'This is a disaster': Nyong'o on Jubilee's manifesto

The Opposition coalition on Monday night dismissed the Jubilee Party’s manifesto as a pledge to continue the ills that have bedevilled the country over the past five years and as confirming that the current leadership is out of touch with the people.

Kisumu Senator Prof Anyang’ Nyong’o said the Jubilee Party had failed to address the problems affecting Kenyans, such as the high price of maize flour, inflation, jobless and the national debt.

“This is a disaster,” Prof Nyong’o said of the manifesto in his hands at Nasa’s Lavington secretariat on Monday night. “Fortunately, Nasa is going to come into power and we are going to forget this document  and consign it to the happy valley of death.”

FOREIGN DEBT

On the national debt, he said: “Beginning to write such a manifesto without telling us how they will deal with that foreign debt is to pull the wool over our eyes.”

Nasa is set to launch their manifesto this evening at an event at the Waterfront Grounds at Ngong Racecourse. A draft seen by the Nation indicates that the alliance bases its plan if it takes power on four key pillars.

On Monday, Prof Nyong’o described Jubilee’s document as continuing what the Opposition has accused it of doing over the last four years.

He said that Jubilee had failed “on virtually every front” of their 2013 manifesto and that all their promises in the new one highlight what was delivered in the last one.

“The worst of Jubilee’s many disastrous policies centers on exclusion. Jubilee had decided on a nakedly ethnic strategy for securing power in the 2013 election, pitting two of our communities against the rest,” said Prof Nyong’o.

He accused the Jubilee administration of failing to adequately the increased cost of maize flour. President Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto have talked up the subsidy plan that saw the price of maize flour drop from Sh150 to Sh90.

They have however acknowledged that the production  and distribution needs to increase.

Prof Nyong’o said there appears to be no strategy to deal with inflation, which puts more essential goods out of the reach of the public.

He said there was also not much done to deal with what he described as the deepening ethnic divide.

JOBLESSNESS

The Senator said that not much has been done to deal with the joblessness of the youth. There has also been a spate of retrenchments across many sectors.

Prof Nyong’o was particularly critical of the statement in the Jubilee manifesto that Kisumu Moi Stadium was upgraded and rehabilitated by the Jubilee administration.

“All I can ask Uhuru is to go to Moi Stadium and see what they have upgraded and rehabilitated. In Kisumu, we don’t need Moi Stadium to be rehabilitated. It should be razed to the ground,” he said.