party Leader of Democracy for Citizens Party (DCP) and one would expect his utterances not to be reckless but meaningful and measured.
While it already suffers teething problems such as the character disparities among its figureheads, Kenya’s emerging opposition now lacks credibility as it has already confessed to be a coalition of ballot manipulators.
Reacting to the Malala comment Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) Party publicity guru Phillip Etale said the opposition has totally lost the plot.
“If Malala’s remarks about stealing votes, and how they are experts in that field are anything to go by, then the opposition has lost the plot. They need to focus on issues rather than talking of how they will steal the vote.”
Etale’s sentiments are shared by a majority of Kenyans who looked up to the new union between Gachagua, Stephen Kalonzo Musyoka and Eugene Wamalwa as an alternative to the Ruto-Raila pact but are increasingly getting frustrated.
According to Etale, such fora should provide opportunity to address policies, development, and how to improve people’s lives, not how to win elections unfairly.
This now casts the new opposition into a new light as for the first time its leaders are not identified with Kenya’s liberation struggle but are unified in the fickle fact that somehow they feel betrayed by either Ruto or Raila. How that betrayal concerns Kenyans is a unique cause for driving a liberation movement.
Neither Gachagua, Kalonzo or Wamalwa have a history of spearheading any civic sensitization program and their new strength is more or less on the youth who rule social media pages.
The reason they have been raising crowds should be examined in the light of how Kenyans perceive the Ruto-Raila alliance. There’s still a lot of mistrust by other communities of this newfound bromance and perhaps it’s time the duo appealed for support from across the country.
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