Response --DO RAILA SUPPORTERS KNOW THAT HUMMER / NYUNDO SLOGAN IS A BAD CAMPAIGN TOOL?

From: nyanja

Abonyo,

You started out well but raced downhill when you deviated to academic reasoning and started refering to Raila supporters as sycophants. It looked like you were giving Raila supporters advise but then it ended up as a veiled sympathy to Kalonzo and agreeing with him that the heckling was stage managed. Kalonzo was heckled by the majority of the crowd and earlier even the Akamba craftmen chased him away. This man from Mwingi does not deserve any sympathy from anybody within ODM-K. He has put us through hell and is holding ODM-K certificate at ransom. That is why people are hecking him. This man from Eastern province does not believe Raila should run because he is a Luo. That is why people are heckling him. Booeing or heckling is age old political tool used all over the world to send messages to the likes of Kalonzo. Booeing is not an invention of Raila supporters. Raila Odinga has been booed so many times and even chased away from campaigning rallies so many times that Kalonzo will h ave to be booed for the rest of the year to even come close.

Your attempt to default Raila for driving a hummer in the face of poverty in Kenya is neither here or there. Raila has many cars and the hummer is not the most expensive of them. This is an arguement that you can make on just about any politician in Kenya and heaping on it here to disagree with the nickname hummer is just not fair. The fact is Kibaki supporters will never give him any nickname derived from the expensive cars he drives because they do not adore him as Raila supporters do. Have you ever really seen Kibaki laugh at anything leave alone laughing at Raila driving a hummer? This was a terrible example.

It pains me when a Luo begins to write about the problems of the Luos and its always the same lines that I have been reading since I learned to read. Yours that Luos perpetuate extravagancy at the expense of development is simply misplaced. You cannot be extarvagant with what you do not have and if you have enough, you can contribute to development and still be extaravagant. Lets stay away from these little lines especially written by those of us who stay in expensive homes, driving expensive cars and many many miles away from the poor they refer to all the time without contact. The sad thing is that most of us do not even know any poor person by name and how much it cost to get them out of poverty.

Raila supporters invented the name nyundo for the hummer. They know exactly what it means and they could care less what Kibaki supporters think. Yes, the word is Luo and was started in kisumu but its not only Luo supporters that use this word. All Raila supporters call him nyundo just like they call him Agwambo, another Luo word. The Luo in the word is irrelevant, its the adoration and the support that comes with the words that we care about. Non Luo supporters of Raila do not support him because he drives a hummer or he is a Luo, they support him because he connects with them in ways you and I will never understand. Non Luo supporters were recently told thay they should not vote for Raila because Raila is a Luo and that was not said by a Luo to scare Raila supporters. Not all Luos support Raila so when you see one scaring away Raila supporters then thats a good sign that he/she is not a supporter.

Barack, you have always written well, this was a bad one.