{UAH} WBK/ Pojim as I was saying.....IS IT BREAKUP TIME FOR JUBILEE? | The Star
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IS IT BREAKUP TIME FOR JUBILEE?
It was the week President Uhuru Kenyatta visited the US for the second time in consecutive months, this time for his maiden address to the UN General Assembly.
Unlike the last time – President Barack Obama's US-Africa Leadership Summit in early August – he was accompanied by First Lady Margaret Kenyatta.
What's more, Margaret had a separate programme of events that included the High Level Dialogue of First Ladies on Maternal and Newborn Health Beyond 2014 with a Focus on Adolescent Girls. She delivered the keynote address at the express and personal invitation of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
The invite was based on Margaret's own maternal healthcare initiative, the Beyond Zero campaign, now being rolled out across all 47 counties. She also featured prominently at the Elephant Protection Declaration event, also in New York.
International credentials, trouble at home
Meanwhile, back at the political ranch in Kenya, even as the First Couple finally burnished their international credentials on the UN's global stage, all is not well.
This was also the week the clearest signs yet emerged that the ruling Jubilee coalition of President Kenyatta and Deputy President William Ruto is coming unstuck. Two regional rebellions while the President was away signaled the beginning of the end of the 'Tyranny of Numbers' coalition.
First came the open rebellion inside Rift Valley among the Kalenjin communities against Ruto, culminating in a violent incident at which guns were fired and people, including a political appointee, were injured.
Ruto's biggest headache in Rift Valley is Bomet Governor Isaac Rutto, who also wears the national hat of chairman of the Council of Governors and whose political brand is Defender of Devolution.
Governor Rutto is also the face of the 47 governors' Pesa Mashinani (Cash to the Grassroots) referendum campaign. This is a drive that the Presidency and its handlers view with the greatest concern, even alarm, lest it joins forces with Opposition Cord's separate call for a referendum spearheaded by former Prime Minister Raila Odinga.
The Presidency will only have itself to blame if this happens and Jubilee's massive defeat at exactly the halfway point in its first term would have far-reaching implications for second-term prospects.
Danger of a pro-referendum juggernaut
The URP rebellion against Ruto has assumed dimensions that must chill the DP's political blood. The majority of elected leaders in the Rift Valley appear to be lining up behind Governor Rutto's Pesa Mashinani drive and to be looking longingly, too, at Raila's Cord drive.
This increases the danger of the coming together of a pro-referendum juggernaut whose smashing victory would put the Presidency's legitimacy seriously in doubt just a jump ahead of a second-term attempt general election.
And then there is the Meru rebellion. Before Uhuru left for the US, Ruto was looking increasingly isolated, what with the President appearing to have masterfully prevailed on his TNA party to line up solidly behind the No vote.
Behind the scenes, strategists threatened any errant members with the direst political consequences. The TNA governors beat a swift retreat on the Pesa Mashinani campaign.
A week is a long time in politics and President Kenyatta will return home to a very changed, and charged, scenario following the Meru rebellion fronted by Senator Kiraitu Murungi and Governor Peter Munya.
As the Star noted at midweek, Meru has traditionally voted with its ethnic cousins and neighbours, the Kikuyu of Central. However, even before the President's departure there had been rumbling in Meru, with a number of politicians threatening to leave Jubilee.
On Tuesday, Kiraitu announced that he was breaking away from the Jubilee position of campaigning against the proposed referendums, joining Munya in pushing for the Pesa Mashinani drive.
Kiraitu also threatened to pull his Alliance Party of Kenya out of Jubilee unless the coalition releases APK's share of the Political Parties' Fund – at least Sh80 million (US$1 million). Kiraitu gave Jubilee just 30 days to release the cash.
Both Kiraitu and Munya have enjoyed impeccable establishmentarian reputations in the post-Kanu era and their suddenly confrontational and dissenting stand makes it clear the region is increasingly unhappy inside Jubilee.
To drive his point home, Kiraitu was flanked by Senate Majority Whip Beatrice Elachi and North Imenti MP Abdul Dawood. Also behind Kiraitu are 17 Meru MCAs.
Senate majority leader Kithure Kindiki, a TNA diehard and Uhuru loyalist who is inflexibly against both referendums, seemed to speak for the President and in his tones when he rushed to comment on the Kiraitu-Munya rebellion, saying, "Views expressed by members within the coalition should not be construed to be rebellion or division. Like any political association anywhere in the world, members have the liberty to raise concerns and at the same time deliberate on practical solutions to strengthen internal systems".
Meru decries 'marginalisation'
The Tharaka Nithi senator's deliberately inoffensive take on Meru's breakaway agenda may well have been too little too late. Kiraitu and Munya seem to have been channeling a region's indignation.
Speaking to reporters at Nkubu town, both Kiraitu and Munya bitterly complained about the length of roads set to be constructed in Meru. Out of 2,000km of roads to be built nationwide by Jubilee in its first term, Meru would get only 8.3km.
Munya exploded: "It is not right that a county that was fourth in terms of votes for Jubilee is now placed at position 44 in terms of road allocations. We view this as an attempt to marginalise us."
The breakaway grumbling in both the Valley and the Mountain is of the highest political significance to the besieged Presidency – and the most acute danger.
In the multiparty era, particularly its post-Kanu phase that begun with the Mwai Kibaki ascendancy after 2002, no president has been able to hold on to the coalition that brought him to power beyond the second year of the first term.
This happened to Kibaki beginning mid-2004, after he rode into power in December 2002 at the head of the National Rainbow Coalition regime. By November 2005 and Kenya's first ever national referendum, Narc had been put asunder, with Raila and Co., who at that juncture included Uhuru, defeating President Kibaki's Banana or Yes vote resoundingly.
Kibaki responded by firing the entire Narc government below the level of Vice President Moody Awori and Attorney General Amos Wako. But this only set the stage for the titanic battle for State House in 2007 between Kibaki and Raila, with the older man seeking a second term and to secure his legacy.
The Rift Valley and Meru breakaway attempts ahead of another polarizing referendum(s) preceding a presidential race where an incumbent will be seeking a second term take Kenya back to seven years ago and the terrific – and terrifying – prelude to the 2007 presidential contest.
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