Azimio la Umoja One Kenya Coalition party leader Raila Odinga’s presidential election was bungled by retired President Uhuru Kenyatta’s allies, it has emerged.
An official who worked closely with Azimio la Umoja One Kenya Coalition party agents in the August 9, elections has revealed that a top Cabinet Secretary and Principal Secretary aided to bungle Raila’s presidential loss.
The official who spoke to the Daily Nation said some of the former Prime Minister were let down by his closest allies.
He said that Raila thought the government would play a big role in this election adding that some of the secretariats were in Azimio physically but their hearts were elsewhere.
The official who sought anonymity dismissed sections of media reports that some top leaders in the coalition misused money meant to pay party agents, and as a result, the coalition had no agents in some polling stations.
“We had a good program for the agents, money was available for them. We had structures. Actually, for the chief agents, we employed lawyers to be the constituency and county chief agents. We had 290 lawyers as constituency chief agents and 47 lawyers as county chief agents, and we had the polling agents,” the official said.
The official further revealed that the Azimio la Umoja had trained party agents and that each of the agents was to be paid KSh 5000.
It further emerged that the Secretariat had paid a down payment of KSh 1,500 for all agents but on the eve of the August 9, General Election, one of the top officials, a close ally of Odinga, messed up the agents’ plan whereby he introduced a new list of party agents.
“We had a good program before it backfired. We trained the agents and prepared them on how to handle the elections. We even made the down payment of KSh 1,500, and we were to pay them KSh 5,000 each,
“Then he gives you a different list and says ‘Work with these people, and it is hours to the election, you don’t know who they are, you don’t know where they came from and then you are being instructed to send the letters to people who are not trained,” the Nation reported.
This, the official said saw the IEBC block the new agents from protecting Raila Odinga’s votes as he had no agents at some of the polling stations.
