Garissa Township Member of Parliament, Aden Duale, on Saturday, August 13, authored an open letter addressed to former Prime Minister Raila Odinga and Azimio la Umoja leaders over the event held at the Kenyatta International Convention Center (KICC).
In the letter, the former Leader of Majority protested some of the election figures that emerged from the meeting that was televised countrywide by major TV stations.
Duale first took issue with an assertion made by Azimio la Umoja presidential running mate, Martha Karua, who claimed that so far, the alliance had secured 180 parliamentary seats, dwarfing those of Kenya Kwanza.
In his argument, he estimated that Azimio had only secured 150 seats against Kenya Kwanza's 160 seats.
Duale claimed that 330 MPs had already been elected with only seven constituencies pending, while 12 are reserved for nominated leaders depending on the strength of each party's representation.
"Indeed, it was quite unfortunate that Senior Counsel and the running mate for the Azimio coalition, Martha Karua, this morning in the 'knowing each other' meeting publicly stated that Azimio coalition has 180 Members of Parliament. The National Assembly has a total membership of 349 out of which 12 are slots for nominated MPs based on respective party strength in the National Assembly.
"Results for three constituencies are still pending and elections for four constituencies were deferred. So far now we are looking at 330 positions (349-12-7). The Kenya Kwanza coalition has over 160 members in the National Assembly and still counting. The Azimio Coalition has just around 150 members in the National Assembly. There are 12 independent members so far, most of whom are aligned to Kenya Kwanza," Duale explained.
In his letter, Duale further explained that only 3 members were elected by other parties belonging to neither coalition.
In the Senate category, the lawmaker explained that Kenya Kwanza had already won 24 out of the total membership of the 47 Senators, dwarfing Azimio's count he claimed stood at 22.
Karua had noted that she was confident the coalition had bagged 24 gubernatorial slots, downplaying Kenya Kwanza's parliamentary seat count at only 130.
"For all of you, because you are in Nairobi, we need to distribute ourselves to where our places where we are needed in order to guard our win because we have won. I was looking at the list of MPs, I am very attempted to read our names, but we are just short of 180 when you combine. We have 24 governors at the moment. If you add Mombasa and Kakamega whose by-election is coming later, you will see we have strength around the country.
"If you look at our competition, they are just at about 130 MPs when I last counted. Even if it improves, it will not come anywhere to what we have. For senators, we have 23 and they have one up (24)," Karua remarked.
Here is a spotcheck by Kenyans.co.ke showing how many MPs have won their seats so far.
