Kitui Senator Enock Wambua has dismissed a perception that Wiper Party leader Kalonzo Musyoka betrayed the opposition when he joined hands with President Mwai Kibaki after the 2007 general election.
Senator Wambua said Kalonzo’s decision was defined by a desire to help check the fire that was burning the country at that time and ought to be lauded other than deprecated. “The rivers of blood occasioned by the 2007/2008 post-election violence would have burst their banks had Kalonzo delayed his move by just a week,” he told a Senate committee on national cohesion, equal opportunity, and regional cohesion meeting. Wambua was expressing his reactions towards sentiments expressed by the Kenya Country Executive Director of Global Peace Foundation Mr Daniel Juma Omondi during a presentation to the committee that cited politics of betrayal by political leaders among factors fomenting division and mistrust among Kenyans. Mr Juma had given the Kalonzo move as an example of political betrayals in Kenya and recalled how diehard followers of Deputy President William Ruto read betrayal in the wake of the handshake between President Uhuru Kenyatta and NASA leader Raila Odinga because their leader was missing from the stage.
He hailed President Kenyatta for liberalizing the handshake during the recent annual national prayer meeting by publicly including Ruto and Kalonzo in the cast where he and Raila were star actors. He said civic education would make Kenyans understand that elections are but a process to choose deserving leaders and not an opportunity to brew and dispense hate or get easy money from undeserving politicians. He singled out tribalism and corruption as key among problems that have stood in the way of cohesion.