President Uhuru Kenyatta has finally vanquished his deputy William Ruto in the fight for control of Jubilee Party, leaving the country’s second in command with only one option – to find a new political vehicle for his 2022 presidential race.
Sources at the party’s headquarters say that President Kenyatta now has firm grip on the party after some of the “DP’s remnants” were either kicked out or stripped of powers.
The President has also succeeded in reconstituting the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) and the National Management Committee (NMC).
After months of persistent onslaught on the DP, which saw his allies kicked out of key parliamentary positions, the President embarked on a clean-up at the party headquarters, forcing Dr Ruto’s Tangatanga camp to seek refuge at the Jubilee Asili Centre in Kilimani, Nairobi.
The Sunday Nation has established that a key DP ally since their days at the United Republican Party, Mr Joseph Mulili, who had been serving as the Jubilee deputy finance director, has been kicked out over claims of “leaking crucial party information.”
Deprived of crucial duties
“Such information has not been substantiated but has been constantly used to tarnish the reputation of the ruling party and its leader. That is unacceptable,” said a party insider.
Mr Nick Bore, Jubilee Party’s director of membership stationed at the party’s Pangani office, was also deprived of crucial duties over claims of having links with Dr Ruto.
“Nicodemus Bore has the title but no power,” a source at the party headquarters privy to the happenings there told the Sunday Nation.
“He has since been denied access to crucial membership data held at the Registrar of Political Parties domain. All these are efforts to ensure discipline and loyalty to the party leader.”
“Not true,” he curtly said.
But Jubilee Party deputy secretary-general Mr Caleb Kositany, the DP’s de facto spokesman, declared the changes in the NEC illegal.
“For any changes, there must be an NEC meeting, which we haven’t had. It is therefore illegal and, to us, the NEC remains as it was,” said Mr Kositany, who is the MP for Soy Constituency in Uasin Gishu County.
Jubilee’s Majority chief whip Mr Irungu Kang’ata said the party was within its mandate to make substitutions in the NEC after “some members left.”
“For instance,” he said, “Kipchumba Murkomen, who was the Senate Majority leader, having been dropped and the fact that we cannot bring in Samuel Poghisio because he belongs in Kanu, there was a need to look for another person to join the NEC.”
Party secretary-general Raphael Tuju said officials of the Jubilee Coalition only come on board when they meet as a coalition and not as a party.
“Within the context of the coalition, when we are meeting, the Kanu team that got positions automatically come on board, but when we are meeting as a party they also have their party,” Mr Tuju said.
“Just like in Nasa, when Wiper wants to meet as Wiper they do so and when they meet as Nasa then ODM and the rest have to be there.”
The DP’s allies in May took the war to President Kenyatta’s doorstep with a barrage of damaging revelations, including an exposè on how a company associated with the president’s relatives was awarded a multimillion-shilling tender to supply key campaign materials in the run-up to the 2017 elections.
President Kenyatta has of late resorted to using a slim number of individuals and officials and non-officials in the party to execute his plans.
Some of the men and women behind the operations to clean up the party and now the faces behind the Jubilee coup are deputy chief of staff Mr Njee Muturi, presidential adviser Nancy Gitau, Mr Tuju, chairman Nelson Dzuya and vice-chairman David Murathe.
Others are Jubilee regional director in charge of Eastern Mount Kenya Francis Mwindani, his Kiambu counterpart and East African Legislative Assembly regional director Mr Steve Mwanga, Head of Finance and Administration Wambui Gichuru, lawyer Tom Macharia and deputy State House comptroller George Kariuki.
Mr Muturi, Ms Gitau, Mr Tuju and Mr Murathe are said to have the ear of the President.
They brief him on technical matters and are the executors of crucial decisions on behalf of the President not only in the party but also in the day-to-day running of government.
Ms Gichuru, who is the financial controller in Jubilee Party, is said to be also involved in critical decision making in the party and finances its activities while Mr Mwindani and Mr Mwanga sit on the party’s dispute resolution committee.
With the changes in the NEC, the President’s camp now hopes to ratify party decisions with ease.
Nominated senators who defied President Kenyatta’s invite for a Jubilee Parliamentary Group Meeting in May could be the first casualties of the reconstituted NEC after the party’s disciplinary committee recommended their expulsion.
The legislators on Kenyatta’s chopping block are Millicent Omanga, Mary Seneta Yiane, Falhada Dekow Iman, Naomi Jillo Waqo and Victor Prengei. The NEC is expected to have the last word on the senators and could seal their fate.
All the six members of the National Management Committee — Lucy Nyawira Macharia, Prof Marete Marangu, Walter Nyambati, Jane Nampaso and James Waweru — have automatically joined the party’s NEC as per the party’s constitution, according to Mr Tuju.
“There are people who had left because either they got jobs in government, so it was kind of conflicting. When they left, we replaced them but with the full knowledge of the board,” Mr Tuju told Sunday Nation.
“All members of the NMC are automatically members of the NEC,” said the party spokesman.
He said it is wrong for some party officials to protest the reconstitution of the NEC when they also got the positions through a similar process.
“They were also appointed the same way. It’s like me now saying that nobody should be appointed to the NEC and my position as SG was done under the same transitional clause.”
