{UAH} Pojim/WBK:: Standard Digital News - Kenya : Anti-Waiguru crusade tip of the iceberg
|
10:05 PM |
No comments |
Standard Digital News - Kenya : Anti-Waiguru crusade tip of the iceberg
Last week something interesting happened on President Uhuru Kenyatta's timeline on Facebook. The posting in question as you may have seen before it was pulled down, was Uhuru sharing 'news' that, 'Today I witnessed the swearing in of Dr Nelson Githinji as the new Director-General of National Youth Service.'
The President and his other friends did not of course realise how badly this was going to be taken by the United Republican Party (URP).
The unstated fact was that this was to be seen as the President's signature to the removal of Mr Kiplimo Rugut from NYS, as evidenced by the 'tribal' comments that followed.
So this quickly became a 'digital' war between members of Kikuyu and Kalenjin communities, and I guess it gave the President a random sample of what is actually happening in the two political tectonic plates that form the Jubilee Coalition: Mr William Ruto's URP (largely Rift Valley) and The National Alliance (Mount Kenya Region).
The thrust of the arguments by the Kalenjins was: Uhuru was playing the tribal card the way his father, Mzee Kenyatta did; Ruto was just a minority shareholder in the Jubilee conglomerate whose voice will always be drowned at the Annual General Meeting; and lastly, that Kalenjins should like CORD-friendly communities smell the coffee, accept and move on!
To drive the point home, the tribal origins of Uhuru's recent appointments did the rounds.
Uhuru's tribal block reacted with the outrageous one that "you (Ruto and his Kalenjins) were 'bought fully'" and so hiyo biashara iliisha kitambo (that payoff was concluded long ago).
Others reminded Ruto that what was happening to him, and which will probably get more clearer to him as days go by, was that this was what befell Raila Odinga when he agreed "to a lopsided" power-sharing deal with the cunning Mwai Kibaki in 2008.
But as the brickbats flew, there were sober comments from Uhuru's side, largely arguing that the President, in his actions, was turning back the clock of ethnic relations in the country.
They asked him why for the sake of a few who benefit, he was casting the Kikuyu again as politically selfish, untrustworthy and manipulative.
There were also Kalenjins who asked what the community stood to gain from a handful of public jobs and advised that Ruto's people should instead lobby for development projects like roads, schools, hospitals, electricity and water.
By the time State House pulled down the posting, it had attracted 4,500 reactions.
If this were idle banter, even as assurances were given by Uhuru's apparatchiks led by besieged Devolution Cabinet Secretary Anne Waiguru that Rugut would be given another job, three things that happened next would define where we are probably headed.
The first was that over 100 MPs, largely and strangely from TNA signed to support a motion seeking to have Parliament censure Waiguru – which, if successful, would then blackmail the President into asking her to resign.
The architect, Igembe South MP Mithika Linturi, gave the following grounds: gross misconduct and gross violation of the Constitution.
Questions were asked why if Waiguru was the untouchable member of Cabinet, (who I last week analogously pointed out as commanding the respect we accord to naked electricity wires) why would TNA MPs play with fire?
The answer would come out in the second thing that happened, but let us go to the third before we are done with Waiguru for this week. Rift Valley MPs, the politically correct way of avoiding saying Kalenjin MPs, secretly met in Nairobi, and the subject was assessment of their shareholding in Jubilee Government against their representation in the "boardroom".
The verdict was that the ratio was far below the 50-50. Does Raila's nusu-mkate (half a loaf) lamentation ring a bell? What poked my ribs was the whisper that indeed the MPs and senators candidly conceded to each other that back home, 'the ground was bad'', which is a euphemism for hostility at the grassroots. One, in fact, told them that they were being asked to speak "like Nandi Hills MP Alfred Keter!"
This particular Keter – alongside Mr Isaac Ruto – if you remember, raised some dust about corruption and tribalism in Jubilee, but Mr William Ruto repulsed the two with the disdain one does while swatting at a fly on your coat lapel.
But the two most important things that happened at the meeting was the decision to support the motion against Waiguru and the lamentation that Ruto was no longer accessible and that his aides were no longer facilitators, but mean gatekeepers turning everyone away.
The third was to do with the President and the fallout over the Anglo Leasing payments. Though directed at Odinga's party, Kenyatta had told off his critics and asked them to wait for him to finish his term. I hope URP listened: "Shut up until my five years end!"
Mr William Ruto, who for entirely different reasons was said to have okayed Rugut's removal, but Waiguru rushed to fill the position without asking for a name, has chosen to remain silent.
This can only mean one thing; he does not want to be seen to be the godfather of the new war on Waiguru, because he knows only a few people in the country have the capacity to mobilise such numbers against one of the President's closest confidants, and he, according to conspiracy theorists, could easily pass for a suspect.
The bottom line is, Ruto faces a tricky situation; how to manage his relationship with his boss but still keep his supporters happy especially given that The Hague glue may be thawing.
But the President faces two tricky situations: stemming the groundswell in the Rift Valley, keeping Ruto on the radar as he doles out the State pie in the direction he prefers; deciding to save or not to save Waiguru about whom we reserve the right to ask whether she a victim of a proxy war.
The writer is Group Managing Editor (Print) at The Standard.
ktanui@standardmedia.co.ke
0 comments:
Post a Comment