2007 Elections

The road to the House has been long and rough for Richard Momoima

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Published on Tuesday, 22 January 2008 23:56
Securing a parliamentary seat has not been so easy, and some politicians have had to persevere to make the long and strenuous journey. And it takes a fighting spirit to withstand the ruthless circumstances in which most perennial campaigners operated before winning in the recent elections.

“If I were the type of people who lose hope I would not be an MP today,” says Kitutu Chache MP-elect Richard Momoima Onyonka. Mr Onyonka, son of former Cabinet minister Zachary Onyonka, thought he would have the Kitutu Chache parliamentary seat on a silver plater after his father died in 1996. It had become customary for sons or close relatives of dead MPs to inherit their seats.

Mzee Jomo Kenyatta’s Gatundu seat was “inherited” by his nephew Ngengi Muigai. Former Vice-President Musalia Mudavadi easily took over the Sabatia seat of his father, Mr Moses Mudavadi, after he died in 1989, and Mr Vincent Maitsi did the same in Hamisi after his father Samson died.

Mr George Khaniri succeeded his father Nicodemus Khaniri in Hamisi upon the death of the latter in the early 1990s. Mr Onyonka had thought it would be a walk-over for him in Kitutu Chache, given the powers behind him at the time. “President Moi personally came to campaign for me, but I lost the seat during the Kanu nominations to Jimmy Angwenyi,” he recalls.

The young Onyonka was convinced that he was the right person to represent the people of Kitutu Chache who had voted for his father for five consecutive terms. “In the election that followed (1997) I was in the race again and I did not succeed,” he recalls. “I did not lose hope because I knew that becoming a people’s representative to me is a calling.”

Even after failing to capture the seat in 2002, Mr Onyonka, a businessman in Kisii Town, continued with the fight until the last elections when he thrashed Mr Angwenyi and 21 other candidates to win one of the most hotly contested seats in the country.

“I did not win because I had used money but due to the confidence that people of Kitutu Chache had in me,” he says. “I made sure I was with them all the time, even during difficult times.”

He made sure he attended almost all funerals in the constituency and he was with the people to guide them how the Constituency Development Fund kitty should be used.