Former Prime Minister Raila Odinga yesterday waded into the Affordable Housing project by calling on President William Ruto to initiate national dialogue to make Kenyans understand the now controversial programme that has been halted by the courts.

Raila said the dialogue will help Kenyans better understand what the programme is all about instead of the government forcing it onto the citizenry. He argued once the populace gets to understand the essence, people will voluntarily sign and agree to pay to have the houses without being forced.

“Let us have a national dialogue on how this programme is going to be rolled out so that people own it properly. People understand what you want to do,” Raila said during the celebration of PNU party’s 15th anniversary,” said Raila.

Raila argued that a constructive dialogue will also come up with an effective way to roll out the affordable housing project.

He noted that it was through such consultations that projects like the Standard Gauge Railway (SGR), Vision 2023, Konza Technopolis and Lapsset, among others, were born.

Kibaki administration

“When we were making the transformation with Kibaki, we convened a conference at Bomas of Kenya for one week. It was called the Kenya.

“We Want and people dialogued and agreed on what needed to be done in our country. Then we also set up a think tank called the National Economic and Social Council (NESC). It had experts from Singapore, Korea and Britain and experts from within the country,” said Raila.

He castigated the Kenya Kwanza administration for its failure to address matters affecting Kenyans, claiming it receives bad advice on governance.

He noted that when the Narc administration came into power, they inherited a broken government but they were still able to implement policies like free education within their first year in office.

“This regime is failing because of poor advice. I want to give them advice, when we came into power we found a bankrupt government. Kibaki himself was sick but he could give us advice on what to do from his sick bed. But we were there implementing what we had agreed on as our policies,” Raila said.

Raila said Azimio had an elaborate plan on how the government could set aside funds in the budget to fund the project.

“The issue of this Housing that these people are struggling with is not a new thing, it’s in our manifesto as Azimio. They borrowed it but they don’t know how to implement it. Us we knew how to implement it,” he said.

Suspend orders

His remarks come a few days after the Court of Appeal declined to suspend orders barring the state from deducting house levies from Kenyans. Justices Lydia Achode, John Mativo and Gatembu Kairu said that the public interest lies in awaiting the determination of the appeal.

“This is because if the stay sought is granted at this stage, should we affirm the challenged decision, then some far-reaching decisions that will have been undertaken under the challenged laws may not be reversible,” they said.

Yesterday, opposition parties gathered at the PNU fete signalled a bid to unite their forces against Ruto’s administration. PNU vowed to mount aggressive grassroots programmes in coming days and stick to the Opposition.

PNU is headed by former Meru Governor Peter Munya who announced that the road to 2027 had just started because “Kenya is in ICU”. He said Kenya’s “problems cannot wait” and that parties in the Opposition must stand up to be counted in liberating the country.

“From here we shall be in Meru and Murang’a in our next two stopovers in the coming two weeks,” Munya revealed.