NAIROBI, Kenya Feb 23 – Leaders from Arid and Semi-Arid areas under the UPIA party have promised to lock the North Eastern Region behind Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) leader Raila Odinga’s presidential bid.
Treasury Cabinet Secretary Ukur Yatani stated that the Party has successfully managed to galvanize the region for Odinga’s bid by curtailing infiltration of any other political outfit not allied to the Azimio la Umoja Movement.
“We have already chased away some people from those region, areas that they perceived was theirs is now an empty shell.I don’t think they are able to raise candidates in some of those regions as a result of investment that UPIA has done,” Yatani stated.
The UPIA party leader alluded to the fact that the ground has shifted since UPIA intensified political activities geared at tuning support for the Azimio la Umoja Movement.
“Our political rivals cannot even get candidates to run for the Governorship, senatorial or any other position. The ground is tightly under President Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga,” he stated.
Yattani while welcoming political aspirant seeking to vie under UPIA Party stated that they have since strategized to campaign for Odinga at the grassroot level urging him to focus on other region as they manned his support in the region.
“In fact he doesn’t really need to come to our region unless absolutely necessary. We are going to hold the ground tight for him,” he said.
The UPIA party which backs support from the ASAL areas is expected to hold a National Delegates Convention to ratify the decision to support Azimio la Umoja Movement as well as change the party leadership.
“We have leaders who are holding their positions. As you well know am a cabinet secretary and was holding this position as a party leader in an interim basis. We will be choosing new leaders at the NDC,”Yatani said.
Among the key political arsenals UPIA party seeks to use is by deploying a multi-pronged approach aimed at clinching all seats in the 11 counties where it believes it commands support.
This include recruitment of members and aggressive outreach by MCAs supporting the party across all pastoralist counties.
It also seeks to join hands by forming political pacts with local political parties that enjoy major support from the North Eastern region.
