By KT Team
As the ODM prepares.to conduct it’s primaries in Nairobi tomorrow, fear of tribal domination is dominating behind-the-scene deal making between MPs and their preferred MCAs. So intense is the background mobilisation that most known ODM aligned individuals have gone underground.
Flash points include Makadara Constituency where party stalwarts Reuben Ndolo and George Aladwa goes head to head in the parliamentary nominations. It’s a contest that has split ODM supporters right down the middle.
In Embakasi East, veteran student Babu Owino leader faces off with various candiates among them media personality Francis Masinde.
In Kibra, Ken Okoth faces the battle of his life against Eliud Owalo who has been on the campaign trail for the last 2 years.
At the Langata surburb of Nairobi where the party enjoys widespread support across all communities a foreboding mood and uneasiness is building.
Out of ten ODM parliamentary aspirants in Langata, a record seven are from the majority Luo community including the incumbent Olum Joash, who inherited the seat from ODM party party leader Raila Odinga.
Traditionally a stronghold of the ODM, Langata is also the biggest constituency in terms of land area in Nairobi as well as the home constituency of all the three CORD principals. It forms part of the constituency that Rt. Hon. Raila Odinga ably represented as from 1992-2013.
This unforeseen politically domineering development in Lang’ata will see Olum Joshua, Omoke Oscar, Ouma Jacob, Otieno Ouda, Omolo Jared, Adhiambo Oguwa, seriously undermines the new NASA consciousness that seeks to promote national cohesion and community coexistence as the prevailing political themes of the future .
Party stalwart Ahmed Papa, a native of Langata, remains a front-running aspirant in this contest due to his non-Luo heritage because this enables him to retain the ability to unite other communites behind him and also be an attractive alternative for conservative Luo’s while the rest of the contestants; Olum Joshua, Omoke Oscar, Otieno Ouma Jacob, Adhiambo Oguwa, Juma Okinda, Otieno Ouda, Odhiambo Omolo and Jumba Okinda facing the rest of the aspirants.
The race will predictably split Luo traditionalists right down the middle as it will boil down to a Central versus South Nyanza, and in some instances a clan war.
Party chiefs at Orange House have been burning midnight oil trying to prevent a situation where, like Jubilee whose, all but one MP in Nairobi is from Mount Kenya region a situation that ODM Party Leader Raila Odinga is keen to avoid.
ODM technocrats will be forced to the drawing board and rethink nomination rules after the Langata constituency parliamentary nomination list exposed what pundits say is a worrying hegemony by Luos not just at the parliamentary level but at the county assembly level and the local party branch as well.
The accusations of ODM being dominated by the Luo community in Langata are not far-fetched as the party constituency officialdom is equally firmly in control of the Luo community and there are palpable grumbles from the Kisii and Luhya communities which are agitating from consesus on sharing of party and elective positions.
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