Written by
Faridah N Kulumba
Africa-Press – Kenya. The tough war that is splitting the allies of Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta and that of his Deputy William Ruto within the ruling party Jubilee, is now losing its flavor according to Ruto’s allies led by Former National Assembly majority leader Aden Duale.
Duale declared Jubilee Party as structurally dead,and that the United Democratic Alliance (UDA) will be the vehicle of choice in the coming 2022 Kenya’s General Election, reported The Standard.
Mr Duale continued to spit fire saying it is no longer attainable for them to stay in the Jubilee Party, which they say no longer speaks for the needs of its members.
Relationship turns sour
Nearing the end of his second and final term, President Kenyatta’s relationship with his deputy and his successor Ruto took a turn in early 2018, when the latter entered a pact with opposition leader Raila Odinga.
Kenyatta has accused Ruto of doing early campaigns to succeed him, instead of focusing on their legacy projects. On the other hand, Ruto also sees the move to limit his likely succession as a betrayal of their pre-2013 pact that was made while both of them were facing criminal charges at the International Criminal Court.
The Jubilee party was founded in 2016, with the aim to consolidate a 2013 alliance between Kenyatta and Ruto, but according to Ruto allies the party is now firmly in Kenyatta’s control, after he replaced its senior leaders in the country’s legislature.
The battle
The falling between President Kenyatta and Ruto is causing jitters and a bare-knuckle duel is shaping up between the two estranged politicians who were elected on the same ticket in the elections in 2013 and 2017.
Duale, also clarified on the recently conducted Kiambaa by-election between UDA’s John Njuguna Wanjiku and Jubilee Party’s Kariri Njama saying it was a friendly fire because UDA was a Jubilee affiliate party.
The United Democratic Alliance candidate won by a margin of 510 votes after he garnered 21,773 votes in a tightly contested poll.
Josephine Kimeu, a journalist, told Africa-Press that Kiambaa parliamentary win was seen as Deputy President Ruto storming President Kenyatta’s political backyard.
“It was arguably the first major direct face off between the Jubilee party and UDA particularly in the president’s political backyard after the dual’s documented fallout,” Mrs Kimeu said.
Plans for a new government
Ruto’s allies led by Duale announced that they are planning to form a new government next year and that their vehicle will be UDA.
“Jubilee is our party and we have realised that it has serious structural weaknesses, that it is sick, some of the key organs of the party have failed,” Duale said.
He added that the Jubilee party with its failures, can no longer be of use in the long journey to the 2022 General Election.
