One Kenya Alliance (OKA) Principals have dismissed media reports that they had agreed to support ODM leader Raila Odinga’s candidature in next year’s presidential election.
In a statement, OKA Principals Musalia Mudavadi of ANC, Wiper’s Kalonzo Musyoka, KANU Chairman Gideon Moi, and Ford Kenya leader Moses Wetangula cautioned a section of the media against peddling what it termed as falsehoods about their recent meetings with President Uhuru Kenyatta.
They claimed a local media house had been fabricating stories in favour of one invitee to the meetings who is also a presidential aspirant.
They said at no time have they ever been summoned to State House, dismissing the news reports as a complete fabrication.
They clarified that their Wednesday meeting with President Kenyatta in Mombasa was cordial and consultative which deliberated on national matters, in particular, the Covid-19 crisis and not succession politics as reported.
“We hereby state categorically that our visits to State House aren’t summons to browbeat us into supporting one candidate or the other, as the distorted narratives suggest. These have been very cordial consultative meetings deliberating on national matters”.
“Indeed, yesterday’s meeting was one such conference where a new Covid-19 surge and containment measures were the subject of extensive discussion. No one asked or even suggested that we support anyone for anything” the leaders added.
They called for accurate reporting arguing Kenyans deserve factual, verifiable, and balanced reporting of events and not fiction about manufactured events that didn’t take place.
“Kenyans deserve correct, factual, verifiable, attributable, and balanced reporting of events and not fiction about manufactured events that didn’t take place; sanitized through the veneer of creative realities, deceptive facts, opaque shadowy sources and twisted logic. We call upon news media and especially the print media to remain focused on reporting facts as they are and not what their wishes are,” they pointed out.
