Crash shattered Saitoti's planned London trip

By ISAAC ONGIRI

Had he not perished in last Sunday’s chopper crash, Cabinet minister Prof George Saitoti would be hard at work planning how to strengthen his bid to succeed Kibaki.

A look at his political diary suggests unfinished business as the workaholic minister, who was one of President Kibaki’s most trusted men, was revving up his presidential campaign.

Investigations by The Standard on Saturday revealed that Saitoti was organising a weeklong trip to London where he would have opened a PNU office and met the Kenyan Diaspora in the United Kingdom.

That trip, whose departure date was scheduled in the late minister’s diary for June 18, would have been his first political trip abroad.

After the London trip Saitoti would have flown to the United States for a similar mission in July.

To help with the planning, Saitoti dispatched his confidant, former Cabinet minister Maina Kamanda, to Washington to coordinate the trips on Friday last week, just a day before he met his painful demise.

But Kamanda, who arrived in the US on Saturday, was forced to fly back to Kenya on Monday, moments after he learnt of Saitoti’s sudden death.

“I met him on Thursday when he briefed me before I left for the US. I had private engagement for a day followed by a raft of activities to arrange his visits both in the US and the UK,” Kamanda said.

Kamanda was scheduled to later fly to the UK to coordinate the minister’s meetings there before joining him for a joint ride home on Tuesday June 19.

Just last week Saitoti had hired two political scientists said to have been strategic in the Obama’s campaign team.

Saitoti had signed an elaborate contract with the two technocrats who were to boost his campaign secretariat in Kenya. The two political thinkers flew back to the US last week where they expected Saitoti to link up with them before finally shifting to Kenya.

The strength of his campaign, which many pundits had underrated, would have taken shape from August when he planned to officially launch his presidential bid, says Kamanda.

Secrets of the unseen power of Saitoti’s political machine began to spill just after his death when former President Daniel Moi revealed he was working to boost the late minister’s candidature.

Election plan

“I was trying to help him fight for presidency especially in the Rift Valley. We have been talking regularly,” Moi revealed on Wednesday.

The revelation of Saitoti’s 2013 election plan is a pointer to a strong election strategy whose outcome would have been very interesting to watch.

Peter ole Sapalan, a close associate of the late Saitoti, said they were to meet Kalenjin professionals today in an elaborate political plan he was laying to make inroads in the Rift Valley. On Monday, Saitoti was set to meet a group of leaders from Meru to finalise arrangements for political rallies in various parts of the Eastern region, which he had set for Wednesday.

“We planned a robust political campaign that would have shocked this country and those who doubted him. Death indeed is a cruel robber,” Sapalan said.

Sapalan escaped death narrowly after the police chopper he had moved to after Saitoti asked him to swap places with Public Works Minister Chris Obure crashed in Kapsabet in May 2009.

On Saturday after Saitoti jetted back to Nairobi from Mombasa, he called Sapalan, who had travelled to Kilgoris asking whether he could accompany him to Ndhiwa for a funds drive at Orwa Ojode’s rural home.

“It was late on Saturday and I told him it would be difficult since they were to leave by 8am,” said Sapalan. But Sapalan still left Kilgoris early, trying to dash to Nairobi to link up with the minister.

He however still arrived late only to hear that Saitoti and his Assistant Minister Ojode had been killed in a helicopter crash