The 2nd Kenyatta Succession: TNA gobbles up URP!

[jakaswanga]

The merger is a significant political development.



That the TNA seems to have swallowed up URP does not necessarily mean William Ruto is a dead fish in the waters. He is a competent enough politician within the confines of Kenya. His bigger worry at this moment should be Fatou Bensouda and her ICC case. And what the unfortunate disappearance of one, Meshack Yebei, portends, seeing there is a corpse there with a sordid story to tell and sell.

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Posted Friday, January 16, 2015 | by- ISAAC ONGIRI
New party ready as Jubilee leaders pursue one political front for 2017

URP Secretary-General Fred Muteti confirmed that his party was party to the coalition’s planned

President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy, Mr William Ruto, have embarked on a plan to merge their parties before the 2017 elections.

The National Alliance and the United Republican Party will be collapsed into a single entity to be known as Jubilee Alliance Party, which has already been registered.

To avoid legal hurdles in registering a new party, those implementing the merger plan went for the easier option of changing the name of an existing Jubilee Coalition affiliate — the Conservative Party.

TNA chairman Johnson Sakaja on Friday said the new party would present a candidate in the Kajiado Central by-election to be supported by the Jubilee Coalition members.

“There is a new party named the Jubilee Alliance Party. Both the TNA and the URP will merge into the new party before 2017,” Mr Sakaja told the Saturday Nation.

URP Secretary-General Fred Muteti confirmed that his party was party to the coalition’s planned rebranding.

“Yes, we are part of the new plan to set up a party called Jubilee Alliance Party,” Mr Muteti said. He urged Jubilee legislators and county assembly members to support it.

“We want to appeal to the Jubilee MPs, senators and MCAs not to fear change.

“This new idea has the support of top Jubilee alliance officials and it is the only way to avoid political zoning of our strongholds,” he told the Nation yesterday.

President Kenyatta’s and Mr Ruto’s allies have taken strategic interim positions in the new entity, confirming their involvement.

Mr David Murathe, a long-time personal assistant to Mr Kenyatta, is the vice-chairman. Mr Nixon Korir, a confidant of Mr Ruto’s and one of URP’s founder members, has been appointed executive director.

The other interim officials are Ms Veronica Maina (secretary-general), Mr Nelson Dzuia (chairman) and Mr Abraham Mutai (treasurer).

Mr Sakaja said the TNA and URP had agreed to conduct a joint nomination to get a single candidate under the new party in the Kajiado Central by-election.

TNA has five aspirants while the URP has attracted two. All will fight for the Jubilee Alliance Party ticket. “We want to use this opportunity to test the waters,” Mr Sakaja said.

The joint nomination will be conducted on January 24. Mr Sakaja said it would be conducted through universal suffrage and the voters would pick the candidate by secret ballot.

“We do not want to behave like the ODM,” he said. “We will allow the people of Kajiado Central to nominate a candidate of their choice by voting secretly for their preferred choice.”

The polling centres would be merged to minimise the cost and that the new party’s secretariat was mapping the constituency for the nomination.

“Government insiders said the plan to merge Jubilee parties ahead of the 2017 elections was meant to help Mr Ruto to position himself strategically for President Kenyatta’s succession in 2022.

The whole idea is to psyche the Kikuyu nation to begin to prepare to support Mr Ruto when President Kenyatta retires and it will work better when the two parties are dissolved,” said a source in government.

The President and his deputy have convened a retreat for Jubilee Coalition legislators from both the Senate and the National Assembly, in Naivasha next weekend.

The retreat is expected to discuss the merger. However, some MPs and senators are said to be opposed to the idea, fearing that some 2013 election losers might position themselves in the new party.

[kamalet]

A monoloth JAP is a bad idea in today's Kenyan politics. It is a lot easier to maintain regional based discipline in a 'regional' party than one would in a 'national' party and it quite apparent what is happening even in the 'regional' parties this is a problem but the power of a regional party keeps the 'rebels' within the party. This partly explains why the Bomet Governor can be a rebel but will not leave URP for fear of not being re-elected.

But the idea to maintain the status quo until 2017 allows the parties to continue assessing their levels of internal discipline and also if the monolith can work in place of individual parties in the coalition. It is instructive to note that they picked up a small affiliate party to rename rather than any of the two parties which allows them to remain independent should the monolith party not work.

[jakaswanga]

There is something called a lot of motion but no displacement in space. Its the politics of stagnation. The same elite can permute and recombine in various desperate formations, ALL KANU PROTOTYPES, but they come up with no solutions to the basic underlying problems of the country. But important is the relentless evolution toward a show-down. A show-down is when problems can nolonger be handled by subterfuge moves, but by taking the bull by the horn. –-For instance, the first post-colonial generation to achieve state power, represented by Uhuruto, has as historical debt, to fulfil the mission the previous generation did not. That is industrialise Kenya.

Why is industrialisation important? It would be a staggering expansion of the economic room FOR ALL, absorbing the hordes from the gigantic idle labour pool ringing our cities in restive the slums; relieving a squeezed and narrow middle class from the permanent threat of ruin; and giving millions of marginalised citizens a realistic stake in the going-ons of their land. A secure future becoming a realisable dream.

That is just ABC. (As I said earlier, Industrialisation is no big deal. It has been done so many times by various countries, it ceased to be rocket science. It is a bit like sex. Everybody does it, relatively successfully. It aint no achievement. A basic function.)

But now look around your country. Or continent for that matter. Visit the nearest public hospital. Suddenly industrialisation does not look that ABC! And Lo! no lab in the country where a pathologist worth his salt can decipher a death cause of a prominent fella!

So I understand these mergers at the top to mean insecurity at the top, faced with real or imagined dangers from the population, --blocks which can opt out of a party and try its fortunes elsewhere. –-For instance a revamped KANU in the Rift Valley could be an alternative to William Ruto's URP in the internal politics of the Kalenjin nation. Just as the pendulum moved from Moi to Ruto, so too can the pendulum swing elsewhere, if there is no achievements to cement the loyalty and Ruto is deemed a lost cause by his base.

Then there are the silly but human problems of emotional insecurity and paranoia. After William Ruto has secured Uhuru Kenyatta two presidential terms, who says Uhuru Kenyatta's voting basket will return the compliment!?
Who? In deed, wants to bet his political future on it?
That is when guys start to scheme, and alliances of today start to have their sell by, or, more appropriately, wind up dates.

The secrecy, stealth with which the new party has been hatched –-with the interim officials already revealing who the masters are, means it is a factional initiative, a power play whose originators and movers already feared the consequences of a free and transparent process. So they went on plan ambush, to present a fait accompli, backed by state power, and ram it down the peoples throat. The people, being sheep in their narrative, are an easy ride. For prominent people, it is dissent and be branded a spoiler, marked for the kill, you know, to be disciplined like the ODM threatening her dissenters in the Homabay drama --Jubilee fifth columns!

Lets see how the conservative alliance handles Bomet governor Ruto. Full of mischief here below.

Saturday, January 17, 2015 Uhuru, Ruto told to resign after merging their partiES

In Summary

Bomet Governor Isaac Ruto said it was wrong for the two leaders to give their blessings on the merger without consulting their respective party members.
Speaking at the proposed Bomet showground after flagging off 12km men race, the Governor who was accompanied by Silibwet/Township Ward Representative Robert Metet said it was clear that by forming the new party, the two leaders had become disloyal to the parties that sponsored them to power.
Mr Ruto said political parties have organs that make decisions on the direction which the party wanted to take on any given issues but for this case, the Deputy President had not consulted his United Republican Party (URP) members on the new development.

President Uhuru Kenyatta and his Deputy William Ruto have been asked to resign and seek fresh mandate from Kenyans following a decision to merge their political parties.
Bomet Governor Isaac Ruto said it was wrong for the two leaders to give their blessings on the merger without consulting their respective party members.

“We were shocked to learn that the President and his deputy have already registered a new party - Jubilee Alliance Party - whereas they were still members of their former political parties,” he said
“Why should the two leaders mislead Kenyans that The National Alliance (TNA) and United Republican Party (URP) will be merged ahead of the next general election when already the Jubilee Coalition will be presenting a candidate for the Kajiado Central parliamentary seat by-election,” he added.

BECOME DISLOYAL

Speaking at the proposed Bomet showground after flagging off 12km men race, the Governor who was accompanied by Silibwet/Township Ward Representative Robert Metet said it was clear that by forming the new party, the two leaders had become disloyal to the parties that sponsored them to power.
“They have no business holding onto their seats,” he said.
Mr Ruto said political parties have organs that make decisions on the direction which the party wanted to take on any given issues but for this case, the Deputy President had not consulted his United Republican Party (URP) members on the new development.

“We are in URP to stay and we are not about to defect to the new party”, he noted.
The governor urged leaders to embrace consultative leadership instead of making irrational decisions which might not augur well with the party supporters.
Mr Metet echoed the governor’s sentiments and petitioned the deputy president to desist from making decisions on party issues single-handedly.
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