Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) leader Raila Odinga is reportedly set to spend the Ksh4 billion awarded to him last week by the Court of Appeal to resuscitate the party’s dormant branches across the country ahead of the 2022 election.
According to reports, the ODM party is planning to revamp the outfit by having all its branch offices up and running, complete with staff to enhance its presence at the grassroots.
Speaking on Friday, ODM’s Nairobi branch chairman and Makadara MP George Aladwa disclosed that the party would also use the money to conduct party branch elections countrywide next year.
“We want the money to trickle down to aid the operations of the party at the county, constituency, ward level, and polling centre level,” he stated.
Aladwa admitted that ODM's fortunes had been diminishing in some parts of the country after its officials either defected or resigned in the run-up to the 2017 General Election.
“The party cannot perform in an area where it doesn’t have an office. Some of our officials moved to other parties, others contested as independent and others now want to come up,” he noted.
Furthermore, the Makadara MP was of the view that the party needed to restructure the party in order to address the thorny issue of party primaries, which, according to him, cost the party dearly in 2017.
“We also want to prepare early for party primaries. In the last elections, we lost many seats because of the way we handled the primaries. Tickets were just being dished out and the same old guards recycled. We want this cured by early primaries managed by duly elected branch officials,” he remarked.
In the meantime, ODM has kicked off a series of consultative meetings with all 47 branch officials in preparation for mounting yet another challenge to produce the country’s fifth President.
Raila is expected to meet the party National Executive Council at Lake Elementaita Lodge in Nakuru county next Saturday, in yet another forum, after secretary general Edwin Sifuna met all the 47 county chairpersons at a Nairobi hotel on Thursday, to draw the 2022 roadmap.
