 I'm still stuck in the, these things that Val was trying to tell me which is a Chini, Marus, Kubali, Ukubali, I don't know, I will get to understand actually I'll be here to see what Val will be talking about in a bit but for now it's my time want to talk about youth in politics, youth in politics I'll be speaking to our political leader Cliff Umbaya. His party is called Ideal Democratic and Economic Party. Good morning. My name is Dereva Hillary. Send in your comments or questions to all our social media platforms at Y254 channel. Let's get to business. Good morning sir. Good morning to you Larry. Good to have you. Thank you very much. As you're talking about the youth, you have a party that I hear, it is Youth Cattelled or tailored to me and also we've had so many parties in this country. Now that Kenya is a multi-party nation, we have so many parties and I would want to get to know how different to be your party from other parties that you've had and then what's the future but to begin with. Tell us how did the idea come and how did you begin it? The idea of the Ideal Democratic Party started not just recently, it's something that you've been working on from 2009 but also understanding what is the solution that you need. It's not just about just coming, waking up and forming a party. It's a solution based political organization and it's a movement that has shown a need that there's a space, there's a gap that need to be filled and it can only be filled by people like us who have understood what is missing and then coming up with a solution. So it's been a journey, especially at a time and a period where we're saying we were clamoring for the youth inclusivity, the women inclusivity in issues on matters politics and we looked around and we shopped around and see where we can fit ourselves within the parties but again you find that these parties are kind of, we call them ownerships and we said now maybe perhaps if we take another direction where there's parties are institutionalized then perhaps even the marginalized community within the region can be able to have their voice and that is now where we say we're bringing the freshness in the political sphere. It's normally said every generation has a responsibility and you can see that there's a generation that are fought for independence, they were not old people. They didn't come out and died at 29, tomboy died at 39, kibaki when he was assuming as a finance minister, assistant finance minister he was 29, 30. So it's not issue of youth, it's the issue of generational responsibility. Even as you talk about the youth, tell me about the name, why the ideal and economic and also you have mentioned something about youth and women and earlier on we were like does it mean we are so vulnerable because anytime the youth is mentioned the woman is included, why do we have this? I said it's a time that we were finding space for these two categories and women apparently they have gone ahead and done it and the youth were left behind because they are still not organized and actually in the most cases they are not organized. So we have done it through other organization but now we said since you have done a social and economic aspect of it, you have already got the voice within the social and economic, can we have a voice in the political sphere? That's now where we come in as a political, the best way to do it is through a legal entity, you can't just do it through any other movement. If you try to do it through other movement either you are looked at as a rabble or whatever. So we said let's follow the legal channel, let's use the system how it works and see how we can bring the solutions in the system from that sphere. The name of the party is ideal democratic and economic party, ideal meaning this is the party that's bringing ideals, the philosophy that we don't have. For a long time between 1991 and 1992 the country has not been having an ideal, that's why you see when there is an issue of now people trying to find identity, people trying to find what is the common culture of the country. If you look at countries like Tanzania, they have the common culture that unite them, Tanzania has 152 tribes. But you know them of Swahili? Yes, but we know they have a common culture, they have a common gold as a country, what do we have as a country, as a Kenya? Apart from what was raised or what we say maybe until Nyayo is him, there was Nyayo philosophy but after Nyayo everything went black. So what are the some of ideals that you have in your party? For now we are looking at the issues which are major we will focus on issues like how do we change our culture. We used to the Boro Wai culture, we used to man it man society. Now how do we take responsibility as a citizen, become active citizen and put values in terms of leading the nation, in terms of doing our day to day activities. So we are looking at a party that is not just bringing politics usual but politics unusual where we have value system, we have core values, we have code of ethics that advises and guides us in every day of our lifestyle. I have seen political parties coming up and they later would merge with other bigger parties but also when you talk about politics you will have a politician who will come. And we have had these politicians since time immemorial, they are moving from one party to another. And definitely these persons are not clean, they are not clean. Now are you having a party whereby doesn't matter who comes in as long as he is loved by his people he can go in? No. Because you need numbers in the parliament? We need numbers but it's not about numbers, it's about quality. We are there to create a culture. And it will take 50 years to do so, we are not in a rush to do so. So whoever comes in must follow the code and ethics and cultures that we have tried to form within our organisation. You cannot just come from nowhere and then you say oh I want to run with this party. Who are you? What have you done within the party? We have great structures that from the grassroots we can be able to evaluate your progress. What have you done as a illari within your community? Are you the person who was saying wherever you bore a yama politics for you you are looking for money? No. You must have created a culture that you know you are a leader, that you want now to run even for an MC seat in that political party. And it's a political party that we are not waiting for. For five years then we started doing campaigns. As we are doing office day to day work as any other corporate institution, any other institution that is working we open our days Monday to Friday. So from what I can gather from your statements is like you need no old school in your party. You are looking for a new influx of blood like the young people now who are coming up who are leaders. But also what missions do you have to tell this person? And by the way what are some of the, I feel because I know you will have a number. What are some of the disciplinary missions you have in your party that you will ensure if so and so has been mentioned somewhere. We go the UK way. Okay. You mentioned you reside. First and foremost is the issue of disciplinary. We really take into consideration the chapter six that is the issue of leadership and integrity. So if you are a leader and you are implicated in a matter, for us as a party we will ask you to step aside as investigation goes on. So these are measures and structures that we put policies that will guide you as a leader if you find yourself in any issue or scandal. Please step aside. Allow and the party, that's the party position. And then after you are cleared we will try and see how you are going to get back. Or in terms of what you are saying freshness of youth. We cannot say it's a really youth, only youth. It's like-minded. We call it like-minded. Okay. If you are older generation and you are like-minded and you feel what you are doing is right. And you feel maybe you are tired of old ways of man society. You are welcome. So it's not about only the youth. Some of the youth you can say they won't go with that because they feel if I'm going to a public service and I'm coming through the party, I need to come to wanna a living. For us it's not about earning a living. It's about service. With this now political party because I feel like you now have a plan. What are some of the ills in the society you seek to address? Corruption is one of them. How will you do it? Because everyone comes in and say we will manage this. We will say corruption number one, number two corruption, number three corruption. What are your mitigations? At the moment we are looking at changing our attitudes. First is how do we change our attitudes individually and then collectively as in party. So we have put culture that we have even ten rules that a party member you should be able to have there for in your day to day life. If it does not resonate with you then it's not a place for you. So these are the things you must first live with it. You put the values in you first before you even ask someone else to put them. So we are trying to train ourselves to live that kind of lifestyle that we are preaching within the party. So that will start reducing the issue of corruption. So when I know that I am going into public service I know there is something expected of me as a leader not as a politician. I want to have an issue with the impunity in terms of where someone from your political party has been denied a chance by his people. And because this is something that has happened with other political parties in this country you award them because they were good to you. You award them spaces in the government. Assuming now your party has gone all the way we now have a presidential candidate and he wins. Then the persons who are in your party and they lose you award them. And these people are not there for service. Is this something that you will be looking into your party? Remember I told you that our party is not owned by me or a person. The party is owned by the members. There is AGM, there is council, there is assemblies within the structure of the party. The decision is made by the council. And at the world level there is a council that decides who is going to be nominated, who is not going to be nominated. And then there is a criteria that will identify since we are new party. We cannot say we are looking out someone from running but have you been a member of the party? That is number one. You seek to run. What have you been doing within the party? The duties that we give you as a member of the party to do them have you been responsible doing these issues? So you can't just come out of nowhere and say I am most famous and I need the party nomination. It's an organized party where there is a council that looks at and evaluates your ways of life. Your service, your responsibility to your community. If you cannot do it at the world level, how will you ask for the constituency level? What have you done? So you have to climb within the ranks. And within 50 years we might say that in our party we will be able to know that young person who has been with us within 10 years how his growth has been. How he has come from being a ward coordinator to a national party, maybe a council member. So it depends on how you have planned yourself. You will be able to see a very clear channel. You can even plan yourself in life and say I want to start today as a coordinator, a ward coordinator, but in 10 years I want to see myself at the neck. Alright. I still hear you still have a clear plan of where you want to be. Now let's now get to the party. Since inception, how has the journey been and how many people do you have on board and probably how are you popularizing the party? Since inception the challenges, there are no more challenges in starting any organization. When you start a new organization you have challenges of first creating the brand, creating trust, building the funds. So we have not yet come out of the challenges. We are working step at a time. Every day we look at it and so long as our goal we know what is our aim, we change our strategies depending on the challenges that come. So we can't say this is the challenges or this is the... there is no casted stone on it. We are just open and saying we are expecting challenges and we are very open to them and we are going to face them when they come. At that time each challenges we tackle them as they come. But we have our strategy and a plan in place that we are going to towards this direction. In terms of popularizing the party, it's not about popularizing the party. As we are looking for the quality, the like-minded people and then how we lay know there is a party that exists that fits them. We have sent our recruitment agents on the ground in different wards and they are talking one-on-one right now. They are talking one-on-one with people because we want to first attract the quality before we bring in the mass. The quality means people that are going to add value to the party. People are going to participate in building the party. So our criteria is very simple. We have 1,450 wards in Kenya and in those wards we want to have... We have a campaign called... We will be launching a campaign called Aidep Mutani. Aidep Mutani is where you are allowed to start your own chapter within your area and when you start your chapter then we give you criteria to go about it and then we commission that chapter and you start doing your activity. Activity being that you have to have one social activity that you are doing in that area and one economic activity that you are doing that will benefit you as members and will also benefit the community around that region. Alright, now it gets to a point in this country where political parties will merge either to form a coalition to ask someone or just to have good numbers. We just said it to 2022. It's not just for... How many candidates will you be fronting and by the way are you looking for Kwanjia-Chini to Kenda-Jewama? Are you just have the whole thing? Like I said, this is a continuous process. We will not cast any and say that we are going to the top or we are going to start from the ground but what we are sure for we are going to start from the ground going up. Depending on the HGMs that we are going to have maybe now we have two HGMs coming 2021 and 2022 between that time we will be able to know are we strong enough to champion for the presidential candidate? Are we strong enough to champion for the governorship? But areas where we find that we are strong for the governorship we will go for it because we love members. In our books we love members and we can be able to say in this region there are 46,000 voters registered and we contain 51% of them. Why don't we go for the bigger seat? So through our membership card we will be able to see and evaluate are we in a position to go for the big seat or not? Are we in a position to even maybe form a coalition? That is a loud yes. Alright, that's a good plan and a good idea but now I want us to digress a little bit since we are talking about our politics and youth as well for a very long time we have seen our youth being abused in terms of we will campaign for people we will use all manner of activities to ensure that they are in office but as soon as they are in office then they forget about us. What would be your message to the youth who has been abused and is it about time now they change their mind and focus on these particular persons because they have been there anyway though the new ones come and I'm sure even your party will have a few that they will change because everyone comes with promises what would you be telling the youth because we just one year short of the general elections? Okay, it's a culture that I think we need to look at and see why are we even why are you promoting someone who is not going to do anything back to you you see, number one we believe are solutions all our problems can only be solved by leaders leaders cannot solve your problem you must first become a citizen active citizen member of a political party then start solving your problems when you solve your problems you not need a leader to solve you only need them to push agendas that maybe one or two agendas but when you are in organized system that's a problem with our youth for a long time we are not in any organized systems we try through CBOs but we are fighting each other when a politician A comes and gives you money in your CBO you feel more prominent and more active than the other groups you need to find a way to organize and mobilize yourself and youth and say we have one problem how can we put our problems in one place and then number one we might not have the finances but we have the numbers as youth 100 shillings from you 100 shillings from the other person is enough to put in one basket and build something for ourselves without even asking the leader to do it and these are practical examples that we have done and then it's not about promises as we are not talking about promises we have come up with a party with activities that is going to do both socially, economic and politically we keep on doing them each year I'm not going to tell you about talking about roads we are going to build your roads that's not our agenda our agenda is how do we fix the community how do we change your perception how do we help you organize how do we direct you how do we lead you to the right direction that is our agenda so rather you'll be teaching me how to fish rather than giving me the fish itself that's exactly what you're going to do alright it's the responsibility of every citizen to have the accountability and making their leaders accountable for whatever service they deliver to them do you feel that with the current political heat in our nation and even what has been happening in the past do you feel like the citizen or the electorate for that matter has been serious in their job to ensure that they make their leaders accountable how will they seek accountability from the leaders when they don't know how to so we need public education is your party coming to fix that those are the things we have in part of the programs that we are going to do and issues of accountability in issue of partnering with the right partners and giving civic education to the people those are part of the things we are going to do maybe I'll be getting to know some of the programs that people feel like we want to enroll and do we have a particular area where people know nothing about leadership integrity we call it for the first time I think if you've ever been maybe you can interrogate other parties and ask them what benefits do they give to their members have you ever heard of that as members of the party yes when you are a member you are signing you ask your party what are the benefits of being a member of that party for the first time we are bringing that in whereby when you sign in their benefits there are ten benefits of 14 benefits where you can be able to look at and say if I need these services I can get them from the offices of Haidem and this from regional, local to the world level those are the things we want to look at and if you don't have the information you can get the information from Haidem so we are looking at a one-stop shop where you can get all this information where you can get educated, you can get trained you can get the services that maybe you may not get from someone else but you can get them at Haidem wow that's something else but now as we wind up now apart from because you just mentioned corruption, corruption, corruption other than corruption what is other one thing that your party is coming to bring a change and why should someone opt for your party and not any other party because there are so many if you look at our website I don't know if I'm allowed to say the website but it's Haidem.io.ke you'll be able to see that we have solutions to what we want at the moment we are not going to talk about fixing the roads and promising you that we are going to bring water in your region the things that we are going to help you understand yourself first once you understand yourself can we do it as a community and then change whatever the problems we have as a community level then cascading it up you understand so it's not issue of we can say we have a campaign called Fixing the Nation Fixing the Nation campaign is right coming down to the family level how do we fix our understanding of the family unit to the society unit to the community, to the nation what is our responsibilities as citizens you understand then after coming back as citizens now what do we want what kind of a nation do we want that is a common goal as a collective, as a people then now we start working towards that responsibility to each of us knowing that I am good in this where can my skill be put and then we fix this issue so everyone will be working everyone will be put into task what is your we have an action plan what is your task what is your responsibility as a party member that's why we have a rotational council within the local the local words we have rotational council we have chairman, secretary general and they keep on looking at issues affecting them in that small community it might be a village you have a small number maybe it's 100 people, 50 people looking at issues affecting you then coordinating with the rights authorities and helping you to fix it I know of so many young people aspiring to be leaders and they want to do something bigger than themselves I'm hoping if they approach you they will have a space in your party however I'm giving you a chance to speak to Kenyans out there tell us whether your party that is registered and what's the future if someone comes in promise them one thing that you know you will keep first let me deal with the issue of promise I can't give you promises the promise is you to start leading yourself when you start leadership you start within you then that is the first step for us we are saying we want to change our attitude once we change our attitude what next attitude towards our country yes change our attitude towards our country do you even love your country first of all many people want to be politicians not many people want to be leaders our party is giving you opportunity our doors are open every time that we are going to make sure that we have offices in each and every word that is our plan through our IDP Mtani campaigns we are making sure that we are going to have each and every office in each and every of the 1450 words and we want you to go there and feel at home feel like a member go ask what can I do don't ask what can we do for you ask what can we do if you have a skill you know many youth are saying they are jobless jobless but there is opportunity because the question we normally we don't ask is what can I do we normally ask what can someone do for me so this time we are giving you an opportunity to ask what can you do because this is a vehicle it has so many parts that need to be dealt with and you have opportunity to put your skill in it so everyone is welcome in the party alright just a quick one what do I require to enroll what you just need to be a Kenyan citizen above 18 years old you have your ID card you are welcome to be a member though we are going to go even further and get it down to create clubs for the young people where we are going to create mentorship program to mentor younger people in the high school who perhaps may want to be in the leadership space and politics space in the future so we are not just going to wait until you are 18 we are going to prepare you before you are 18 you already know your roadmap to your life alright thank you so much I am wishing you the very best in this and I am sure if this is what you have I kind of feel like you will have to achieve whatever plans you have ahead he has been my guest Cleve Fumbaya he is a political party leader ideal democratic and economic party thank you so much a value of becoming up to tell you what we talked about earlier we talked about this we talked about this I don't know, I also want to hear what that means thank you so much for Kipika's company my name is Edereva Hillary good morning