Prime CS Mudavadi drums up support for Raila’s AUC bid ahead of Tuesday launch
By Arnold Ngure, August 26, 2024
Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi on Monday, August 26, 2024, intensified the campaigns for Raila Odinga for the chairmanship of the African Union Commission.
Mudavadi, who is in Japan for the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD-9) ministerial meeting, seized the opportunity to lobby for Raila, who is set to be officially unveiled by President William Ruto on Tuesday, August 27, 2024.
“Speaking on the sidelines of the ongoing Tokyo International Conference on Africa Development (TICAD-9) Ministerial Meeting at Tokyo, PCS seized the opportunity to rally several Foreign Affairs Ministers from the African Union member states out of the 25 in attendance at the conference,” a statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs noted.
“President Ruto will not be announcing only to the Kenyan people but also significantly to the continent and the international community at large that the official candidate for Kenya in the AUC race is none other than Raila Amolo Odinga,” the statement added.
The statement comes after it emerged that the government had outlined a team of experts and merged it with Odinga’s secretariat to ensure he clinches the influential position in the continent’s politics.
The team in charge of Raila’s campaigns is expected to handle all his communications and publicity material, arrange for media interviews with international reach, and coordinate his public debates with fellow aspirants.
Mudavadi noted in an earlier statement that the anticipated official launch will only intensify the campaigns for Raila, which have been ongoing across Africa.
“Because largely these campaigns will call for foreign engagement, we will have to go full blast as soon as the official launch on Tuesday, and naturally the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which I head, will be very pivotal in undertaking this exercise,” Mudavadi said in Tokyo.
His sentiments were reiterated by the new Kenyan ambassador to Tokyo, Moi Lemoshira, who said Odinga’s previous position at the AU gives him the impetus to excel as the chairman of the AUC.
“We need to appreciate that we have a very strong candidate in Raila Odinga. He is an experienced leader who has served in various high-level positions in Kenya and Africa, especially when he was the AU envoy for infrastructure, a very relevant position in the future of AUC leadership,” Lemoshira said while accompanying Mudavadi at the TICAD-9 conference.
Raila is set to square it out with three opponents from the Eastern Africa region: Djibouti Foreign Affairs Minister Mahmoud Youssuf, Anil Kumarsingh Gayan of Mauritius, and Richard Randriamandrato of Madagascar.
The elections will be conducted in February 2025, with 48 African heads of state expected to cast their votes. Raila will need at least 32 votes to clinch the AUC chairmanship.