Cracks in Jubilee as elders caution against joint UhuRuto vote hunt

The powerful Kikuyu Council of Elders (KCE) wants President Uhuru Kenyatta and Deputy President William Ruto to stop campaigning together.

The Council has advised the leaders to hunt for votes separately for strategic reasons.

The feeling within the elected leaders from Central who spoke to The Standard on Sunday is that the DP’s overly aggressive campaigns may have cost him votes in his Rift Valley backyard.

They fear that the DP is building a polarising image which may work against Jubilee in neutral grounds such as Western and the Coast.

The elders also disclosed that the elected leadership of the region want a clear agreement between Central and Rift Valley drawn up ahead of the election and be allowed direct engagement with the President.

“The council has received reports from all county branches and now resolves the political pact with Deputy President, William Ruto, needs to be revisited and reviewed,” Council chairman Wachira Kiago announced after a daylong KCE National Governing Council meeting in Nakuru on Friday.

The Council claimed that there is a void left by the Central and Nairobi Parliamentary Caucus, which was chaired by Dagoretti South MP Dennis Waweru. The caucus was allegedly intimidated into silence by the Jubilee Party politics. The rumblings in Jubilee over the hand-picking of regional leaders for Kenyatta’s presidential campaign appears to have jolted the Council to vent on behalf of Central political figures.

“The sentiments are that the new Jubilee line-ups largely favour the DP and his networks at our expense. Put differently, the DP owns the whole Jubilee political edifice and its future is intertwined with his future,” a Central MP, who sought anonymity said.

During the Friday meeting in Nakuru, KCE vowed to side-step the official Jubilee line-ups and to commission its own campaign teams “because we have realised there are people out to make President Kenyatta a one-term President.”

“We are looking at prospects of invoking unprecedented voter apathy in our stronghold if these matters are not addressed. The truth is, we are doing this in the best interests of our people,” another MP told The Standard on Sunday.

Before the meeting, Mr Kiago had, on behalf of a section of leaders, distributed a social media post demanding separate campaigns for the top Jubilee leadership. It was picked up by local radio stations and formed part of discussions in talk-shows and in social media platforms.

“The Jubilee government should not take NASA for granted. They must work harder and this time Kenyatta should solicit for votes alone. We know why....” he wrote without elaboration.

He sent a similar post a week before when the duo toured Ukambani: “It is now clear the President needs to change tack and start traveling the country alone to solicit for re-election votes and dispatch the DP back to North Rift to reclaim what Jubilee has lost.

Unless one was blind, the Bomet meeting (Isaac Ruto’s homecoming from South Africa) was an eye opener. Who is not hearing the grapevine from our region (Central)? It is not right for the two to continue sticking together on the campaign trail...”

The Council asked the President to “move with speed” and update the Kikuyu community on the status of his pact with the DP.

KCE observed that the 2013 pact between the duo “was yet to deliver on its central pillar of restoring peace and reconciliation in the Rift Valley” and that fears of recurrence of violence in the run up to 2017 abound.

In an interview with The Standard on Sunday, Kiago said the council had received complaints from Kenyatta’s core support base that they were unable to access him. He said the people in Central, Nairobi and “diaspora” are seething over state of affairs at the top.

“We have decided to go public so that people can determine who should take responsibility should 2017 end in a negative result. People can see several blocks that supported President Kenyatta in 2013 have shifted support. These are not KCE issues, they are people issues” he said. The leaders we spoke to were unanimous that unlike 2013 when Jubilee was defined by a popular anti-ICC euphoria, 2017 must be more structured.

KCE resolved to visit former President Moi, to thank him for preparing Kenyatta for the leadership of the country. They will also be seeking his guidance in finding a permanent solution to the elusive peace among the Rift Valley communities.

Although it is a fact that the former Head of State plucked Kenyatta from obscurity and placed him at the core of national politics, analysts are more likely to discuss the visit in the context of current political happenings which have placed a section of the Moi family at loggerheads with the DP.

The Nakuru meeting was attended by KCE secretary general Peter Munga, organising secretary James Nene and Bahati MP Kimani Ngunjiri who is also a founding member of the Council, .

The choice of the venue for the meeting has all the hallmarks of the underlying succession struggles and fears within the central Kenya leadership. Others view it as an apparent warning shot that the DP’s role in the re-election campaign was not as prime as in 2013 elections.

Mr Ngunjiri, the only MP who spoke on record, discussed the undercurrents informing KCE moves: “We (central Kenya elected leaders) no longer meet or discuss any serious matters because we are divided between those perceived loyal or disloyal to the DP.

Since we waged a collective war on alcoholism and some of us ended up being taken to court with criminal cases, we’ve not met again over any important matter.”

The MP said the unveiling of Jubilee has only made things worse “because it has been imposed on us from above like prescriptive medication.” This, he says, is the feeling across the board in Central and its diaspora. The KCE has organised prayers in Kirinyaga County on New Year’s Eve where it plans to make a major declaration.