Third force: Will youthful MPs' team 'salvage' the country?

A new political formation led by youthful Members of Parliament is taking shape, charting a fresh path that challenges traditional politics regardless of party affiliation.

In what is now arising as a new formation, the team is coming together to form yet another political force away from the existing opposition and the Kenya Kwanza government.

On Sunday, the legislators comprising Nairobi Senator Edwin Sifuna, MPs Babu Owino (Embakasi East), Gathoni Wamuchomba (Githunguri), Caleb Amisi (Saboti) and Anthony Kibagendi (Kitutu Chache South) declared that they are one team ready to face and call out the government over its persistent ills.

The MPs said they are a team of at least 70 and urged other opposition leaders to work with them in what they termed as seeking to pull the country from the jaws of corruption and bad leadership.

Sifuna, who has been heavily critical of the government, said they are now working together as a team known as Kenya Moja/Kenya Mpya, even as he sought to affirm that he is still the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) secretary general.

“These leaders here today are a team, the Kenya Mpya/Moja team. We have over 70 leaders.  I heard the preaching of Shadrack, Meshack and Abednego… we are now these people. We are not three. We are a team but we are surrounded by enemies who want to finish us,” he said.

They made the remarks when they attended a Sunday service at Jesus Teaching Ministries (JTM) in Embakasi, owned by Pastor Peter Manyuru.

“Herod is coming from one end, on this other side, Goliath appears, Nebuchadnezzar is in front of us. We are going through a lot because we have refused to bow down to Nebuchadnezzar. We have said we are ready to die for what we believe in,” Sifuna said.

According to the senator, the team will not sit and watch the country being run down and stay silent. He said they are no longer afraid of delivering the country, including protecting public entities out to be sold.

The leaders have, in recent weeks, shared platforms echoing frustrations with rigid party loyalty and portraying themselves as voices of a new political generation. They argue that Kenyans, especially the youth, are tired of recycled politics and tribal bargains.

Babu scoffed at the government’s move to use empowerment programmes as a ploy to mislead the people that it is working.

He said every young person who went to State House should have been given a personal motorbike as opposed to having several of them sharing one and other income generating projects

“We were told it is a bottom up government and when the President was campaigning, he said it will be about bottom up. But now this bottom up has changed and has two meanings: the first is to take wananchi’s money from the lowest level and having it at State House,” Babu said, adding:

“The second meaning is getting young men and women from Nairobi estates and taking them to State House, then take 50 of them and giving them one motorbike. Is that the real bottom up agenda? and then you call that empowerment.” 

Babu said corruption is a thorn in the country’s flesh but disagreed with how the President has approached it, and demanded for action.

Instead of establishing a multi-agency team to fight corruption, Babu told the President to take serious people who can fight graft head on.

“The Bible says, woe unto you the Pharisees who clean the outside of the cup and the plate but leave the inside full of corruption, full of impunity, abductions, death,” he uttered.

Wamuchomba also took a swipe at President Ruto, highlighting what she termed government failures. She referenced the discovery of 52 dismembered bodies in the Kware dumpsite last year, saying the government has remained silent on who committed the crime.

“We are yet to know who committed the heinous act. As a mother, I am so pained,” she noted.

Mr Amisi drew parallels with the story of Caleb and Joshua in the Bible.

“Many people fear William Ruto. They say you cannot defeat him. These young leaders you are seeing here do not fear. Just like the Bible says, every Israelite feared the giants,” Amisi said.

“I was an adviser to President William Ruto. When we were campaigning, we promised to remove Kenyans from bottom to top. But after taking over, we forgot our promises. We have started increasing taxes, we have weakened the health sector, education and infrastructure. And now they have started selling companies belonging to Kenyans,” Kibagendi said. 

The Kitutu Chache South MP claimed that the President is seeking to buy the Kenya Pipeline Company (KPC) through proxies and has since undervalued it to about Sh100 billion yet it is worth Sh600 billion.

During the service, Manyuru declined Sh100,000 that Amisi had granted him for what the church described as ‘mantle handkerchiefs’ saying they do not want to be misconstrued as being bribed.