AN ATTEMPT BY FOUR MPS FROM MIGORI COUNTY TO HAVE ALL THE ELECTIVE POSITIONS WITHIN THE COUNTY SHARED PROPORTIONATELY BETWEEN LUO AND KURIA HAVE RUN INTO BIG TROUBLE.
News Analysis By Leo Odera Omolo In Migori Town.
The power sharing plan brokered by four Members of Parliament fro Migori County without involving the entire ODM members are reportedly to have run into big trouble.
The politician appeared have agreed that all the elective positions must be contested in a democratic manner with no seats to be reserved for any particular community.
The proposal is said to have been endorsed and sanctioned by the ODM party leader Raila Odinga during his tour of Kuria two weeks ago. Raila, however, made no public formal announcement and is said to have steered clear of the issue.
On of the Kuria ODM leader J.M Magaiwa who is the current ODM party Migori County branch chairman had requested that the Senate seat be preserved for him that the party should give a direct nomination as one way of securing the Kurias votes for Raila’s presidential bid.
The issue has since degenerated a lot of controversies and threatening to tear the ODM support apart in the region . Politicians inside the Luo side of the County have faulted the PM arguing that such issue amounted to forcing unpopular in the voters.
Moreover, they argued, there is no ODM branches or offices established n the region and which are formally operating inside the two districts of Kuria East and West and as such it would be a mockery to the tenets of democratic principles t offer one member from the region such coveted position in a silver plate..
The four MP who are said to have called a m secret meeting in Nairobi which deliberated on the contentious issue included Dalmas Oteno {Rongo] John Pesa {Migori} Edick Omondi Anyanga {Nyatike} and Cyprian Omolo [Uriri}.
During the PM tour The Kuria MP Dr Walter Machage was asked by Raila to cross over to the ODM, but the legislator who is also an Assistant Minister in the coalition government an a member of the PNU told the Prime Minster his face that he would not move to the ODM until certain conditions were met. These include the promise that the marginalized minority communities within Migori County will be taken care of as far County governance is concerned.
It as the been resolve that a task force committee should be formed by the MPs to map out how the plan and strategies on how the organized communities would be accommodate in the County governance in Migori could be accommodated into the ODM.
It is being rumored that Dr.Machage had given the ODM big-wigs condition that he was willing to join the party on condition that he would be given direct nomination as the next Migori County Senator, and that the MPs have been arms-twisting ODM leaders and supporters to succumb Dr.Machage’s condition.
The common pinion is that such an arrangement encourages tribalism in ODM. It has sidelined other inhabitant of the County such as Luhyias, Kisiis Maragolis, Suba and Somalis.
The Migori County Senate seat has attracted quite a god number of well established politicians from the Luo side of the County whose campaign trail had already ht the ground. They included the former Mathare MP Gilbert Ochieng; Mbeo, former Homa-Bay MP Phares Oluoch Kanindo,
The two have been on the campaign trail for last two years ,and might not accept any move to sideline them. The idea and move has elicited a lot of jittery in and altered the tempo of Migori County politics as the majority of the residents are willing to accommodate a Kuria representative into a position of the deputy governor respectively as one way of power-sharing arrangement. They are vehemently opposed to the idea of anybody getting direct nomination by the ODM without going through the process of open election contest.
Other have been heard saying that they would accept Mr Magaiwa the ODM boss to be elected the Senator, but not Dr.Machage whom they seemed not to trust and whose politics appeared to have been somehow retrogressive and parochial.
It would an up-hill task for Raila to market Machage to the Luo voters as he is perceived to be a hostile neighbor, while Magaiwa is seen as a moderate and a cohesive person who can work with the rest harmoniously.
Ends