Boniface Mwangi: Why Raila Odinga lost to Ruto

Human rights activist Boniface Mwangi has shared a detailed account of why Azimio la Umoja-One Kenya coalition presidential candidate Raila Odinga and his running mat Martha Karua failed to clinch the presidency in the just-concluded August 9 election.

Taking to his official Facebook page, Mwangi gave a blow-by-blow account of how the coalition relaxed on the job by underestimating their opponent.

“We assumed the victory was ours because President Uhuru Kenyatta endorsed and actively campaigned for Raila and Martha. We failed to do the hard work of strategizing, organizing, and mobilizing our base to come out and vote, especially in our strongholds,

“We failed to protect our agents from the temptation of easy bribes from our opponents. We allowed them to be compromised at the polling stations. We also failed to protect our votes because we had too much faith that theIEBC would conduct a credible, free and fair election,” the statement reads in parts.

Additionally, Mwangi took issue with the outgoing President Uhuru Kenyatta’s involvement in the Azimio coalition.

Everything I posted was based on the information that was availed to us. Looking back, it is now obvious that we were fed with misleading information, up until the very last minute. The question arises: was this a long con? https://t.co/yrZ0epgPhT

— The People’s Watchman (@bonifacemwangi) September 12, 2022

According to the activist, each time Uhuru spoke on behalf of the party, numbers were lost since citizens believed he had vouched for Raila and Karua so as to push his agenda in their administration, a move that was detested by many.

“Because of Uhuru’s incessant and ill-advised utterances, Raila and Martha struggled to shake off the “projects” tag. Far from being “state projects”, Raila and Martha’s reformist credentials needed no emphasis. Unfortunately, Uhuru was the chairman of Azimio. His presence in Azimio made Kenyans believe Raila and Martha would b a continuation of Uhuru’s presidency. Uhuru ended up sabotaging what would otherwise have been a very robust campaign,” he added.

In addition to that, Mwangi also acknowledged that the Azimio team lost the election because they were disorganized.

He stated that the team appointed people for their loyalty instead of their professional skills. According to him, those appointed with huge responsibilities were lazy and failed to match what was expected of them.

While underscoring the faults in the secretariat, the activist additionally pointed out that a section of the Azimio team who were at Bomas on the night of the results announcement had a misguided agenda different from what was expected.

“Hon. Raila and Hon Martha were let down by the secretariat together with President Uhuru who seconded clueless advisors to the Azimio secretariat, and those men gave terrible advice,

He added: “After the election and while with Martha, we received a phone call (while vote tallying was still ongoing)letting us know we had won. The person who called us is very prominent in Kenya. I couldn’t imagine that lies would come from a secretariat where the chairman of the coalition was the sitting President of Kenya,”