By Naomi Wanjiku
A tweet claiming to come from the United Democratic Alliance (UDA) Party asks Jubilee Party Secretary-General, Raphael Tuju, to apologise for disrespecting the party.
The tweet was posted together with a video clip of Tuju speaking at a local musician’s event in Gatanga, Murang’a County on Tuesday, 27 July 2021.
In the video clip, Tuju inquires about Deputy President William Ruto’s political campaign model — the bottom-up economy approach.
“Hii maneno ya bottoms-up economy. Labda Peter Kenneth ungetafsiri. What is it in Swahili? (***) juu? (This issue about a bottoms-up economy, perhaps you should translate Peter Kenneth. What is it in Swahili? Bottoms-up?”) Tuju asked.
DP Ruto recently defined the bottom-up economy approach as “deliberately promoting investments and financial instruments targeting the millions who are unemployed, hustler enterprises/ farmer groups”.
Verification
The Twitter account which reacted to Tuju’s sentiments on the bottom-up economic approach claims to be the official UDA Party account. However, a review of the account shows it only has 92 followers, which appears odd for a party that is seeking to establish influence and popularity in the country.
The account was also created in June 2021, and yet the party officially rebranded on 8 January 2021. UDA was initially known as Party for Reforms and Development (PDR) and it endorsed President Uhuru Kenyatta in the 2017 general elections. PDR won four seats in the National Assembly and one in the Senate.
However, on 28 December 2020, the DP Ruto-affiliated party applied to change its name to UDA and its symbol to wheelbarrow from a bull. The Registrar of Political Parties, Ann Nderitu, in a letter dated 7 January 2021, accepted those changes.
PesaCheck contacted the UDA Party Director of Communications Wanjohi Githae who told us their official Twitter handle is @UDAKenya. The party’s official account was created in December 2020. So far, it has 64,600 followers.
No such tweet asking for an apology has been shared on the UDA Party’s official Twitter account or other social media accounts.
Githae pointed out that the UDA Party’s official accounts on Facebook and Instagram can be found here and here respectively.
Verdict
PesaCheck has looked into a tweet asking Jubilee Party Secretary-General, Raphael Tuju, to apologise for disrespecting the United Democratic Alliance (UDA) Party and found that it was posted by a fake account and hence it is FALSE.
This story was produced by Africa Uncensored in partnership with Code for Africa with support from Deutsche Welle Akademie.
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