Sifuna Claims He Tried to Save Raila’s Party as ODM Rift Widens
Nairobi Senator Edwin Sifuna is recalling a promise he made during former Prime Minister Raila Odinga’s burial – a vow to keep the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) united after Raila’s passing.
Sifuna, who was ODM Secretary General for nearly a decade, says the party has undergone quite a transformation since then,a transformation that’s leaving some of its members grasping for ways to express themselves politically, even though they were first elected through the party.
As one of the co-principals of the Linda Mwananchi movement, Sifuna maintains that he held true to his word not to destroy ODM – even though he found himself at the centre of disputes over party leadership that eventually led to him being pushed out of the Secretary General role.
Sifuna Says He Kept His Promise to Raila Odinga
Sifuna said he made it clear to Raila, who he affectionately calls Baba, that he had really made an effort to keep the party from falling apart after his death, an effort that he’d made clear right there in Bondo.
“I want Baba to know – wherever he is – that I actually kept my promise to not be the one to wreck his party. I was right in the thick of things behind a lot of the controversy that’s come up, but personally I think I gave it my all to keep the party together, exactly as I said I would back in Bondo,” he said
Sifuna pointed out that the wranglings over ODM leadership were, in his view, motivated by a desire to stop internal divisions from tearing the party apart.
And he acknowledges that the time since Baba passed away has been extremely tough on his family, on his loyal supporters and on the movement that he built over the years.
“Things have changed A LOT since the last time we had Mzee around it’s been like a really hard time for loads of people – his family, his supporters, his party and everyone who knew him” he said
Sifuna Reveals Efforts to Reconcile ODM Leaders
The senator’s been saying for a while now that loads of attempts have been made to bring ODM leaders back together – all because they just can’t agree on where the party’s headed and who’s in charge.
From what Sifuna’s saying, these reconciliation efforts included some pretty intense mediation sessions with party trustees, and loads of meetings that took place at the different leaders’ homes.
He reckons he did his best to bring the leadership together but kept running into a brick wall – mainly because decisions affecting the party were being made outside the official structures.
“Honestly, I really hope that Baba’s watching from wherever he is and sees that I made a genuine effort to get the party leadership together again. But it was like trying to force a square peg into a round hole – decisions about ODM were being made elsewhere, and then they just expected us to go ahead and implement them like robots or something,”
His comments are a pretty clear sign that there’s still a whole lot of disagreement over who’s really in charge within the ODM party after Raila’s passing.
Ida Odinga Asked ODM Leaders to Resolve Their Differences
Sifuna also mentions a time when Raila’s widow, Ida Odinga, came out and asked the ODM leaders to put their differences aside.
Apparently, it was on Raila’s birthday when she made this plea to the party leadership – and the whole thing went down during a little visit to her place.
“We’ve had our fair share of meddling – I remember when we paid a visit to Mama on Baba’s birthday and she more or less begged the party leadership to sort out their differences. Loads of mediation sessions and loads of people trying to make things right, that’s for sure,” Sifuna said.
The senator is thanking all the party trustees who put in the effort to mediate – it looked like things were going alright at first, but then things took a turn for the worse.
“We thought we were making some progress, but then you’d wake up in the morning to find out that decisions had been made that went against all the agreements we’d made in the meetings…it was like the more we agreed, the more the disagreements just kept piling up!”
Sifuna Explains His Removal as ODM Secretary General
Sifuna took another look back at his removal from the ODM Secretary General role back in February and called the decision a slap in the face – “unlawful” is pretty blunt but I reckon that’s exactly what he meant.
He went through the motions, telling us how he took this on to the Political Parties Disputes Tribunal (PPDT), who he reckons basically said the party had done something wrong by sacking him – and told them to follow the ODM Constitution from then on.
Sifuna then said he wrote a letter to the party asking them to sort it out through arbitration – but they turned him down. “I wrote a letter asking for arbitration according to the ODM Constitution but they rejected it & then decided to just roll their own kangaroo court to try me,” he more or less said.
That adds another layer to the dispute – one that’s about party rules and how they deal with discipline.
Sifuna Accuses ODM of Ignoring Its Constitution
Sifuna reckons that ODM should have dealt with his case through its usual disciplinary process instead of setting up some new committee to pass judgement.
He points out that that committee is actually supposed to be chaired by Rama Abubakar & that the constitution should have been followed – but they went ahead and set up some new panel to hear his case instead.
“The ODM Constitution says there’s a standing disciplinary committee chaired by Rama Abubakar, so you’d expect them to follow the rules & go through that process with me – but they just set up this whole new thing to hear the case while I wasn’t even there,” he said.
Sifuna mentioned that he didn’t get any traction from the tribunal when he tried to get them to sort out the disciplinary mess he was in.
And still – no explanation from the party as to why they didn’t just do what the constitution says & send it to their standing committee to sort out.
The whole thing keeps on raising questions about what a healthy democracy looks like inside the party, how well ODM’s own constitution is being applied and what’s going on in the party’s future plans.
ALSO READ : Kenya’s Ebola Crisis Deepens: 66 Contacts Quarantined, More Expected
Sifuna Claims He Tried to Save Raila’s Party as ODM Rift Widens
Comments 1