MALINDI, Kenya, Feb 28 – Pamoja African Alliance (PAA) party stalwarts have intensified campaigns to popularize the party just days after inking a coalition deal with the Jubilee Party.
Party members led by Kilifi County Assembly Deputy Majority Leader Samuel Gambo Ndago camped in Chonyi Sub County over the weekend in bid with a view to wooing as many locals as possible to embrace a homegrown party and a call to grow local leaders.
Although the party has hinted at campaigning for former Prime Minister Raila Odinga’s presidential bid, its leaders have refused to back the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) party.
Instead, the Governor Amason Kingi-led party has intensified its supremacy war with ODM in Kilifi County and the Coast region in general, with a narrative that the region will only be liberated economically if it has its own party in partnership with like-minded political outfits.
Ndago, who is the Shimo la Tewa Ward Representative, said that since the former Prime Minister has severally said he was looking for partners and not followers, it was prudent for the region’s people to partner with him through a homegrown party.
Noting that PAA advocates for economic liberation and the tackling of the squatter menace, Ndago said the region needed a voice at the national negotiating table, and that PAA was the solution.
“For us to be economically liberated and have land, we must ensure that we have a voice at the national negotiating table, and you cannot sit at the negotiating table as a follower of other people. You must be a partner,” he said.
Ndago, who was accompanied by sitting and aspiring leaders, said only PAA would ensure that the Coast region benefits from the Blue Economy and other economic activities in thew region that the national government is running, such as the Port of Mombasa.
He urged the residents of the Coast region to support Kingi, who is PAA’s party leader, in his bid to become a national leader, saying that other regions have grown their own leaders to the national level.
He faulted local leaders fighting the new party saying they were the enemies of the region since they were dancing to the tunes of other regions without prospects of getting the desired economic benefits since the parties that they are singing about have their owners.
His sentiments were echoed by Nominated Senator Christine Zawadi, Aspiring Senator Ben Kai and Mtepeni Ward Representative Victor Mwaganda Gogo among other leaders, who said there was need for the Coast region to have its own kingpin.
Kai said many leaders had used the region as a steppingstone to ascend to power by promising to tackle the problem of landlessness in the region, but soon forgot the promise since they did not have the region’s interests at heart, hence the need to have a national party with local roots.
Gogo said many leaders had become fans of Ruto, Raila and other leaders from other regions because their people had allowed them to grow and urged the Coast region’s residents to allow their leaders to grow so the region can also benefit.
