Mvita MP Najib Balala has defended his partnership with Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta and Eldoret North MP William Ruto. Balala has been heavily criticised for joining coalition talks between Uhuru and Ruto.
Kaloleni MP Kazungu Kambi claimed Balala is a joyrider and threatened to lead Coast MPs out of the coalition. Kambi said Balala does not speak for the Mijikenda.
The former Tourism minister said the Mijikenda will not cooperate with Balala after reports that Uhuru wants to make Balala his pointman at the Coast.
But speaking in Ganze at the weekend, Balala said he has joined the Uhuru-Ruto team so as to fight for the rights of the Coast people.
At the weekend, the Mijikenda Youth Association vice chairman David Mwanza and Coast coordinator Rashid Mwagasare criticised plans to install Balala as the leader of the TNA-URP coalition in Coast.
Mwanza and Mwagasare said Balala has not done anything to benefit the Mijikenda community and therefore cannot be their leader. “We as the Coast community cannot act as a ladder for other people to benefit ,” Mwagasare said.
Balala, however, said he attended a breakfast meeting with Uhuru as a Republican Congress Party leader and not as a community leader.
Others who attended the breakfast meeting including party leaders Ruto (URP), Charity Ngilu (Narc) and Eugene Wamalwa (New Ford-Kenya).
He said he is not a tribal leader and will never attend a meeting with tribal inclination, something he said is the undoing of the Coast region. He said the Coast has been divided along tribal lines.
“We are all Kenyans. Nobody chose to be in the tribe in which they are in,” Balala said. He also defended himself against claims that he has not been associating with Ruto in the past. He said three years ago he was in Kaloleni with Kambi and Ruto.
He told Ruto then that soon he will form a party after being frustrated in ODM because of championing for the rights of his people. “We were tired of being carried in other people’s vehicle and while on the road, you are kicked out not because underperforming but because you ask questions for your people,” said Balala in Ganze.
He said he was the founder of Prime Minister Raila Odinga’s ODM with his party registration number being 0001 while that of Raila being 0005.
He said he implored upon Coast leaders to form their own party but they did not heed his call. He said now he is about to benefit from forming his own party.
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