Nairobi Senator Edwin Sifuna has asked President William Ruto to withdraw his apology against Tanzania following torture of activist Boniface Mwangi ana Ugandan Journalist Agatha Atuhaire. Photo: Edwin Sifuna X.
Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) party Secretary General and Nairobi Senator Edwin Sifuna has once again declared Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between ruling party United Democratic Alliance and (UDA), and ODM null and void, following the killing of 31-year-old X blogger and teacher Alber Ojwang’.
Ojwang’ died inside Central Police Station in Nairobi after arrest on complain by DIG Eliud Lagat. Speaking during an interview on Tuesday, Sifuna emphasized that the tragic death of Ojwang’ marked the end of the MOU, saying that the working agreement was shaky, from President William Ruto’s side.
“On the day that Albert Ojwang died in a police cell, to me this agreement is dead. Because it doesn’t matter what else you do, Albert will not be able to enjoy that,” Sifuna said.
Sifuna disclosed that he was against the MOU from the beginning, cautioning the party against getting into a formal agreement with the Kenya Kwanza administration. He claimed that the regime led by Ruto had no genuine intentions to uphold the content of the MOU.
“I am on record having advised the party against doing this MoU with UDA, and we still went ahead and entered that MoU, but the beauty is that we’re proven right every day. I warned that the problem with doing a formal MoU with UDA is that it didn’t matter what the MoU said, the people from UDA, the government and William Ruto, are not interested in the details of the MoU, and that is why he gets upset when I remind him what the MoU said,” he stated.
According to him, the Ruto led team took the deal as a tool to propagate unity with the opposition of working together, despite an understanding that the document does not show it is a coalition; emphasizing that he had cautioned about UDA using the agreement for propaganda.
“They wanted a document that they could then go and run a P.R campaign around and say we’re together…that is not what this document says, this document does not establish a coalition agreement between ODM and UDA, but that’s the impression they’ve been creating. I had warned that the P.R disaster that was going to come from this was going to be something that was going to be very difficult to manage,” Sifuna explained.
The ODM SG further revealed that he declined to take part in a recent meeting held, which was aimed at reviewing the implementation of the MOU, as to him it does not stand.
“Recently, we had another meeting and there was a proposal to have a team to review the implementation of this MoU. I have asked respectfully that I be left out of that team because I have already declared this MoU dead,” he disclosed.
Sifuna stated that the main agreement of the MOU was to uphold dignity of human life, and the rising political tension in the country, which he acknowledged it has stabilized,, but faulted the continuous state-sponsored violence and killings that disregard the basis of the agreement.
“The reason that I declared this MoU dead is because the initial argument for entering this MoU was two-fold; first of all, it was for the sustenance of life that we were losing people unnecessarily, that can we all agree that we need to stop killing our people,” he stated.
“The second argument was the sustenance of the democratic state; so Ruto is getting his end of the bargain because the democratic state is being sustained at least until 2027, but our people are not getting there, they’re still being killed,” he further explained.
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