SUNDAY DECEMBER 17 2017
From left: Kanu Secretary-General Nick Salat, President Uhuru Kenyatta and Kanu Chairman Gideon Moi in a jig during the party's national delegates conference in May at Kasarani Stadium where they endorsed President Kenyatta’s candidature in the August 2017 General Election. Details of a secret power sharing deal between the President Uhuru Kenyatta and Senator Moi have emerged. FILE PHOTO | NATION MEDIA GROUP
Details of a secret power sharing deal between President Uhuru Kenyatta and Kanu chairman Gideon Moi can be revealed today.
As part of the hitherto closely guarded deal, the Baringo senator handed President Kenyatta names of potential nominees to the Cabinet on Thursday last week, further stoking tensions within the Jubilee coalition as Deputy President William Ruto grows increasingly jittery over the role of Mr Moi in government.
An impeccable source at the senator’s office confided to Nation that Mr Kiprono Kittony, the chairman of the Kenya National Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KNCCI), and Kanu Secretary-General Nick Salat are among those whose names are with the President.
In the larger deal, Mr Moi wants President Kenyatta to set aside a total of six slots in the executive, two in the Cabinet and four for principal secretaries in return for Kanu’s support for his re-election in the August 8 and October 26 presidential elections.
PILES PRESSURE
The secret arrangement with Kanu further piles pressure on Mr Kenyatta who equally promised nearly all opposition politicians who switched their loyalty to his side that they would be incorporated in his government
There are other parties like Maendeleo Chap Chap, Narc-Kenya, DP and PNU that also supported him and will be waiting to be rewarded with positions.
Lobbying for the slots in government is in top gear with a number of the President’s men hinting that most of the cabinet secretaries would be shown the door when Mr Kenyatta crafts his team for the second and final term in office.
UPDATED VERSION
The Kanu list is an updated version of an initial one crafted before the August 8 election and contained names such as that of Prof John Lonyangapuo who has since been elected West Pokot governor and no longer needs a presidential appointment.
Party insiders say rewarding Kanu with government jobs was discussed as recently as last month when the President met his political godfather and retired President Daniel arap Moi at the latter’s Kabarak home in Nakuru County.
Last week, Mr Salat said Kanu was ready to work with the government and be part of President Kenyatta’s legacy.
“We have our MPs who have contributed to Jubilee’s majority in Parliament. So outside Parliament, we would want to be included in government,” he said.
CONFIRMED
Mr Salat confirmed Kanu had submitted the list of its nominees through their chairman.
“It is the President’s prerogative to appoint them to whichever positions, be it CS, PS, parastatal heads and others. We have not been given a specific allocation.”
Prof Lonyangapuo said that while there was no written deal for such appointments, they had given the President the proposal when they agreed to back his re-election earlier this year.
He revealed that the Kanu leadership had met the President in February and presented their proposal for appointment for CSs, PSs, and ambassadors, managing directors, chairpersons of parastatals, CEOs and university chair persons to be picked by the party.
“We submitted our proposal to the President and we are hoping that our request will be put under consideration,” said Prof Lonyangapuo, noting that the absence of a deal did not mean that they should not be considered to be part of the next government.
“We do not doubt the President. With our overwhelming support, he can only return the favour by appointing people picked by our party,” he added, saying that Kanu enjoys a cordial relationship with the President.
But DP Ruto’s men feel that Senator Moi is out to benefit from the close ties that exist between the Mois and the Kenyattas yet “he did not soil his hands hard enough to give the regime a second term in office”.
2022 PRESIDENCY
With both the senator and the DP having their eyes trained on the presidency come 2022, planting their trusted allies in high positions in government is a sure way of jump-starting their respective ambitions which may somewhat portend a unity test for the two leaders’ Kalenjin Nation.
Mr Kittony is the son of former Kanu nominated Senator Zipporah Kittony, who enjoys close family ties with the Mois.
Mr Ruto is reportedly unhappy with the arrangement.
His allies, Majority Leader in the National Assembly Aden Duale and his Senate counterpart Kipchumba Murkomen, would rather not discuss the topic, a clear sign that it is a hot potato in the corridors of power.
The prominent role Senator Moi played on the day of President Kenyatta’s inauguration, welcoming Uganda President Yoweri Museveni, Salva Kiir of South Sudan, and former Tanzanian head of state Jakaya Kikwete, set tongues wagging that some scheme was in the offing.
PROTESTS
The DP’s associates are said to have vehemently, albeit quietly, protested the move.
“What were they trying to show us? Weren’t there enough senior government functionaries to receive visiting heads of state?” one of them posed.
Mr Bill Ruto, an author with vast knowledge of Kalenjin politics, last year wrote: “The DP would like to have a complete and undiluted territory for the purposes of his future political ambitions. That is why he has gone at Gideon the way he has done. On the other hand, Gideon sees himself as the natural heir of his father’s mantle to Kalenjin leadership. He is extremely bitter and unable to reconcile with the fact that an outsider hijacked what he sees as his birth right.”
NO PROBLEM
In an attempt to downplay the growing tensions, Kipkelion West MP Hilary Sigei says that as lawmakers from the Great Rift, they have no problem with any persons being picked by President Kenyatta and Mr Ruto to join the cabinet.
Others think the decision to appoint Kanu members in government is the President’s idea of repaying a debt to the senior Moi who picked and cast him into the national limelight, eventually making him his preferred successor in the 2002 General Election which he lost to Mr Mwai Kibaki of Narc.
By settling on the rookie politician over other experienced hands in Kanu like Prof George Saitoti, Mr Musalia Mudavadi and Mr Kalonzo Musyoka, President Moi was most probably returning a favour that President Kenyatta’s father, Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, had done him in the formative years of his career.
DANIEL MOI
Mzee Kenyatta picked Moi as his vice-president in 1967 and stuck with him even as members of his kitchen cabinet belittled him as a “passing cloud” and plotted to prevent him from automatically succeeding him as the Constitution provided.
When he picked Mr Kenyatta, President Moi most probably expected the latter to return the favour at some point in the future.
The President’s youngest son, Gideon, was inheriting his father’s Baringo Central parliamentary seat which he had held for nearly half a century.
According to Jubilee’s succession plan, the DP is the automatic successor of President Kenyatta in 2022.
However, recent visits by Mama Ngina and President Kenyatta to the former president’s home are raising political eyebrows in several quarters.
In a country whose political history is replete with case studies of betrayal and shifty alliances, it remains to be seen whether Jubilee will stick to its own script or change it midway.
In declining to name his then vice, Prof Saitoti, as successor, President Moi, in the run-up to 2002 elections, wittingly made remarks to the effect that leadership is different from friendship, a signature line that many quote to date.
– Additional reporting by Oscar Kakai, Ruth Mbula and Anita Chepkoech
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