Prof Nyongo Sharply Criticizes President Uhuru's Three Week Absence

I am surprised that the President can choose to leave the country for 3 weeks at a time when Kenya is facing the most grievous security threats almost everywhere. Given the limited powers that the Deputy President can exercise constitutionally, I find the absence of the President reckless, adventurous and most uncalled for.

At a time like this, we need a National United Front of all parties, beliefs and persuasions, well structured at the National level, to deal with the insecurity crisis. The President has chosen to absent himself from the nation at a time when a hands on approach is most needed.

Rather than talk about the impending shake up of the security system, Kenyans want to see the result of action and not the intention of promises.

I must say however that the President seems to be immobilized by the feeling of entitlement that the security bosses have to their positions hence no doubt for their political debt the President owes them.

Prof. Anyang Nyong'o.
Ag. Party Leader.
ODM
1/4/2014

KENYANS DESERVE BETTER: Response by the ODM to the State of the Nation Address by the President of Kenya March 28, 2014

KENYANS DESERVE BETTER:
 
RESPONSE BY THE ORANGE DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENT TO THE STATE OF THE NATION ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF KENYA; MARCH 28, 2014:

President Uhuru Kenyatta makes his State of the Nation address at the National Assembly's Chamber in Parliament Buildings, Nairobi.

Fellow Kenyans, yesterday, you heard from the President on the state of our nation.

We urge you to spend a few minutes with us as we give our side of the story.
We are ODM. But it really should not matter because today, we are all hurting. One year after elections, millions of Kenyans are watching and asking; does this government want to stand on our side or in our way.
Ours is therefore a national call to action on behalf of all the struggling Kenyans. Our main point this morning is; Kenyans deserve far much better than this.

UNITY OF THE NATION:

We are too divided to build a nation ready to confront its challenges.

Jubilee has run the country as a collection of tribes, allies and enemies.
Every appointment to a public position has been handed down as a gift to supporters, along tribal and party lines. This skewed balance of power poses grave danger to our progress and it must not tilt any further in favour of one or two communities. It must be reversed.

ECONOMY AND COST OF LIVING:

Our economy requires urgent, immediate and sustained rethink.
The absurd policy of tax and spend has traumatised Kenyans.

Families can't pay rent, can't afford food, can't pay school fees and cannot afford bus fare.

In response, we are seeing and hearing the same-old ideology that we've heard before — over and over again: Salary cuts, retrenchment of workers, cleaning up the payroll of ghost workers and how there will be just a little more pain before it gets better. Kenyans are going through tremendous pain. It must not get worse.

We urge the government to focus on eliminating corruption, inefficiency and wastage. Savings from these areas would be sufficient to finance recovery and growth.
We advise that the government to put singular focus on food as the biggest driver of cost of living, particularly for the poor.

Let’s focus on pro-poor agricultural investment as this will result in jobs, containing poverty and reduction in cost of living. Let's pay particular attention to job creation, expansion of economic opportunities particularly for farmers, informal sector, and economically disadvantaged communities.

The time has come for the government to treat unemployment as a crisis.

We need a clear road map towards putting millions of Kenyans to work and encouraging companies to hire and not fire people. We have seen no such steps in the last one year.
Jubilee must use its numerical strength in the Houses of Parliament to come up with administrative, regulatory and legislative measures to help small firms start and expand.

The cost of bank loans remains unbelievably high despite so much rhetoric about it. But if we are to create job creators and not job seekers, the cost of loans have to fall. Jubilee must use its numbers to champion these positive measures.

The government must embrace and engage small contractors and change the way it does business with them. Startups cannot afford to chase payments for months. A simpler engagement would help turn many enterprising young Kenyans into job creators, not job seekers. Small businesses must be treated as the engine of growth, and essential to economic recovery.

CRIME: 

The greatest responsibility of any government is to protect its people and their property. Yet the last one year has brought us a lot of pain and loses. Lives and property have been lost; thousands have been wounded, businesses have underperformed or closed as a result of spiraling crime.
 
This comes after Kenyans worked so hard in the last ten years to create a largely secure nation. By the time Jubilee took over, we had a largely secure nation in which operating a 24 hour economy looked increasingly realistic, not rhetoric.

Today, criminals hunt us in the streets, from our houses, in churches, in mosques, in matatus and in schools.
 
We are approaching the first anniversary of the attack on the Westgate Mall. Our hopes and prayers remain with the families that fell victim to this attack. We stand with families who have lost loved ones to criminals across our country. Their pain and horror remain with us.
 
But as we moan, we are not convinced that the gaps in our security exposed by those attacks have been closed. The Government is saying the right words about the threat we face. But it has failed to take action commensurate with the threat.

When terrorists issue threats and act on them while the government issues threats and fail to track those it is threatening, we know we are on our own as citizens.
Goods and weapons still enter our borders unnoticed. Fire fighters are still pleading for the tools they need to prevent or respond to an attack.

Poachers have invaded our world famous wildlife heritage with abandon.

Police are still waiting for comprehensive insurance cover even as we ask them to stand in the line of fire on our behalf.
 
The Government has inexplicably refused to form an inquiry into how the attackers in Westgate got here, even after the president promised this. Yesterday, the National Assembly rejected the report by the National Assembly Security Committee on the attack.

We are therefore calling for the constitution of a Parliamentary Select Committee to investigate the Westgate attack.

We are also calling for a Parliamentary Select Committee to investigate the rising problem of poaching. We suspect there is more to it than meets the eye. In any case, poaching is part and parcel of our growing security, economic and corruption problems.

When a bomb that failed to detonate near the British Airways check-in counter at JKIA late last year, the government shrugged it off as an exploding light-bulb.
 
After the latest attack in Likoni, the Inspector General of Police considered it beneath him to offer an explanation to Kenyans. He let his juniors deal with it. The President and his deputy did not see this as a matter worth their urgent attention. They addressed it in passing on their way to Tanzania.

These are signs that the government is off track and does not care.

Any discussion of our national security must include recognition and respect for our men and women in uniform.

Whether they are fighting in Somalia or walking our increasingly dangerous streets and borders, we salute them.
 
These officers and troops have the gratitude of every Kenya for their courage and the sacrifice they are willing to make on our behalf.
 
But we decry the lack of modern equipment, the absence of opportunities for best training that our officers deserve and their dismal working conditions.
 
Above all, we ask the government to address the issues of deployments and promotions in the police force, especially now that we are under attack and we are counting on these men and women to be motivated enough to protect us.
 
Promotions and deployment in the police force is still dogged by tribalism, nepotism and cronyism, not merit.
 
We must also talk about our military whose prowess we are all too proud of.
Because of the courage of our military, Somalia is a much better place today. We know that Somalia still has persistent insurgency to deal with. It continues to be a magnet for international terrorists.
 
But we feel it is time for the Government to present to us a clear plan for ending our presence in Somalia. We are not suggesting that we simply declare the job done and pull out. We are not suggesting we sneak out through the back door.

We want a clear plan for transferring responsibility for Somalia's security to the Somalis. We believe training the Somali forces to take charge must be expedited. We must accelerate Somalia’s economic development, particularly through infrastructure that gives Somalis a stake in achieving a better future.

We must also intensify regional and international diplomacy that will deny fuel to the anti-western sentiments that power insurgency in Somalia.
 
We want the government to table before Kenyans a comprehensive plan to protect the nation from terrorism. We have only heard promises and more threats.
 
We want to see the government's plan to build a military, a police force and an intelligence gathering system that will be second to none. Kenyans are dying because we lack ability to collect timely and reliable intelligence to keep us safe at home.

EDUCATION:
Even as the government proceeds with the ill-conceived laptops project, we are yet to address the issue of cost of education.

It is now more than ten years since fees were abolished in public schools. But we know fees exist and are keeping many children out of school. Parents buy uniforms, text books, desks, school buses, pay motivation fees, and much more. We feel the government must climb the education tree from the bottom. Is education free or not? If it is, why are these many levies being imposed and when will they stop?
 
We continue to caution the government against the extravagant laptops project. It is not realistic. It is not sustainable and it is not a priority. We support IT in learning and we laud the government for championing it. But we advocate for computer labs in all schools instead of laptops for every child at this stage.

The cost and built in room for corruption in the acquisition of laptops aside, a bigger question is whether the laptops will actually improve learning. Will reading skills improve because the children have laptops instead of text books? Will children perform better in math and science? Will parents afford the cost of repairs and maintenance? Who will replace crashed or lost and stolen laptops?

CORRUPTION:
 
We are concerned about the corruption roulette in government, which Jubilee calls war on corruption. The government admits that thieves have invaded no higher place than the Office of the President.

But to date, there have been no sackings, no prosecutions, no naming of names. We have been treated to the drama of members of government publicly campaigning for a chance to fix contracts for grand infrastructure projects in return for bribes.
 
As we pay lip service and issue warnings at rallies and church functions, corruption is eating into government coffers, paying ghost workers and paying for services not rendered or way above market rates.
 
Yet today, the battle on wages is rated much more urgent by the Jubilee government than the war against corruption. The Jubilee government has now resolved to pay the so-called Anglo-Leasing debts, an outright conduit for corrupt deals. Warnings have run their course. We need action.

RULE OF LAW:
 
We must protect the Constitution and its promises. We must safeguard the rule of law, the media and civil liberties. All these are threatened today. Judges have been called names. Laws have been signed to curb the free media. There have been attempts to limit foreign funding for NGOs.

Jubilee government has failed to discontinue extrajudicial killings thus undermining the right to life. As we speak, there is an arbitrary shoot-to-kill order against terrorists as well as other criminals. The country has seen an alarming rise in religious intolerance and religious bigotry which the government has not in any way attempted to manage.

OUR PLEDGE:
 
One year of Jubilee Government has landed us in very uncertain times. How long they times last depends on the government. We want to assure Kenyans that when we believe the Government is on the right track, we will not allow partisan interests stand in the way of what's good for the country. We will be first in line to work with the Government. As at now, we repeat; a Government can do better. Kenyans deserve better.
 
We are losing patience with politics of tribalism, nepotism, favoritism, cronyism and rule by fiat. We are tired of incompetence and dishonesty in government.

HON PROF. ANYANG NYONGO
Ag. PARTY LEADER
ODM.
MARCH 28, 2014.

Unveiling of the ODM Candidate for Mathare Parliamentary Seat

Following a series of consultative meetings by members of the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) in Nairobi County, both elected representatives and branch officials regarding the forthcoming Mathare Parliamentary by-election, an all-inclusive meeting was held today at a Nairobi Hotel and was graced by the Acting Party Leader Prof. Anyang’ Nyong’o and the joint Secretaries to the Transitional Interim Executive Committee (TIEC) Hon. Ababu Namwamba and Sen. Dr. Agnes Zani.

During the meeting which also included the Governor of the City County of Nairobi Dr. Evans Kidero, ODM Members of the National Assembly from Nairobi and Members of the County Assembly of Nairobi, it was unanimously resolved that Mr. Steven Kariuki popularly known as K-1 be presented as the sole candidate for the party in the upcoming by-election in Mathare Constituency.

This was as a result of separate caucuses by party members of the National Assembly, Members of the County Assembly, Branch and Sub-Branches officials in the last one week which settled on Mr. Kariuki as the party’s flag-bearer.

Consequently, we have received assurances from the CORD coalition partners that they will not be fielding candidates for the seat. The meeting also agreed that the Nairobi Governor Dr. Kidero will be chairman of the 12 member campaign steering committee which was set up today.

We call upon all ODM and CORD supporters in Nairobi to join us in the campaigns to drum the support for Mr. Steven Kariuki once the seat is declared vacant by the Speaker of the National Assembly and the date for the by-election set by the IEBC.

Signed

27th March 2014

Ag. Party Leader – Prof. Anyang’ Nyong’o

Joint Secretaries – TIEC – Hon. Ababu Namwamba & Sen. Dr. Agnes Zani

Video: Hon Raila Odinga to be in USA until end of May 2014

ODM's Position on the Wage Bill

 The populist move by the President and the Deputy President to cut their salaries by 20 per cent and that of Cabinet and Principal Secretaries by 10 per cent is not convincing.
 
These cuts will not in the least affect the standards of living of these people. The president pays no bills, buys no air time or fuel nor does he have to pay rent or bus fare. The same is true with the Deputy President.
 
The allowances and other perks the Cabinet Secretaries get will more than compensate for the salary cuts they have taken. Ordinary civil servants are not therefore in the same league.
 
What Kenya needs is a national incomes policy and not a populist cut of salaries. The government needs to lead a national discussion of TAXATION in relation to WAGES at all levels. In the meantime, we recommend the government takes the following steps:
Accept Devolution and stop duplication.

The entire structure of Provincial Administration that was to be phased out with the coming of the constitution of 2010 has been renamed and retained in the form of regional commissioners, county commissioners, district commissioners and a chain of administrators running past the chefs.

This system is running parallel to the constitutionally sanctioned system of county governments headed by the governor. The source of the money remains constant; the Kenyan tax payer. The Jubilee government could save Kenyans the pain of higher taxes, higher cost of living and anxiety over job cuts by simply accepting the reality of devolution and fitting the provincial administration into devolved units instead of running a parallel system then asking where all the money is going.
Cut down on corruption:

It is clear that the big time corruption cartels whose hold onto Kenya we cut short in 2002 are back, trying to make up for lost time. Corruption is eating into government coffers, paying ghost workers and paying for services not rendered or way above market rates. It is ironical that the battle on wages is now rated much more urgent by the Jubilee government than the war against corruption. The Jubilee government has now resolved to pay the so-called Anglo-Leasing debts, an outright conduit for corrupt deals.
Cut luxury expenditure:

Jubilee should enforce Treasury's ban on five-star venues for government meetings, which it defied only last week. The government should ban foreign locations for conferences, exhibitions and keep the size of delegations and entourage locally and abroad at an absolute minimum. But this is easier said than done.
Put Kenyans back to work:

There is need for a clear road map on what needs to be done to put millions of Kenyans to work and encourage companies to hire and not fire people. The government needs to come up with a plan to reward firms that hire more Kenyans and those that increase workers’ pay.
Support Small enterprises:

Jubilee must use its numerical strength in the National Assembly to come up with administrative, regulatory and legislative measures to help small firms start and expand. The cost of bank loans remains unbelievably high after so much rhetoric about it. The subject of interest rates is touchy because a number of senior government officials also have interests in the banking industry.
 
But if we are to create job creators and not job seekers, the cost of loans have to fall. The government must embrace and engage small contractors and change the way it does business with small firms. Startups cannot wait for months and years chasing their payment vouchers. A simpler engagement would help turn Kenyans into job creators, not job seekers. Small businesses are the engine of that job growth, and essential to the continued economic recovery.
Embrace, don’t fight security sector reforms:

This may seem to have nothing to do with wage bill, but the reason the economy is stagnating is uncertainty about security. Reforming our security sector radically and equipping it with skills, knowledge and tools fit for new challenges will go a long way in giving confidence to investors and helping the economy grow.
PROF. PETER ANYANG’ NYONG’O
AG. PARTY LEADER
ODM
March 10, 2014.

Composition and Terms of Reference for the ODM Transitional Committee

The National Governing Council (NGC) of the Orange Democratic Movement held on Monday, 3rd of March, 2014, resolved to set up an interim transitional committee to manage the affairs of the party.
 

Pursuant to that resolution, and after consultations, it has been agreed that members shall include:
 

1. Hon Ali Hassan Joho / Hon Thomas Mwadeghu (alternate
2. Hon Wycliffe Ambetsa Oparanya / Hon Paul Otuoma (alternate)
3. Sen Otieno Kajwang
4. Hon Josephat Nanok
5. Hon Ababu Namwamba
6. Hon Agnes Zani
7. Hon Abdikadir Aden
8. Hon Timothy Bosire
9. Hon Adan Keynan
10. Hon Rosa Buyu
 

It has been agreed that H.E Hon Hassan Joho and H.E Hon Wycliffe Oparanya will jointly chair the committee while Hon Ababu Namwamba and Hon Dr Agnes Zani will be joint secretaries. The team shall be reporting to the Party Leader.
 

The Terms of Reference of this group is clearly spelt out below.

We have set up the team to investigate the disturbances that led to the disruption of the ODM elections in Kasarani on 28th February 2014. They include:
 

Mr Jotham Nyukuri - Chairperson
Hon Harold Kipchumba;
Mr Isaiah Mandala
Mr Jotham Arwa
Mr Mtalaki Mwashimba

 

TERMS OF REFERENCE FOR ODM TRANSITIONAL INTERIM EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE. 

1. Confirm membership of the Transitional Interim Executive Committee (TIEC)

2. Establish the mandate and enumerate the functions of the TIEC and the structures for the implementation of the said mandate and functions. The tenure of TIEC.

3. Establish the framework and mechanisms for enabling the TIEC to run the Party.

4. Receive and consider the report of the task force established to inquire into and to make recommendations on the circumstances surrounding and leading to the stalemate experienced during the National Delegates Convention held on the 28th February 2014.

5. Arising from the Report of the Task Force recommend appropriate measures for adoption and implementation which are and not limited to the following.

a) When do the campaigns begin and end and is it legitimate to campaign on the floor of the convention when the election exercise begins.
b) Preparation, confirmation and certification of registers.
c) Form of ballot papers
d) Systems, procedures and methods for voting and counting of votes and the final announcement of the results.
e) Security at the Convention during the voting exercise. Should it be outsourced?

6. The date and venue of the NDC for purposes of conducting fresh elections for the national office bearers and consideration of the following matters.
 

a) Debts and obligations arising from the NDC held on the 28th February 2014
b) Budget for the next elections and how to raise needed funds.
c) Preparatory work and planning to enable NEC, once in place, to organize for the next elections.

7. Membership recruitment and the expansion of the numerical strength of party supporters. Mobilization countrywide. To be discussed as a task to be undertaken by NEC.

8. Party activities and programmes for ODM as the main opposition party in the country developing policies and drawing strategic plans during the tenure of the TIEC.

9. The status and strengthening of CORD with an eye on 2017

10. The status of ODM and CORD in Parliament, county assemblies and the performance of CORD Governors in running county governments.

SIGNED
RT HON RAILA ODINGA
PARTY LEADER

ODM Forms Interim Transitiomal Committee

Today, consultations between members of Sen. Agnes Zani and Budalangi MP Ababu Namwamba teams chaired by Party Leader Mr. Raila Odinga were held and resolved that a six member interim transitional team be formed to take charge of the party for three months. The resolve was later adopted by the ODM National Governing Council (NGC) converging at Orange House, Nairobi. 

The two teams were directed by the NGC to file the names of their nominees to the interim team before the close of business today.

And as directed by the NGC, the teams presented their nominees as follows;

Team Namwamba;
1. Mr. Ababu Namwamba
2. Mr. Hassan Ali  Joho
3. Mr. Adan Keynan

Team Zani;
Mr. Wycliffe Oparanya
Mr. Otieno Kajwang 
Mr. Abdikadir Aden

The team also nominated Mr. Paul Otuoma as the alternate to Mr. Oparanya in the Interim Transitional Team. 

The nominees are expected to begin negotiations on who to take up what position in the Interim Transitional Team. 

However, the Sen. Zani team has proposed that Sen. Elizabeth Ongoro who is not allied to any of the two sides take up the position of Secretary General on interim basis.

Both teams have also nominated the following to the Task Force to investigate incidences that occurred during and before the aborted party polls at Kasarani last Friday;

Team Zani;
Mr. Junet Muhammed
Mrs. Florence Mutua

Lawyer Antony Oluoch will provide legal advice to team Zani.

Team Namwamba; 
Maj. Gen. (Rtd) Joseph Nkaissery
Maj. (Rtd) John Waluke. 

Regards.

Philip Etale
Communications Director - ODM
3/3/14

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Orange Democratic Movement,
Orange House Kilimani,
Box 2478-00202
Nairobi