Wetang'ula reveals how he won battle for Ford-K

Ford Kenya leader Moses Wetangula, March 2020. [Edward Kiplimo, Standard]

Ford-Kenya leader Moses Wetang’ula is a politician loved and loathed in equal measure.

Being a vibrant, articulate and fearless politician, he has fought many battles, some of which threatened to end his three-decade political career.

But like the proverbial cat with nine lives, Wetang’ula has survived by the skin of his teeth for the past 28 years of his chequered political career.

If he is not fighting for his political survival like during last year’s attempted coup in the party, the Bungoma senator will be in the courts battling one case or another.

The botched coup was orchestrated by his long-time allies turned foes, Kanduyi MP Wafula Wamunyinyi, Tongaren MP Eseli Simiyu and Bungoma Governor Wycliffe Wangamati.

They had sought to oust Wetang’ula and replace him with Wamunyinyi as the interim party leader over alleged gross misconduct, running the party like a personal kiosk, overstaying at the helm of the outfit, and failure to call for a national delegates’ conference to elect new officials.

In 2013, the court nullified Wetang’ula’s victory as Bungoma senator and he was almost barred from vying in the by-election over alleged election malpractices.

But he described the attempted coup in Ford-K as his lowest moment ever in politics. But like a true lion, he managed to weather the storm.

In an interview, Wetang’ula for the first time revealed how the coup was planned and how he survived it.

“Many meetings had been held in Kisumu, Bungoma, Kitale and Nairobi planning on how to snatch away the Ford Kenya leadership from me. In all the meetings, I had my moles who relayed verbatim deliberations and that helped me plan ahead of the coup plotters,” he said.

“A day to the attempted coup, the plotters hired planes and congregated people in five-star hotels in Nairobi. They incurred huge bills and whoever was bankrolling them piled a lot of pressure on the party rebels to announce my removal because colossal sums of money had been spent already.”

According to the senator, the coup plotters were not acting on their own but with the support of Wangamati and the blessing of other leaders, who he claimed included Defence Cabinet Secretary Eugene Wamalwa.

When asked whether at one point he saw the possibility of losing grip of the party, Wetang’ula said he knew Simiyu and Wamunyinyi could not manage the feat “because they are lightweights”.

“If they had managed to take control of the party, it would have been a terrible indictment on me. I knew they could not get me out. They were just surrogates trying to please their paymaster,” he said.

Wetang’ula wondered how the two legislators could turn against him despite him having invested a lot in them.

“Politics is not about friendship but about interests and realism. I invested in what I thought was friendship in Wamunyinyi and Eseli and made them who they are. They chose to betray me but I forgave them,” he said.

According to Wetang’ula, a leading former Nasa leader was among those pushing for his ouster.

Contrary to claims that he had run down the party, Wetang’ula said when he took over from Musikari Kombo in 2012, Ford-K had only one elected MP, “but I have given the party a national outlook with more elective seats countrywide.”

According to him, the Ford-K National Delegates Conference (NDC) held on November 4 at Bomas of Kenya was convened in order to disarm the group, which had called for a parallel meeting on November 6.