Former Kakamega Senator Boni Khalwale on Thursday, January 9, spoke to Kenyans.co.ke about the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) consultative meeting scheduled for Saturday, January 18, at Kakamega's Bukhungu Stadium.
The event has split opinion among leaders from the region, with claims that contrary to its supposed agenda of discussing the BBI report, it was actually a bid to prop up Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) Party leader Raila Odinga and his deputy, Governor Wycliffe Oparanya.
Khalwale claimed that high-ranking state officials were actively working to give an impression that the BBI report and the leaders supporting it were popular.
"Don't use the crowd to gauge popularity because the crowd will be hired.
"In fact, it will be similar to the Bomas meeting where participants were handpicked by county commissioners and were paid to attend," he stated referring to the launch of the BBI report in Nairobi on November 27, 2019.
He alleged that funds to facilitate the event were being channelled directly from the national government through Cabinet Secretaries.
"You can see these BBI events, the ministers are already moving around, working hard to ensure the optics are just right," Khalwale stated.
Khalwale further claimed that Central Organization of Trade Unions (COTU) Secretary General Francis Atwoli planned on presenting Oparanya as the Luhya's community's spokesperson, as he did with Amani National Congress (ANC) leader Musalia Mudavadi in 2017.
"The sole purpose of this event is to attempt to revive the fortunes of ODM in the region because supporters have been disillusioned since Raila sold out.
"What I can tell Raila, Oparanya and Malala is that they are living in denial," he opined.
Mudavadi himself strongly opposed the meeting which he described as an ODM Party event.
"If it is me they are after, politically, let them declare openly instead and come for me but not cower under a phantom called BBI," he stated on an interview on Citizen TV.
