Failure to pick agents cost you presidency – Atwoli to Azimio
Francis Atwoli, the secretary general of the Cotu, stated that Azimio la Umoja lost the presidential election on August 9, 2022, because it failed to dispatch agents to polling stations.
According to him, the Azimio brigade possessed all the necessary government equipment to secure the presidency but failed to do so due to inadequate logistical planning.
According to the results announced by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission, President William Ruto defeated Raila Odinga of the Azimio party with 7,1 million votes to Raila’s 6,6 million.
“We pushed Ruto out of the system and we had all it takes to ensure we take the government but we failed,” Atwoli said.
The Cotu leader spoke on Saturday in the Hamisi sub-county during Rajab Mwondi’s interment. Mwondi was the chairman of Cotu.
Before working with President William Ruto, Atwoli was a vocal Azimio supporter and an ardent Ruto critic in the run-up to the 2022 presidential election.
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He stated numerous times that Ruto would never be president.
Ruto will never be Kenya’s leader. We’ll have a president in 2022, but it won’t be William Ruto, said the Cotu leader on January 5, 2019.
However, Atwoli would subsequently claim he never stated Ruto would never be a head of state.
“As I have said always, William Samoei Ruto is an articulate politician. But I had envisioned that he can’t become the fifth President of Kenya, I did not say he can’t be a president,” he said during an interview on Citizen on September 5, 2022.
His remarks followed the Supreme Court’s dismissal of Azimio’s presidential petition contesting Ruto’s victory.
In their consolidated petition, Raila and other petitioners alleged that the elections were manipulated.
However, the Supreme Court ruled that the petitioners failed to prove their allegations.
Failure to pick agents cost you presidency – Atwoli to Azimio