Billionaire businessman-cum-politician Jimmy Wanjigi has asked his party leader Raila Odinga to guarantee ODM presidential aspirants democracy.
This come barely a week after the party’s National Election Board (NEB) chair Catherine Mumma announced that they had abandoned plans to hold grassroots elections and instead asked branches to pick officials through consensus by Saturday, September 18.
The grass-root officials will comprise the National Delegates Conference -a party organ tasked with electing national officials and the presidential ticket-holder.
But speaking in Ruiru on Wednesday, September 15, Wanjigi who has expressed his ambitions to battle it out with former Prime Minister for presidential ticket said handpicking grass-root officials will influence the process of presidential party primaries.
“And we tell our ODM party that democracy must be guaranteed to all presidential aspirants,
“We will not accept this absurdity of hiding in board rooms and evading democracy,” Wanjigi said.
According to Wanjigi, selecting grass-root officials by consensus will see the party pick Raila Odinga’s diehards who will at the end vote in favour of their leaders, something he said will likely breach democracy.
Wanjigi further challenged Raila Odinga to stick to a democratic process saying that it will be absurd for the former Lang’ata MP to evade democracy when he himself was jailed seeking the same democracy.
“And my friend Raila Odinga was imprisoned for democracy… make sure this party is democratic and that will only be achieved if you give the people the power to choose the leaders who will represent the party in the next General Glection,” Wanjigi reiterated.
ODM National Election Board (NEB) chair Catherine Mumma said the party had resorted to picking its branch officials by consensus due to the laid down Covid-19 containment measures by the Ministry of Health.
