Your presence at Uhuru-Raila meeting was not necessary, NASA co-principals told

A section of leaders from Siaya County have lashed out at NASA co-principals Kalonzo Musyoka, Musalia Mudavadi and Moses Wetangula for crying foul after they were left out of the meeting between President Uhuru Kenyatta and Opposition chief Raila Odinga on Friday, March 9.

In a joint statement after Kenyatta and Odinga unveiled their unity pact, Musyoka, Wetangula and Mudavadi said they were neither consulted nor invited to the meeting. Mudavadi would later dismiss the Kenyatta-Odinga pact as a “conceited and selfish” agreement between two individuals.

In a rejoinder, however, Bondo MP Gideon Ochanda and former MP for Alego/Usonga Sammy Weya, termed the complaints from the three NASA co-principals as trivial, adding that their presence in the Kenyatta-Odinga meeting was not necessary.

According to Dr. Ochanda, the complaints from the NASA leaders were uncalled for as political and religious leaders have been calling for dialogue between the president and the opposition leader.

“The call has been that Raila Odinga needs to meet Uhuru. It has not been that Wetangula, Kalonzo, Mudavadi or anybody else need to meet Uhuru… Raila as leader of NASA and Uhuru as president… Those are people in completely different levels,” said Ochanda.

On his part, Sammy Weya noted that Deputy President William Ruto was also not in the meeting but has not come out to complain.

“I dont see why the issue of co-principals need to arise in this case because even William Ruto who is the Deputy President did not attend the meeting. If it was a team meeting, it would have been a different issue. They need to understand that Uhuru and Raila met in the interest of the country and not on personal interest,” said Weya.

The leaders, who were speaking in Bondo constituency, lauded Kenyatta and Odinga for considering it wise to bury their political differences to unite and heal the nation, noting that this will now pave way for Kenya to move forward.

On Saturday, Mudavadi said the NASA leaders would do a thorough audit of the Kenyatta-Odinga agreement and “undertake soul-searching on whether Kenyans were taken for a ride on not by this MOU.”

“The meeting was between two individuals. It does not bear the imprint of NASA Summit as it ought to be. It was not processed through the NASA structures. Indeed nowhere does the MOU allude to or mention NASA, including the signing off. Instead, the two repeatedly invoke their names and personally commit to each other and not to all Kenyans,” he said.

“The MOU is not anchored nor underwritten by any known institutional framework. Neither does it succinctly capture the nagging issues contained in NASA national dialogue agenda for which many have died and others maimed in the recent past.”

In a ceasefire address to the nation on Friday, Odinga and Kenyatta said they were ready to walk the talk in chatting the country into a new chapter and devoid of ethnic undertones for the sake of future generation