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LARA-Luos against raila abroad

Posted by africanpress on January 2, 2008
Posted on Mzalendo on Tuesday November 20, 2007 11:54 pm

It is time for right-thinking Luos to speak. It is very unfortunate that a great lie is being told that all Luos are Raila damu and will vote as a block for him. This is coupled with the other lie that all Kenyans abroad support ODM. I can openly tell you that Raila has next to no support here in Canada and in some Luo stronghold back home. On his over-publicised visits here, he only managed to meet a handful of his supporters.

It is time we made some facts clear. For starters, not all Luos follow Raila like sheep. As we talk now, residents of my home constituency, Rarieda, are the envy of the entire Luo land. From the time they voted Honorable Raphael Tuju in, they have seen the kind of development that they only dream about come to their door step. For too long now, Luos have been cheated that the only Moses who will deliver them to Canaan is an Odinga. The success of Tuju’s effort have torn that Jaramogi mystic into shreds. It is now clear that other Luos can lead. However, instead of working with them, Raila wants to finish them. Tuju has been hands-on in the setting up of the Rarieda water project. Courtesy of the Internet, Raila can no longer hoodwink the rest of us abroad. How can we dismiss the picture we saw of Tuju in a construction worker’s overalls supervising the construction of the water pipes?

For over 40 years, Luos have blindly followed the Odinga clan, and what do they have to show for it? Nothing but abject poverty at the grass roots. In the meantime, he has been raking money in. There is no question that Raila is the richest Luo in the world. Yet his supporters in Luoland and Kibera are some of the poorest people in Kenya . In a very curious twist that only Luos can enlighten us on, while the likes of Kenyatta and Moi were handing out goodies, plots and money to the needy, poor Luos see nothing wrong in handing over their meager earnings to Raila, all in the hope that once he is president, he will magically transform Luoland into the garden of Eden. Yet it is well known that Odingas have not brought an iota of development in Luoland. Just compare Luoland to their neighboring Kisiiland. While Kisiis have never even had a president, their hard work and development conscious leadership is well- displayed by their stone houses with mabati roofs.

Now, visit Luoland and all you see are the same grass-roofed old round huts that Speke and Grant found in the late 1800’s! Yet Raila feels no shame when he drives around there in his Sh 15 Million Hummer Military vehicle for show.

In his selfish quest for the presidency, Raila has been telling blatant lies, hoping that he can develop a momentum that will usher him into the high office before the people realise his lies. By then it will be too late. Raila is a clever manipulator who is working on Kenyan’s predilection of being attracted by the grass on the other side of the river, the unknown and any idea from abroad, and sometimes mistakenly clamoring for change for the heck of change. We are therefore calling out his lies now:

1. Raila’s hatred of Kikuyus is a ploy. All he is doing is working up the politics of the 1960’s on the mindless Luo masses, yet Kenyans have been busy building barriers across tribes. If he hated Kikuyus that much, how could he let his son marry a Kikuyu just the other day? As Kenyans we have seen the kind of bloodshed that tribal conflicts can lead to. Think of the Rwanda genocide, Somali clan wars and the continuing massacre in Sudan ’s Darfur region. Is this the kind of leadership Kenyans want? No!

2. Majimbo is a concept that has never worked anywhere in the world. Again this goes back to the Jaramogi politics of 1960. At that time the pros and cons of Majimbo were debated fair and square, and majimbo lost. Balkanisation of any country has never worked and one needs not look any futher than the Balkan states themselves. In the Euphoria of breaking up the USSR , majimbos and countries were formed along tribal lines. In less that three years, these break away countries realised their mistake and came together and formed the CIS union. Do we have to break apart, kill each other, then regret later? From an economic point of view, and the fact that in a true majimbo system, each jimbo would be allocated development funds based on their contribution to the national kitty, what does Luoland have to offer except dwindling fish supplies? Raila did not raise a voice when Moi killed the sugar, cotton and rice farming by allowing tax-free imports, in fact he selfishly benefited from it.

Raila’s socialist ideas are outdated: Cuban’s can’t wait for Fidel Castro to die. North Korea is a dirt-poor country stuck in a time-warp. The sole purpose of creating majimbo is to provide Raila with a freedom to lord over once he leaves the presidency (assuming he gets it) in 2017.

3. Raila killed the Constitution reforms. By cleverly budding some contentious issues with the main agenda, Raila was able to hoodwink some people into voting against proposed constitution reforms during the referendum. By now, Kenyans would be reaping from the benefits of those reforms. Can he tell us why we need a figurehead president, if the Prime Minister will end up doing what the current president is doing?

4. Raila cannot deliver a new constitution in 100 days. Simple logic. A constitution reform needs two-thirds majority vote in parliament. There is now way he can gather that in 100 days knowing the hatred he is causing. The law requires a referendum and that cannot be done in 100 days.

After all Raila and his sycophants rejected a 90% proper constitution to later cry they want a 5 % section on the current constitution to be replaced with what suited them, instead of accepting the 90% and try to replace the improper sections ? Can that kind of person be trusted? isn’t that an indication of pure selfishness and power hungry.

5. Raila’s fight against corruption is a lie. While on the surface it would look like Raila is out to fight corruption, the truth is that he has been eating from the same corruption plate. This is precisely why he cannot touch those he has eaten with. A case in point is the Kisumu Molasses plant. He was given this plant by Moi as a present for delivering Luos to Kanu. Then he cleverly cheated Luos to raise money to buy the plant, money that he put in his pocket, and then allocated only 5% shares to them. The rest of the 95% shares and the money he collected he kept for himself. If he was clean and above board, shares for the plant should have been floated in the open market for all Kenyans to buy. He should have mobilized the various Luo organizations and groups to buy blocks of shares so that even the simplest sugar cane farmer would have had a portion of even one share.

6. Raila is selling the country to foreigners. Just the other day Raila announced that investors would flood into Kenya when he comes into power. What he didn’t tell us is that he has been cutting deals with foreigners to sell them Kenyan assets and institutions one he comes into power. That has been a major reason for his numerous trips abroad. This cannot be allowed. While Kenyans have demonstrated a hunger to invest in the stock market, Raila is selling us back to our old Colonizers. How can we allow this?

7. Raila is very vengeful. Another lie. Reacting to talk of his intended revenge on Moi and Kikuyus, Raila has responded that he will not revenge. Yet, when he was chased out by women in Meru (for some reason he seems to bring out the wrath of women!), he was later quoted saying that those regions that don’t vote for him will cry come December 29th. Which begs the question, if Raila won, would he be the President of Kenya or Nyanza? We read in the bible that “Vengeance is mine, says the Lord”..Raila is certainly not God. We cannot have a president hell-bent on revenge. We saw how Moi devastated non-Kalenjins (including Raila) when he came in with the idea of revenge.

8. Secret MOUs have been signed. This is an open secret. With pro-Arab support, Raila has signed on to transform Kenya into a Muslim state, something that would put Kenya at loggerheads with our western donors and partners. This pact is in addition to the creation of a Jimbo la Pwani, where a 10-mile wide strip along the Kenyan coast would be ceded, again, to the Sultans of the gulf, whole will then appoint Balala as Sultan. This will result in the rest of Kenya being a land locked country. Taxes would levied on anything that comes through the port of Mombasa , including foodstuff. Kenya is predominantly Christian, but with freedom of worship for everybody. We do not need religious bigotry to lead us into faith-based chaos like those in Afghanistan (Taribans), and Sudan (Sharia law).

9. It is do or die for Raila. Even if that means bloodshed. Just the other day, the papers had the picture of Raila inspecting a guard of honor. Since when did a private person in Kenya have a private army? Is this not a signal for his intended take over of power by force? How can Kenyans allow one man to lead us into bloodshed? We lost our fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters and children in the Coup he led in 1982. We say, Not Again!

10. Raila is a Liar and Cannot be trusted. Very true. He tells lies knowing that the Common Mwananchi has no way to verify the truth. Sometimes this is a deft trap to get into a name-calling contest with Kibaki. Recently, Raila has been trying to woo the Muslim Vote by harping on the extradited Kenyan-Somali terrorists. Yet he knows very well that Kenya has extradition treaties with other countries (that is how “Miracle Babies” child slave trader Gilbert Deya will be brought back to Kenya to face the courts). In any case, why should the Kenyan Tax payer spend money on the terrorits’s trials when this is not our war?

The Bottom line: We need Raila to lead a strong opposition in parliament but not as president.

Please pass this message to all Luos and right-thinking Kenyans. Luos can no longer afford to be alienated from the rest of Kenyans simply for the selfish satisfaction of One Dangerous Man (ODM). We want to make it clear that not all Luos follow Raila senselessly like sheep.

You can fool some people some time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time-Bob Marley.

BY McDouglas Owino

Luos Against Raila Abroad (LARA)