Deputy President William Ruto (centre) with some Mt Kenya leaders at Engineer, in Nyandarua County, on February 14, 2021.
| Cheboite Kigen | Nation Media GroupPolitics
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Ruto allies plan to hold church ‘coronation’ for him
What you need to know:
- President and DP handlers are caught up in a vicious fight for Mt Kenya votes.
- Recent installation of Speaker Justin Muturi as Gema kingpin has split leaders in vote-rich area.
Deputy President William Ruto will be unveiled as Mt Kenya’s preferred presidential candidate in churches to counter the recent installation of National Assembly Speaker Justin Muturi and elders’ support of Mr Raila Odinga.
Dr Ruto’s allies have told the Sunday Nation that already, point men from Lamu, Uasin Gishu, Nakuru, Narok, Kajiado, Nairobi, Nyandarua, Kiambu, Murang’a, Laikipia, Kirinyaga, Nyeri, Embu, Tharaka-Nithi and Meru counties are working on a list of churches that will be used for the DP’s coronation.
“They have picked their kingpins from the bushes and we will pick ours from the altar of God,” said Nakuru Senator Susan Kihika. The date of the event is yet to be announced.
According to the planners of the “Holy Spirit coronation drive”, the climax in the plot will be his consecration in a national prayer forum where he will line up his contest team, including his running mate and 94 County coordinators – a man and a woman per county.
Dr Ruto’s backers, currently in a cut-throat competition with the President Uhuru Kenyatta’s people for the control of Mt Kenya’s eight million votes, say the divisions in the region are as a result of “mandating a fake council of elders to coronate the heir apparent of President Kenyatta in circumstances that reek of witchcraft”.
Candidate of choice
According to Murang’a Senator Irungu Kang’ata, the DP’s handlers in the region are working on a programme that will see “strategic churches used to unveil him as the candidate of choice for the Gikuyu, Embu and Meru region in the 2022 duel.”
He said the unveiling of Dr Ruto in churches is informed by the fact that “we are competing against opponents who oppose the church and do not have any known mainstream faith”.
He said the region, being a home to God-fearing voters “will have to do things differently and avoid competing on the platform of darkness, dedicating our candidate to God”.
Nyandarua Woman Rep Faith Gitau told the Sunday Nation that all the willing churches will organise themselves into one function to host the event so as to avoid fallouts.
“Yes, it is true that we are planning to unveil our candidate straight from the wings of the church. We are investing Dr Ruto’s candidacy in the blessings of God. The opponents that we are facing can only be tackled through investing in prayer. Ours will only be to tour the country to ask for votes and God will convince the voters that our bet is His bet,” she said.
Political caves
Naivasha MP Jane Kihara said that “anyone who is claiming that he is a Kikuyu king is living in the political caves… since we all know that our people are firmly behind Dr Ruto, who has won their hearts to be their political kingpin regardless of his tribe.”
She added that this “statement of fact will be sealed in our churches soon”.
In his recent visit to Murang’a County, where he attended the Jubilee celebration of priesthood for retired Catholic Bishop Peter Kairo, Interior Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i revealed that “we are in the know of a plot to divide us along religious lines being hatched by those who pretend to be very born again during day time but very divisive during the night.”
The controversial Muturi coronation on May 22 at Mukurwe wa Nyagathanga shrine has since been rebutted through a cleansing ceremony by a splinter group of area cultural purists as rifts among President Kenyatta’s loyalists in the region deepened.
