Jubilee MPs have let the President down

NAIROBI: President Uhuru Kenyatta must be feeling deserted at his hour of need. Jubilee troops from his Central Kenya backyard have betrayed him. They haven’t demonstrated loyalty to him, at least in the raging saga of his Devolution and Planning Cabinet Secretary Anne Waiguru.

If kidnappers hold your child hostage, and threaten to take such the child’s life, would you say they are hell bent on harassing your child or yourself? This is the scenario President Kenyatta finds himself in. To me, the mob lynching subjected to Ms Waiguru from various quarters isn’t just a fight about corruption.

It is a well-orchestrated scheme to hit at the larger Jubilee Government and the person of the President. Waiguru’s exit will be used by Jubilee government’s critics as a clear demonstration that corruption is rife within Jubilee government.

The innuendos being bandied about in social media and rallies over the Waiguru saga explain why a fight against Waiguru is not just a fight against her as a person. The anticipated output of the whole scheme is that when you bring Waiguru down, you will have pricked the President’s political faculties.

This is the script Jubilee MPs from Central Kenya have inadvertently failed to read. The President has been quick to ask public officials implicated in corruption to step aside. Four CSs are already out due to this directive. This is because they knew the President had known something that made their stay in government untenable, at least until investigations are done and concluded.

By failing to crack the whip on Waiguru, the President must be convinced that his indefatigable CS isn’t guilty as charged. He has the machinery to conclude whether on the face of the allegations against Ms Waiguru, she needs to step down.

The larger section of Jubilee MPs has backed the Opposition in calling for Waiguru’s exit. They have failed the loyalty test. They have let the President down. They cannot join the Opposition to wreck and ridicule the President’s authority on his Cabinet and still claim they are steadfastly supporting him.

Like a house of cards, they have caved in to pressure from the Opposition, squarely indicating they do not have the wherewithal to defend the Jubilee leadership.
The leadership of the Central Kenya Parliamentary Group is lacking in political pragmatism that would make it an integral player in the re-election of President Kenyatta. They are too cowardly.
As an opposition MP, it is not lost on me that some of the development projects undertaken by the Devolution Ministry are irresistible for any elected leader. If implemented fully, they will have political implication in the 2017 polls.

As such, therefore, my colleagues in the opposition would want any such progress to fail so that they can have material to go round the country discrediting the government and offering them as an alternative.

In light of this, Jubilee MPs must be wary of this plot. The spontaneous pronouncement against Waiguru indicates some subtle anger about maybe the level and frequency of the attention they get from the President.
The President should thus seek to find out why his men back home got the audacity to publicly take a political line contrary to his opinion and which subjects him to ridicule by his detractors in the Opposition.