State House hopeful Waihiga: I'll jail Covid billionaires in 100 days

Agano Party Presidential candidate David Mwaure Waihiga.

Presidential candidate David Mwaure Waihiga said that if he is elected, he would jail within 100 days people who benefited illegally from Covid-19 funds, roll out free education up to university and sack all corrupt civil servants.

He declared on Wednesday that he is one of the more than four million voters that opinion pollsters have been capturing in their surveys but he said he would win the August 9 election and set about overhauling the country.

He said he is like the biblical David who did not get anointed to be king as a frontrunner “and that is why we do not agree with those opinion polls being published left, right and centre portraying me as an underdog … They are making a huge mistake”. 

Mr Mwaure explained that he is missing in opinion poll ratings because he started coming out as a candidate “properly a few days ago [and] had not attended public debates”.

He said his leadership of the Agano Party will be “revolutionary, it will be different … It will be what Kenyans have really been looking for. The others are talking about change. They cannot change. They do not have the wherewithal”.

He said he only requires under two years to pay off the national debt that is estimated at Sh12 trillion.

Mr Mwaure is among four presidential hopefuls cleared by the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC). Others are Deputy President William Ruto (United Democratic Alliance), Mr Raila Odinga of the Azimio la Umoja One Kenya Alliance and George Wajackoyah of the Roots Party.

“Some people in the civil service will have to go home. New people will have to come in. Corruption underlies the poverty we are seeing around. Abraham Lincoln said democracy is defined as the rule of the people for the people and by the people … we will take the government down there at the family unit,” Mr Waihiga said.

His running mate, Ruth Mucheru, clarified that the axing of the civil service will be gradual. 

Mr Mwaure, a senior counsel, said his purge will target mostly the Judiciary and he will kick out promoters of impunity.

He promised that counties would get at least 40 percent of national audited revenues. He said development would be driven by the needs of ordinary people, who will tell the government what their priorities are.

“Our manifesto is going to be out … within the next 14 days, we are not late and our strength is that all those other competitors have at one time or the other served the government and did not do all those things that they are promising,” he told TV47.

He said he will finance his programmes from taxes and by going after the money stashed abroad that he said had hit Sh6 trillion by 2020.

“Do not be lied to … Kenya has a lot of money, we have a very hardworking and determined lot who never give up,” he said.

He cited the Sh2 billion that President Uhuru Kenyatta claimed is stolen daily from government coffers and pledged to ‘close that hole”.

“That is Sh60 billion per month … nearly a trillion per year. The President was just talking about what he knows. We have individual, corporate and other institutionalised corruption where colossal sums get lost,” he said.

He added that the Auditor-General had disclosed on Tuesday that about Sh500 billion could not be accounted for in just one financial year.

“We only need to fight corruption, impunity and have the law followed and we will protect our internally generated taxes, pool it together and use it to develop our lives,” he said.

He said Kenyans would be empowered “to take charge of the fight against corruption”, citing President Mwai Kibaki’s approach in the 2000s, “to a point that they were arresting police officers caught receiving bribes”.

He said he is a clean man and his running mate is equally untainted. “I am the new clothes that the country needs,” he said.

Ms Mucheru, who was with her boss during the interview said: “I am not ready to accept the same … regime, same old faces, coming in with very colourful manifestos with no ability to bring down the cost of living, build new hope for Kenyans to invest sustainably, save and divest so as to make Kenya great again.”

She said that she, the Agano Party and Mr Waihiga are the new brooms coming in to sweep out the mess that past governments had created.