While Uhuru Will Not Leave His Govt To Thieves, WSR Says Thieves Are His Partners...

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Ruto during a visit to Kabarnet, Baringo County on Saturday, February 20 accused President Uhuru Kenyatta of associating with thieves after deserting him.

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“There are people plotting to push me out of the Jubilee government.
I’d like to ask when seeking leadership on Jubilee party, was Uhuru with me or with the thieves he’s currently with?” asked Ruto.

Ruto further noted that his allies are also being pushed out of government owing to the fact that they are his close confidants.

He, however, asked leaders to quit rivalry and focus on development and uplifting the common mwananchi.

“At the moment, all the leaders who were in the jubilee, some are being pushed out of leadership on grounds that they are allies of the deputy president,” said Ruto.

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Deputy President William Ruto during the opening of St Joseph the Worker Parish Kituro church at Kabarnet , Baringo County

“When did it become a crime to be a friend to be a friend of the Deputy president who is a friend of the President who was elected alongside the president?”
He further asked.

He argued that most of his friends were being subjected to harassment by senior government officials who were misusing the police.

He lamented that the police arrested Kisii Deputy Governor Joash Maangi and South Mugirango at the funeral service of former Cabinet Minister Simeon Nyachae in Kisii on Monday, February 15.

Ruto castigated his opponents warned them against using police, and detectives from EACC and DCI in running politics.

“Don’t push us to the edge. Stop using criminal justice systems to run politics,” he cautioned.

Earlier today February 20, Senator Susan Kihika alongside Bahati MP Kimani Ngunjiri were briefly arrested after police interrupted the United Democratic Alliance (UDA) party meeting in London ward, Nakuru.

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Uhuru in a meeting with Cabinet Secretaries (CSs), Principal Secretaries (PSs), CASs and other executive members on Thursday,

February 18, asked those who were loyal to Ruto to either quit or support him (the head of state).

A week earlier, the President dared Ruto and his allies to resign as they were not supporting the government, but reprimanding and accusing it of derailing development agendas. The head of state also claimed that he won’t leave the country to thieves.

“My aim is to ensure that all who will take from me will not be thieves and harass citizens.
My aim is to make sure that they will have the urge to unite the country,” said Uhuru.

Meanwhile…

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Police faced off with rowdy youth who attempted to disrupt a funeral service attended by ODM leader Raila Odinga and other dignitaries in Ndhiwa, Homabay County.

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Two differing groups clashed immediately Odinga arrived at Ratanga Primary School on Saturday, February 20. The two parties exchanged blows and kicks in front of Odinga who had been ushered to sit in a nearby tent.

At first, the police urged the youth to calm down and pushed them away from the VIP guests.

However, with the situation escalating, the law enforcers forced their way into the mob, hit them with batons and forced them to move away from the tents.

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ODM Party Leader Raila Odinga addressing residents of Kawangware on Sunday 4 October 2020.
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Senior police officers rushed to the scene to de-escalate the situation. The cause of the fracas was, however, not ascertained.

“Vijana please calm down. Relax. Let us welcome baba in a dignified manner. Vijana kindly stop that nonsense. Let us all settle. Thank you,” the emcee appreciated the law enforcers after calmness was restored.

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At Kabarnet in Baringo County, Deputy President William Ruto also confronted a group of youth who attempted to disrupt his rally. The DP requested his followers to focus on him instead of the sideshows.

"I want to tell those who are bribing the youth with meagre amounts of money that they will never succeed. The youth in Kabarnet are educated and intelligent.

“Let those who propagate violence send their wives and children to revolt and demonstrate,” Ruto said.

Earlier on during the day, police tear-gassed his allies at a campaign rally in London ward, Nakuru County. The legislators led by Senator Susan Kihika and MPs Kimani Ngunjiri (Bahati) and Mohamed Ali - Jicho Pevu (Nyali) engaged in running battles with the police who had sealed off their venue.

The leaders were campaigning for the United Democratic Alliance’s (UDA) candidate Nzuki Wachira for the London MCA seat.

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Police in Nakuru County on Saturday morning lobbed teargas canisters at a group of lawmakers allied to Deputy President William Ruto, who had started a campaign meeting to drum up support for the United Democratic Alliance candidate for the London Ward by-election.
The lawmakers, among them Nakuru Senator Susan Kihika, and Members of Parliament Kimani Ngunjiri (Bahati), John Kiarie (Dagoretti), Mohammed Ali (Nyali), and Cecilly Mbarire, had just started their meeting at Milimani when police dispersed them and their supporters.

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A police car is pictured in Nakuru town on February 20, 2021, when they dispersed Tangatanga politicians and their supporters from a meeting at the Nakuru showgrounds.

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The meeting to support UDA candidate Anthony Nzuki Wachira was cut short with police bosses claiming it had not been authorized and that the supporters had not adhered to Covid-19 safety measures.
This was to be the first physical campaign ahead of by-elections slated for March 4. Candidates for the London and Hell’s Gate MCA polls have been campaigning online because of restrictions to contain the pandemic.

The seats fell vacant following the deaths of Samuel Mbugua of London Ward and Hell’s Gate’s John Njenga in November 2020.

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Jubilee’s Francis Njoroge and the UDA candidate are the front runners, while others include Benard Kariuki (People’s Democratic Party), Stephen Adoch(Orange Democratic Movement), Rebecca Moraa (Third Way Alliance), Felix Kipruto (People’s Party of Kenya) and Joseph Kariuki (The Service Party).
The Jubilee and UDA candidates are likely to put to the test the political might of President Uhuru Kenyatta and DP Ruto amid the wars between the two luminaries.
Senators Kihika and Kipchumba Murkomen (Elgeyo Marakwet) and MP Ngunjiri have been leading the campaigns for the UDA candidate in his quest to defeat Jubilee Party, which has held Nakuru in its grip since 2013.

Nakuru Governor Lee Kinyanjui has also been drumming up support for Jubilee candidates in London and Hell’s Gate.

The Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) on January 19 confirmed clearing 16 candidates nominated by their respective parties and four independent candidates for the London Ward by-election.

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[Mangele]

Celebrated Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe once remarked that Africans are at their best when telling their stories in proverbs.

In the Mount Kenya region, there is a saying that an old man seated on the ground can still see farther than a boy perched on a treetop.

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Here is my story.

In February 2016, 90-year-old veteran politician John Keen (he would pass away on Christmas day the same year) and I were headed to his ranch near Namanga border town riding in his vehicle. Just past Isinya township, his telephone rang.

His personal assistant had a message that Deputy President William Ruto would be dropping in for dinner at his Karen home that evening. “We have to turn back to Nairobi,” Mzee Keen told his driver.

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The following day, we were back on the road to Namanga. Journalists’ curiosity had me asking the old man how was dinner with his VIP guest. “It went on very well”, he told me. “We served him ugali, goat meat, greens, and sour milk (mursik) which he liked.”

They also transacted business and talked politics. You can guess what kind of business the DP was doing with the old man – he was buying some land from him.

Former Senator Johnstone Muthama once gave the DP the nickname “Bwana Mashamba”.
I wonder whether he still calls him by the same name now that they are great buddies in the wheelbarrow party. :D:D:D

[SIZE=6]Mouth-watering[/SIZE]

My interest was in what politics the old man talked with his special visitor. He told me the DP was keen to learn about the complex Maasai clan politics which very much determine election outcomes in Kajiado, Narok, and Samburu.
The three counties have about a million votes, a mouth-watering figure for anybody with presidential ambitions.
On his part, the old man too wanted to hear something from the DP. He asked him whether he expected his political dalliance with President Uhuru Kenyatta to last to the 2022 elections.

Mzee Keen told me the question caught his guest by surprise.

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At the time, everybody thought the UhuRuto alliance was a marriage made in heaven.

Nobody contemplated that in just two years the marriage would take a trajectory for the rocks – and a likely messy divorce. But purely on political sixth sense born of experience – not any secret information privy to him – Mzee Keen could see it coming.

The old man reported to me that after some pause to reflect on the question put to him, the DP said he fully trusted the friendship with the President would last the whole stretch and he would back his presidential bid come 2022.

But Mzee Keen wasn’t about to let the matter rest at that. He pursued:

“What about the eventuality of the President abandoning you midstream, or that he sticks with you but his Mount Kenya backyard has other ideas?”

After yet another long pause, Mzee Keen told me, the DP said in the event the President backslides on his pledge, he would take himself to Mount Kenya and ask for votes.

[SIZE=6]Secret plan “B”[/SIZE]

In retrospect, and going by scuttled disclosures from various sources since the relationship between the President and his deputy headed south, either the DP had secretly been putting in place a plan “B” even as he talked to Mzee Keen, or began to assemble one after the conversation that evening.

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Well, in the light of the recent events including last week challenge by the President’s that the DP take a walk if he feels dissatisfied in Jubilee, and the decision to lock him out of a cabinet meeting on Thursday, wonder what the late Mzee Keen, were he alive, would tell the DP if they were to have another meal together. Maybe something like: “Look, young man, I told you so!”

Only last Sunday during a talk show on a vernacular FM station, Kieni MP Kanini Kega disclosed that the fall-out between the President and his supposed principal assistant began immediately after the 2017 elections when the President learned the DP has secretly lined up over 100 MPs to be doing his “bidding” behind the President’s back.

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The first agenda, the MP alleged, was to remove current Speaker of the National Assembly Justin Muturi – a staunch ally of the President since their days in Kanu -–and replace him with the DP’s man.

When the President learned about it, said the MP, he hit the roof and angrily told a closed-door Jubilee parliamentary meeting, the very first after the August 2017 election, that he knew there was an attempt to create a parallel center of power in Jubilee and in the country but he wouldn’t allow it.

The MPs account somehow collaborated an account by Senator Kipchumba Murkomen late last year when he told a local TV station that he saw a different President Kenyatta during the first Jubilee PG meeting after the 2017 elections when the head of state spoke with “rare hostility” and unfriendly body language to his deputy.

The outspoken senator alleged the President was only slowed down by the Supreme Court decision to nullify his election, hence necessary to have a united Jubilee to win in the repeat election.

And this week, a confidential source revealed that even as early as 2017, concern had been raised at high places over the huge financial war chest the DP had amassed and questions raised as to the motive.

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The source says the state machinery only hesitated to move against him only because there was a coming closely contested election where a slight shake-up in the Jubillee house would have been to the great advantage of the opposition.

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It would also appear a plan had been put in place for President Kenyatta to seek rapprochement with opposition leader Raila Odinga and creep the DP wings long before the March 2018 “handshake”, at least going by remarks by Jubilee vice-chairman David Murathe in yet another TV talk show this week.

He said: “All along we knew we couldn’t get far with that man (the DP).
We knew his character well and just wanted to get past 2017 and we put him in his place.”

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