Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) party leader Raila Odinga on Monday, September 16, blasted The Standard over a Kibra nominations story it had published.
In a post seen by Kenyans.co.ke, the opposition leader labelled the contents of the story titled Raila's Fury Over Insider Bungling of Party Poll as misinforming.
"Raila appeals to party supporters to ignore reports appearing in The Standard today of his supposed displeasure at how nominations for Kibra Constituency by-elections were conducted and instead focus on retaining the seat," read the post.
The Standard story had claimed that a furious Raila had pressed top party officials to explain mistakes in the party voters' register that marred Kibra by-election nominations during a heated meeting on Tuesday, September 10.
It alleged that Odinga had been informed of the hitches that occurred during the party nominations where various names were either missing from the party voter's register or were mixed up.
The former prime minister is reported to have called for a closed-door meeting at Orange House, where he expressed his anger with the officials, who he said, could soon be kicked out in a restructuring to clean the political outfit of rogue officials.
Odinga disputed these claims and instead urged party supporters to view reports by The Standard as "part of a campaign of misinformation and propaganda which only intensify as competition formally kicked off to create doubts, wars, and divisions in the party over imaginary issues with a view to helping handpicked candidates for the Kibra seat."
Odinga did, however, admit that there were challenges in the nominations, with names missing from the voter register but said they were not tailored to favour any aspirant.
The AU envoy encouraged his party supporters to instead take pride in the fact that only ODM conducted party primaries for Kibra Constituency by-elections while other parties took the easy route of handpicked candidates for the race.
