ODM has dismissed a viral document claiming it struck a seat-sharing deal with UDA for Coast region governor, senator and women rep seats, calling it fake news amid ongoing coalition talks ahead of 2027.
A document purporting to lay out a detailed seat-sharing agreement between the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) and the United Democratic Alliance (UDA) for the Coast region went viral this week — only for ODM to swiftly shoot it down as fabricated.
In a notice issued on Monday, September 1, ODM flagged the document as fake, stating plainly that it did not originate from the party. "Treat this as fake news," the party said, urging the public to rely only on its official website and verified communication channels for accurate information.
What the Fake Document Claimed
Titled "Agreement with UDA in Coast Region," the document claimed the two parties had already settled on which side would field candidates for governor, senator and women representative seats across all six Coast counties. According to the version of the document reported by Kenyans.co.ke, ODM would retain the governor seats in Mombasa and Kilifi, while UDA would take the governor's seat in Kwale, Tana River, Lamu and Taita Taveta, with UDA also claimed to be sweeping all three top seats — governor, senator and women representative — in Tana River, Lamu and Taita Taveta.
Notably, other outlets reporting on the same viral document described a slightly different breakdown, with some accounts suggesting ODM would hold all three Kilifi seats while splitting Mombasa and Kwale seat-by-seat with UDA. The inconsistency across reports underscores just how murky and unverified the document's actual contents were — a further reason ODM's dismissal matters, regardless of which specific version circulated.
Why the Timing Matters
The fake document didn't emerge in a vacuum. It surfaced weeks after ODM and UDA agreed to work together toward the 2027 General Election under the broad-based coalition, with both sides setting up specialised committees to hammer out a formal pre-election pact, a shared manifesto, and a power-sharing framework. Leaders on both sides have been meeting to iron out those details, and the Coast region in particular has become one of the thorniest sticking points.
ODM has been pushing hard for "zoning" — an arrangement where UDA would agree not to field candidates in ODM strongholds, the Coast chief among them. UDA, for its part, has consistently rejected that idea, with Secretary-General Hassan Omar and other UDA figures insisting the party will field candidates in every seat nationwide, arguing that multi-party democracy shouldn't be restricted by informal non-compete zones.
That tension has already spilled into public view at the Coast, where local leaders and even ordinary residents have pushed back on the idea of seats being "given away" without a vote. In Kwale, for instance, a resident publicly confronted Mining CS Hassan Joho over fears that a national-level deal could sideline ODM's presence in the county altogether, while in Mombasa, UDA's own Hassan Omar has declared interest in the governorship currently held by ODM's Abdulswamad Nassir — a sign that even within the coalition framework, local ambitions are complicating any tidy seat-sharing math.
The Bigger Picture
With that backdrop of high-stakes, unresolved negotiations, a slickly produced but fake document claiming to have "settled" the Coast's political future was always going to spread fast — and it did. ODM's quick denial suggests the party is keen to avoid the confusion, or worse, the false expectations, that such a document could create among supporters and coastal leaders alike.
For now, no formal seat-sharing framework for the Coast has been made public by either party. Discussions between ODM and UDA committees are reportedly ongoing, and given how contentious the zoning question has already proven, any real agreement — when and if it comes — is unlikely to be announced quietly.