DISQUALIFIED BY COURT, SOUTH MUGIRANGO FORMER MP OMINGO MAGARA IS NOW FACING BLEAK AND UNCERTAIN POLITICAL FUTURE, AS A RESULT OF HIS FALLOUT WITH AGWAMBO!!

News Analysis By Leo Odera Omolo In Rongo Town.

OMINGO Magara, the outspoken former ODM MP for South Mugirango constituency, has lost his seat following one of the longest and toughest legal tussle in an election petition.

This is the second MP within the Southern Gusii region to have lost his parliamentary seat as a result of irregularities committed in the last general election, and after the wronged aspirants and voters had petitioned the court, before the same judge, Justice Daniel Masinga.

The first MP to be disqualified by the same court was the former Bomachoge MP, Joel Onyancha, who was the only PNU candidate to have won a parliamentary seat in the Kisii region during the 2007, but who, in the consequent by-election, was trounced by an ODM candidate, Simon Ogari.

There is clear evidence from the ground that the entire Southern Kisii region is an ODM stronghold area. However, the situation on the ground appeared to be rather tricky for Magara, who the locals believed had already burned bridges with the ODM party “supremo” Raila Odinga, and as such, cannot be 100 per cent sure of clinching the party ticket in the forthcoming by-election, although Magara is the registered ODM national treasurer.

SOUTH Mugirango constituency was first created as South Mugirango/Bonchari constituency in 1962, and its first MP was Samuel Omweri Kibwagea, a well mannered politician, who won the seat in the 1963 general election on a KANU ticket, that ushered in political independence in Kenya in the same year.

In the 1969 election, Kibwage lost the seat to a former trade unionist, Silvester Ayieko Nyakweba, who represented the constituency up to 1974, but lost the seat to S Kombo, who represented the constituency between 1979 and 1983, when it fell to a prominent Kisii Town based businessman, Reuben Oyondi. Oyondi again successfully defended his seat in the 1988.

Oyondi, however, was swept by the bone-fire of the first multiparty elections of 1992, which saw Kombo’s return on a Ford-Kenya ticket, beating Oyondi hands down, and ending his political career temporarily. Oyondi, however, bounced back in1997 on Nyachae’s Ford People’s party ticket, but lost again to a Kisii based young lawyer, the late Nyakieya Magara, Omingo Magara’s younger brother, who clinched the seat on the NARC ticket in 2002 general election.

The late Nyakieya Magara, however, did not complete his tenure of office. He died in a fatal, but controversial road accident near Sondu, on the Ahero-Oyugis Kisii road, while he was speeding up, in an attempt to catch up an evening flight for Nairobi at the Kisumu Airport.

In the subsequent by-election that followed, his elder brother, Omingo Magara, won the seat for the first time on Nyachae’s Ford People’s party ticket. But Omingo Magara immediately burned his bridges with Nyachae, and the fallout saw him teaming up with Raila Odinga’s ODM, leading to his controversial victory in 2007, which has since been contested in the High Court, and consequently resulting in his disqualification by the High Court.

Bordering Rongo in the Southwest and Bomnachoge in the Southeast, Bobbasi in the East and Boinchari in the north, South Mugirango inhabitants, who are a mixture of Abagusii/Luo people have a heavy Luo vernacular, mixed in heir Abagusii bantu language. but in most cases, culturally behave like their neighboring Luos in Kamagambo Locations.

The Abagirango, is the largest Abagusii sub-clan. Apart from South Mugirango, the Abagirango also occupy what was previously known as North Mugirango Location. There, the community is represented in Parliament, in two parliamentary electoral constituencies, namely Mugirango West and North Mugirango-Borabu constituencies. The latter extends its boundaries covering the new Borabu district and Manga Settlment scheme in Sotik areas of Nyansiongo and Kijauri towns.

The Abagirango of the north east in Nyamira district are the cousins of the South Mugirango people. For many years, this particular community has been producing the best known politicians in Gusiiland. The late John Kebaso, who took part in the early struggle for independence, along with Kenya African Union in the 1950s, hails from North Mugirango.

Kebaso became the first Senator for Kisii district in 1963. He was later to transfer his services to the newly created North Mugirango, which he later lost to a former Regional Assembly member, Livingstone Atebe Marita. The constituency later produced one firebrand MP in the name of the late George Justus Morara, who died in a road accident near Kakamega.

Things were looking good, with better future prospect, with the Magara’s 2007 election victory in South Mugirango on an ODM ticket. But those privy to Magara’s side of information have confided to us that Omingo Magara’s relations with the Prime Minister, Raila Odinga, took a sour turn when he was not given a cabinet post, after the enactment of the National Accord.

Magara, they say, felt he was more deserving of the cabinet post than the Road’s minister, Chris Mogere Obure, who had just joined ODM and was fresh from KANU.

And immediately soon after the formation o the coalition government in which he was appointed an Assistant Minister for Trade, Magara went silent and stopped his previous outbursts in defense of Raila Odinga on various national issues. He began leaning more towards the side of the Minister for Agriculture, William Ruto, and became classified as one of the ODM rebel MPs.

Te Fact that the relationship between Omingo Magara and the Prime Minister Raila Odinga had gone sour resurfaced in the open, during the last year campaign for the Bomachoge by-elections. On one occasion, Magara, who was expected to lead the campaign and assault on PNU candidate Onyancha, stayed away. And while Raila OIdinga and other ODM leaders, who included Chris Obure, Richard Onyonka and Ms. Janet Ong’era, the ODM executive director, were addressing a mammoth crowd in a campaign rally held at Kenyenya Divisional head quarters, Omingo Magara was hosting William Ruto and another 12 Rift Valley MPs in the next door, for what was said to be an Harambee fund drive for a primary school.

Magara’s reluctance to campaign for the party in the Bomachoge by-election was viewed as a rebellion against Mr Odinga, the party leader, who in turn demonstrated his unshaken popularity in the region by delivering the Bomachoge seat to ODM.

But a more humiliating exercise to ODM team, led by Mr.Odinga, was Magara’s move at the fund raising meeting presided over by Ruto, when the South Mugirango MP paraded officials of the little known People’s Democratic Party{PDP}, and asked his constituents to watch their steps. His public display, in an area where the Raila led party is the one calling the shots, and association with PDP, might be used to deny him the ODM party ticket, in the forthcoming by-election.

Despite Magara’s political antics and gimmicks, Mr Odinga has avoided mentioning anything in public to do with the differences between him and Magara, but political pundits within the constituency maintain that the ODM ticket will obviously land in the hands of another aspirant in the forthcoming by-election, and not to Magara.

The agriculturally rich South Mugirango constituency produces large quantities of both tea leaves and sugar cane as cash crops. It is one of the cane growing zones within the Awendo based SONYSUGAR factory, and also delivers a lot of green tea leaves to the Ogembo based KTDA managed tea factory.

The area also produces a lot of maize, vegetables, finger millets, bananas and other cash crops. Farmers have introduced the more economically important graded dairy animals.

Its short borderline with the Trans-Mara district is, however, volatile, due to intermittent attacks as the result of hostilities between the Maasais and the Kisiis, along the Nyamaiya border areas.

These hostilities have at times extended along the Luo-Kisii border around Kamagambo, due to the presence in South Mugirango, of a large number of youths, believed to be members of the outlawed Chinkororo outfit, believed to be gravitating around Simeon Nyachae, along with another banned group “Emachuma” as private armies.

But considering the fact that in politics, there is no permanent friendship nor permanent enmity, Omingo Magara might still mend his fences with Mr.Odinga and win back the ODM ticket. This, however, remains to be seen as a matter of public conjecture.

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leooderaomolo@yahoo.com