By MWANIKI MUNUHE
Kenya: The United Republican Party has rejected a plan to have a joint political operations centre for the Jubilee coalition, The Standard On Saturday can report.
The plan included closing down the secretariats of both Deputy President William Ruto’s URP and President Uhuru Kenyatta’s The National Alliance (TNA) and opening a joint secretariat at the Jubilee House in Westlands.
TNA’s secretariat is based at Promiso building in Nairobi’s Eastlands area. URP has its secretariat offices in Lavington. Although TNA secretary general Onyango Oloo officially launched a Jubilee secretariat on Thursday, URP is still hesitant. Its officials did not even attend the unveiling of the Jubilee Centre. In fact, URP chairman Francis Ole Kaparo (pictured) said his party had not been invited to the function.
“We are waiting, as we speak,” he said. “I am in the village, we were not invited. Did you see anybody from URP in that meeting? Let’s wait and see what happens.” URP had earlier agreed that there was need to run a joint secretariat. The party’s top brass reportedly developed cold feet and began asking for more time to think the matter over a week to the launch of the secretariat. The two coalition partners are scouting for a spokesperson for the secretariat and are interviewing candidates. There are reports they have already settled on former garsen legislator Danson Mungatana. The ceremony to open the Jubilee centre was attended by TNA officials only. They included Onyango Oloo, new TNA executive director Joseph Mathai and director of communications Machel Waikenda. Former TNA executive director Winnie Guchu, who worked for the defunct Interim Independent Electoral Commission, has since lost the position.
Similarly, TNA chairman Johnson Sakaja is still fighting to retain his party chairmanship after the party’s National Oversight Board ousted him. However, a crisis meeting at the Jubilee Centre on Thursday decided to delay the process of unveiling Mungatana until next Tuesday. This was after two senior officers from the Office of the President called a Jubilee Centre official over the matter just as journalists were breaking the news. We have established the callers were a senior officer in the directorate of political affairs and a senior official in the political advisory unit. Their instructions were to stop the unveiling of Mungatana and instead identify a topical issue that would be the discussion point with journalists at the unveiling.
Sources at the Jubilee secretariat told The Standard On Saturday that URP insiders fear that a joint secretariat will limit the party’s independence in running political activities. Oloo, however, said that the party could not proceed to unveil Mungatana because there are “pending issues”, which include interviewing other candidates. Contacted for a comment, Waikenda said: “We are working towards a joint secretariat because… we need some form of uniformity as we implement the Jubilee manifesto.
It is our intention to run the affairs of the Jubilee Government, especially political affairs, in a coordinated manner.” Both President Kenyatta and Deputy President William Ruto have been quiet about their respective parties amid growing battles within Kenyatta’s TNA party.
