The UDA party chairman, Johnson Muthama, has dismissed the internal memo as fake.
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An internal memo mentioning a plan by the United Democratic Alliance (UDA) party to counter an expected merger between the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) and Jubilee Party is FAKE.
The memo purports to inform the UDA staff of a counter-strategy to follow the possible merger.
“New guidelines focusing on the obliteration of this alliance will be issued to your respective departments. The social media team is tasked to pour cold water on this merger by using the established pointers as per our earlier meetings. Required funding will be availed,” the internal memo, which is allegedly penned by the party Secretary-General, Veronica Maina, states, in part.
The memo further urges the UDA staff to remain focused as the impending merger is a great threat to the party’s 2022 presidential candidate, Deputy President William Ruto.
“Make no mistake. The merger between the two has hugely dented our plan to win the forthcoming general elections since ODM and Jubilee have more numbers as compared to UDA. However, this should only motivate us to work harder and push even more as it’s time for ultimate focus,” the memo adds.
However, UDA chairman, Johnson Muthama, has flagged the memo as fake. Without divulging much, the former Machakos senator wrote on his Twitter account, “NOTICE! #fake.” He then shared the internal memo with a fake stamp across it.
The UDA party has not shared the internal memo on their website, Twitter handle or Facebook pages.
The fake memo emerged days after ODM and Jubilee Party officials met on 17 June 2021 to begin talks on a 2022 pre-coalition agreement.
Jubilee Secretary-General Raphael Tuju, his ODM counterpart Edwin Sifuna, ODM chairman John Mbadi, Jubilee vice-chairman David Murathe, and Suna East MP Junet Mohamed held the meeting at a Nairobi hotel. Tuju confirmed to The Star newspaper that the two parties are expected to form a coalition in the coming days.
“The meeting we have had today is a culmination of several other meetings that we have held before to formalise the coalition with the former Prime Minister,” Tuju told The Star.
Sifuna also reiterated that ODM will have several other meetings with Jubilee officials to firm up the coalition plans.
“We had our initial meeting today. We have started talks that will see us having a pre-2022 coalition agreement with Jubilee. It is too early to talk about the timeliness. We will firm up everything by holding a series of meetings in the coming days,” The Star quotes Sifuna as saying.
The ODM and Jubilee talks are meant to cement the 9 March 2018, handshake between President Uhuru Kenyatta and the ODM party into a strong coalition. DP Ruto, who was initially part of Jubilee but later announced his membership in UDA, has termed the expected coalition as “tragic” and “ill-advised”, adding it will destroy the ruling party.
Ruto claimed that party members were not consulted and the decision to form the ODM-Jubilee coalition was made by Tuju and Murathe.
“They are free to do it, and because they have chosen to do it without consultations, we will have to organise ourselves in UDA (United Democratic Alliance),” DP Ruto said.
PesaCheck has looked into an internal memo claiming to address the United Democratic Alliance (UDA) party staff on how to counter the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) and Jubilee parties expected merger and finds it to be FAKE.
This post is part of an ongoing series of PesaCheck fact-checks examining content marked as potential misinformation on Facebook and other social media platforms.
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This fact-check was written by PesaCheck fact-checker Naomi Wanjiku and edited by PesaCheck deputy editor Rose Lukalo. The article was approved for publication by managing editor Enock Nyariki.
PesaCheck is East Africa’s first public finance fact-checking initiative. It was co-founded by Catherine Gicheru and Justin Arenstein, and is being incubated by the continent’s largest civic technology and data journalism accelerator: Code for Africa. It seeks to help the public separate fact from fiction in public pronouncements about the numbers that shape our world, with a special emphasis on pronouncements about public finances that shape government’s delivery of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) public services, such as healthcare, rural development and access to water / sanitation. PesaCheck also tests the accuracy of media reportage. To find out more about the project, visit pesacheck.org.
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