Aisha Jumwa’s behaviour on Friday during the burial of Mombasa Deputy Governor William Kingi’s father whereby she barred ODM secretary-general Edwin Sifuna from addressing mourner was not the first time she was putting her feet down.
Ms Jumwa, who was the master of ceremonies, walked to the stage and grabbed the microphone from ODM secretary-general Edwin Sifuna and accused him of “talking politics during funeral”.
Talk within Kilifi where she was born tells of her messy divorce. She was attending political meetings and yelling herself hoarse over what she termed as injustices at the Coast.
Her husband got jittery with each meeting she attended. He finally told her to stop. Jumwa refused, and when he threatened to divorce her, she told him to go ahead.
“He said if I wanted to continue with my life, I should pay him dowry. We went to the sub-chief, made the decision and I paid back the dowry,” Jumwa said in a media interview a few weeks after she was elected.
The talk is that she whipped the dowry cows herself, all the way to her in-laws.
After the divorce, she went full throttle into politics and was elected Kilifi Woman Representative.
During campaigns, she wowed crowds through song, dance, poems, and punchy speeches delivered in flawless Swahili. She knew what the crowd wanted, and she added melodrama to sway them at the ballot box.
When Malindi went to the by-election in 2016, Jumwa delivered victory for ODM and knocked the daylights off the men who wanted to rock her boat.
However Jumwa’s problems at the ODM party started when the party’s National Governing Council unanimously expelled her for showing disrespect to the party leader and insinuating she had decamped from the party and aligned herself with Deputy President William Ruto.
Jumwa explained why she was doing a political tango with Ruto, and abandoning the ODM train that led her to power.
“We have to change the formula. We have tried solving our problems in the Opposition, but it is not working. We have decided to work with the government. From today, Ruto is not just the front runner, he is the only runner,” she said.
People within ODM were enraged by her declaration.
ODM whip Junet Mohamed is said to have had initiated the move to tame the Malindi MP by writing a cheeky letter to the Speaker of the National Assembly seeking guidance on how to discipline her.
To that, Jumwa brushed it off: “Junet, I am ready for you. Mr Man, you can proceed … I am ready for you.”
SIFUNA has just learnt how powerful and influential Aisha Jumwa is. The PEOPLE are with her. He couldn’t believe it. pic.twitter.com/Y27lvldHM2— Brian Khaniri (@BKhaniri) May 3, 2019