How partyless leaders worked to build winning team with URP

Jubilee Presidential candidate Uhuru Kenyatta of TNA and his running mate William Ruto of URP lift their hands in a show of unity in 2013. [File, Standard]

There's no worse humiliation for a politician than to be told you're not welcome to a political party you helped build. ODM tagged us "party rebels". The media called us "Ruto allies".

As the clock ticked towards the 2013 elections, we knew we had to get a political party of our own. A political party gives you networks, allies and supporters around one idea, one bigger vision. We had a vision for national unity and reconciliation.

We agreed to talk to the United Democratic Movement, the party that had brought Prof Hellen Sambili to Parliament. At first, UDM welcomed us with open arms. Ruto became the de facto party leader.

We went around the country popularising the party with William, Isaac Ruto, Charles Keter, Joshua Kutuny, and scores of other politicians who had jumped out of ODM with us. We used tiny electoral victories to magnify the party's presence.

New home

For instance, when two councillors in Timau in Tharaka Nithi and Igoji in Meru won civic seats in by-elections, we spent a weekend in that part of the country popularising the party. Isaac even cheekily said we had run away from the dictatorship in ODM and had decided to carve the 'O' into a 'U' to ensure we had a genuinely democratic party.

Then on July 20, 2011, it all came tumbling down. ODM sued us - William, Isaac, Keter, Kutuny and I - for breaching the Political Parties Act. We knew that James Orengo and Fred Gumo had spoken to Martin ole Kamwaro, the secretary-general of UDM, to hound us out of our new home.

They had met at Sankara Hotel in Nairobi's Westlands neighbourhood. Kamwaro subsequently locked us out of UDM, and worked to assist ODM to kick us out and render us partyless with the elections around the corner.

I called Kamwaro and asked him why he was going behind our backs over party membership. "Young man, let us talk about it tomorrow," he told me. "I will see you at the Intercontinental Hotel." In the swanky lobby of the Intercontinental Hotel, calm piano music playing just a few decibels louder than the collective buzz of dozens of conversations, I saw Kamwaro, sitting in one corner, his back to the wall, facing the door. I was with William Ruto and Charles Keter.

He appeared rattled, annoyed, ready for war. I didn't have time for niceties. We were bankrolling the party; so he owed us a bit of loyalty, some honesty.

Legal facts

"Why are you kicking us out of the party?" I asked.

"But you are members of ODM," Kamwaro stated the legal fact.

All along, we had been paying rent for the UDM offices in Lavington. We had even branded the offices and popularised the party. Ruto had even publicly announced that he would vie for the presidency on the UDM ticket.

We had even planned a national delegates meeting for the party, and proudly announced it at a press conference.

Now Kamwaro was calling us strangers, effectively rendering us partyless.

"Are you serious bwana?" I pushed.

Kamwaro looked at me straight in the eye, with those piercing eyes, leaned forward and repeated: "You are members of ODM. You are not members of UDM. Therefore, you have no business with my party or what I do with it".

Ruto looked at Kamwaro. He didn't utter a word. "Let's go boss," Ruto said, pulling me from my seat. Keter, too, rose. We walked away. It was humiliating.

Inside ODM, Raila realised the miscalculation. He was facing terrible political optics, as a persecutor, the dictator that he was, trying to force even those who had run away from him to pledge loyalty to his party. He ordered the suit to kick us out of the party to be withdrawn. Jakoyo Midiwo, Raila's cousin and then Gem MP, was mad with the ODM secretariat. The suit died.

Without a party and with the elections around the corner, we had to act fast. I dragged Charles Keter and Isaac Ruto to the Registrar of Political Parties to reserve the United Republican Party (URP) as the name of our new party.

Party approval

Since we had the backing of the people in government, the Registrar, Lucy Ndung'u, quickly gave us an interim certificate, showing she had approved the name.

It was now upon us to do the paperwork to actually set up the party infrastructure on the ground.

I flew with Keter to Eldoret and proceeded to Ruto's house in the posh Elgon View Estate to deliver the good news. It was Christmas season and everyone was back in the village or away on holiday with their family.

I had planned to fly back to Nairobi that evening but Ruto told me that he wanted to go to Kisumu to visit Shakeel Shabbir, the ODM MP of Asian descent who had made history when he won an elective seat in the predominantly Luo region.

We left Kisumu back to Eldoret, and then I flew to Nairobi. I then went to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, for my annual pilgrimage.

I came back in January and we convened the core group of URP founding members. I was with William Ruto, Isaac Ruto (Chepalungu), Ekwee Ethuro (Turkana Central), Mahmoud Ali Mohamed (Moyale), Charles Keter (Belgut), Ali Mwakwere (Matuga), William Cheptumo (Baringo North) and a young man called Nixon Korir, who was doing the running around.

We sat at Biblica Conference Centre on Dennis Pritt Road. For five days, we cobbled together the party constitution using a draft that Isaac Ruto had put together. I had appointed myself the URP spokesman. For all his rabble rousing, Isaac is a very intelligent, hardworking gentleman.

He burned the midnight oil to ensure all the paperwork was done. We would later spar over funds to county governments - I told him hii pesa si ya mama yako bwana (this money is not your mother's). That episode taught me that Isaac is a man with his heart in the right place.

He fights for the public good, and it is very hard for anyone to cut corners with him. He is one of the few principled politicians in Kenya.

We agreed on the colours - yellow, red and black, and even the symbol, a horn of a cow, because we wanted to appeal to the farmers in the Rift Valley and the huge community of pastoralists stretching from Lokitaung in Turkana in the northern border with South Sudan, to Lokichogio in the south on the border with Tanzania.

Registration hurdles

This was a huge constituency that had been ignored for years. However, when we took the horn to the Registrar of Political Parties, she informed us that the Grand National Union Party of Nderitu Gachagua and Mwangi Kiunjuri had already taken the horn.

We started debating about using the milk gourd. Right there in the boardroom of the Registrar's office, with Charles, Isaac, William and I, Kiunjuri walked in. He found us debating about a milk gourd.

"You are also here to register a party?" I teased him. "No, I don't want this horn. I want to return it and pick a jembe, a hoe. I want to appeal to the farmers," Kiunjuri said. "Why?" we asked, alarmed.

"You know, I come from Central Province, and we have been terrorised by Mungiki. They use the horn to sniff their snuff. Now, if I use it, the propaganda will finish me," Kiunjuri said.

Kiunjuri once worked as a matatu tout; therefore, any association with Mungiki, the Mafia-like extortionist and murderous gang that terrorised people in Central Kenya and in Nairobi, mainly getting revenue from matatu crews, would sink his political career.

Rejecting the horn was a smart move. We gladly took the horn and registered it as a party symbol.

Target demographic

We were targeting a very different political demographic. We came up with the party slogan, Kusema na Kutenda, to do what you say (or walk the talk), which Ruto borrowed from one of the leading lights of multiparty democracy Kenneth Matiba, whose slogan was Kuuga na gwika, which translates into "doing what you say".

With the paperwork done, we got the greenlight to operate as a party. Ruto said we had to launch our party to much fanfare. It was not going to be a low-key affair. We had to do it in style, announce our presence and arrival. We launched the party in January 2012 at the Bomas of Kenya, with about 3,000 delegates and constituency. co-ordinators from every corner of the country.

The next legal hurdle to cross was the need for 1,000 members in each of 24 out of the country's 47 counties. It was the minimum for a full registration. Every person was given a target of about 3,000 members, but some of those who signed to join our party were already members of other parties and the Registrar rejected their signatures, sending us back to the ground. We doggedly worked hard until in the end, we got fresh members, 1,000 in each of the 24 counties. It took us five months.

With the party set, we began looking for officials to run it. We picked Nixon Korir as the executive director. We wanted a father figure for the chairperson, someone who readily commanded respect among the pastoralists.

I asked Hussein Maalim, the man I ousted in Dujis, to lead the party. He declined. We then settled on former Speaker Francis ole Kaparo, who turned out to be a complicated man to deal with despite our full support.

The prayer rallies continued. Uhuru was also strategising on forming a new party.

Unsellable Kanu

He knew that Kanu had historical baggage and was therefore unsellable in his political stronghold, the Mt Kenya region. Worse, he was a weak politician with a big name and a lot of money, but without a political stranglehold over the region similar to what Ruto had in the Rift Valley.

Uhuru appropriated culture. He went to Mukurwe wa Nyagathanga, the Kikuyu shrine in Murang'a, to be crowned the Mt Kenya political kingpin, an empty ritual with huge political significance. It was meant to consolidate his base.

We were all politicians engaging in a careful risky dance, sizing each other up, knowing that those we sought to court had other tricks up their sleeves.

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