How Uhuru Kenyatta allies plan to counter William Ruto

President Uhuru Kenyatta on Friday hosted a Jubilee Mt Kenya legislators’ caucus to plot on how to rejuvenate the party and dismantle the networks his deputy has built in the mountain region.

At the meeting, the leaders raised concern on the difficulty of selling ODM leader Raila Odinga in the region and pleaded with the President to directly get involved and give direction.

Interviews with various MPs who attended the meeting revealed that the President instructed his allies to begin revamping the Jubilee party from the grassroots as part of preparations for the 2022 General Election.

Emphasis will be on rejuvenating the party in their respective constituencies ahead of a national and country-wide campaign to strengthen Jubilee, the meeting decided.

The leaders, sources said, were also asked to drop their calls for the resignation of Jubilee party secretary-general Raphel Tuju and vice-chairman David Murathe from the ruling party.

“The places where people want to feel the party is from location, ward and branch level. This is the core business of all leaders. MPs have to go to their constituencies and build the party and make it strong down there. This is something we agreed on when we met the President,” said one of the Kieleweke MPs.

“The President met people who spearheaded Kiambaa by-election. He had promised to meet them after the polls,” the source added.

The leaders raised questions with the President on the candidature of Mr Odinga, whom they say would be difficult to sell in the mountain. This is not the first time the central Kenya legislators have brought up this issue though Mr Murathe says that selling Mr Odinga should not be an issue. “We are the ones who demonised him. We can undo that,” he said.

Central Kenya leaders

While campaigning for Mr Odinga remains an issue for the central Kenya leaders, there was a general concern that Dr Ruto had made great inroads and they proposed a scorched-earth strategy to undo his networks.

Read: Mt Kenya politicians panic over Raila endorsement for President

President Kenyatta is understood to have undertaken to visit the Mount Kenya region to give the community direction. The DP has on his side a number of central Kenya MPs who have broken away from the President and have been campaigning for Dr Ruto and his UDA party.

Sources told the Sunday Nation that the lawmakers will be meeting the Head of State in the next two weeks to give a report on how far they have reached in revamping the party.

The Kiambaa by-election where Jubilee was humiliated by UDA was spearheaded by National Assembly Leader of Majority Amos Kimunya, Nyeri Town MP Ngunjiri Wambugu, Kanini Kega of Kieni, Murang’a woman representative Sabina Chege and Jude Njomo of Kiambu, among others. In another clearest indication yet that President Kenyatta is keen on uniting fractured opposition, the Friday meeting also agreed that Kieleweke MPs have to continue backing the Head of State in his agenda of uniting the country as he is set to retire next year.

“Our agenda is one: bringing the country together as the President has always said. In the next two weeks, we will be meeting him so that we start strategising on next year’s election,” said the source.

Jubilee secretariat

“Yes, there are people who have been pushing for the removal of Mr Tuju and Mr Murathe but I do not think they are the main problem in the party. A party without a presidential candidate always has a problem,” he added.

Both Mr Tuju and Mr Murathe did not attend the meeting which was a Jubilee MPs’ caucus. But yesterday, Mr Murathe told the Sunday Nation that the Jubilee secretariat has no problem with the proposed re-invigoration of the party.

“This is about their (MPs) careers. If they want to strengthen the party they should be more involved. We have no problem. In any case we have started engaging with the parliamentary leadership. We will also be engaging the actual members. But they need to participate from wherever they are in re-energising the party,” said Mr Murathe.

Nominated MP Maina Kamanda, who attended the State House meeting, said that part of the agreements reached were that plans to remove both Mr Tuju and Mr Murathe should be shelved.

Mr Kamanda, while being cagey on the exact details of the meeting, said the feeling among those present was that since both Mr Tuju and Mr Murathe were appointees of the President, it is only the Head of State who can sanction their removal from office.

“They were put there by the President himself. No one can remove them. It is only the President who can do that because the duo work for him,” he told the Sunday Nation.

Equitable resource allocation

Mr Wambugu said the Friday meeting, which he attended, agreed to rally leaders together in readiness for the 2022 contest, as well as find ways of regaining the ground the Jubilee party had lost in the Mt Kenya and across the country.

“The President was clear that the Jubilee political party belongs to us as the next generation of leaders. He said that if and where we want changes, they will be made. It was agreed that the issue of who we will sell as the post-2022 President is going to be driven purely by the interests of the region; and who can be trusted to deliver on them. The interests of the region are equitable resource allocation, equal representation, access to appropriate government opportunities among others,” said Mr Wambugu.

“So the process of getting to a candidate in 2022 is two-told. First we all agree on what are our interests are. Second; we agree on what amongst those seeking the presidency post Uhuru, can deliver our interests to us,” he added.

Other points that came up during the meeting included a plea to President Kenyatta to directly get involved and give direction to the central region. That should start with re-organising the Jubilee Prty

Yesterday, Jubilee party deputy secretary-general Joshua Kutuny said they had begun filling positions that had been left vacant after the expulsion of leaders allied to DP Ruto.

The Cherang’any MP said the move is part of the wider scheme of making the party more vibrant with a number of offices set to be opened across the country, including in Wajir County where the roll-out will begin.

Dwindling fortunes

“We have rolled out identification of office bearers in every county, offices like in Wajir and other regions have been open and they are up and running. As a party we are focusing on consolidating our base, making it vibrant and supporting the President's agenda,” Mr Kutuny told the Sunday Nation.

The absence of Mr Kenyatta from his party activities has been attributed to its dwindling fortunes.

Eldas MP Adan Keynan, who is also the Secretary of the Jubilee Coalition Joint Parliamentary Group, has previously alluded to the fact that the absence of the Head of State, could be attributed to the internal and external rebellion in the party.

“If President Kenyatta was seriously interested in having the Jubilee Party organised and disciplined, it would be so.

As it is now, Jubilee is ill-prepared to mount a formidable challenge against its opponents as it did in the 2017 election. It is unlikely that President Kenyatta will heavily invest his time, energy and resources in rallying Jubilee's candidates to victory in 2022,” Mr Keynan said.

And just two weeks ago, leaders allied to the President led by Ms Chege and Mr Kega had said that leadership changes, both at the grassroots and at the regional and national level, were important in reviving the party’s fortunes, a move they asked the National Delegates Conference (NDC) to sanction.

Already it has emerged that lieutenants of the Head of State have embarked on rejuvenating the party with the intentions of blocking Dr Ruto-linked UDA from getting a pie of its support-base.

[email protected]