It is not for nothing that Jubilee-affiliated politicians in Rift Valley are falling all over themselves in their quest to dismiss the growing popularity of Kanu in the region as nothingmuch to write home about. Kanu is winning the people back in the North Rift especially now that the United Republican Party is dead and cremated, thanks to September’s Jubileemerger debacle.
Last week, the reclusive Baringo Central MP Sammy Mwaita finally found his tongue and used it appropriately in lashing out at the man waging a protracted political supremacy war with Deputy President William Ruto in the North Rift and elsewhere.
In September, as Jubilee was merging, Gideon made it crystal clear that his party, handed over to him by his father and Retired President Daniel Arap Moi, will never dissolve to join Jubilee Party.
He instead challenged the ruling alliance to dissolve and join Kanu. Mwaita is alive to the territorial expansion by Kanu in the county.
This gives him sleepless sweaty night.Last week, the legislator told a fundraiser in Baringo’s Kapropita Girls’ High School that Kanu is a derelict party that has no space in the modern world.
County Governor, Benjamin Cheboi joined in the chorus criticising Gideon’s quest to rally Baringo residents firmly behind Kanu.
For close to three years now, Cheboi has been avoiding like the plague, any talk touching on the ruling Jubilee Alliance.
But when questions of misuse of public funds were raised recently, the quite Governor leapt from his cocoon defending JP’s every act. He went blind and mute over the long list of graft scandals in Jubilee’s closets.
That is no wonder because Cheboi’s closet is teeming with its own share of dubious dealings.
We all know who made Cheboi who he is today. President Moi appointed him to many lucrative positions including that of CEO of the Higher Education and Loans Board (HELB), a position he held for more than a decade before resigning to vie for the Baringo gubernatorial seat in 2013.
Without Moi, Cheboi would be nothing. But he is following in the footsteps of his erstwhile political godfathers like the Deputy President, William Ruto, who have no recollection of
what Moi did to prop him up for a fruitful political future.
We also know that Mwaita made his wealth during Moi’s rule when he was the Lands Commissioner for Kanu’s regime.
Jubilee politicians in the Rift Valley are driven by the blank check accorded to DP Ruto for cashing in the 2022 presidential elections. For those relying fi rmly on this shaky promise, they
will have themselves to blame when that time comes and they realize that it was all but shifting sand. If they were tactful, they would have left Gideon to do his thing. is is so
because, the tide may swing and they may need him in 2022 now that JP is not very keen in giving Ruto the ticket.
Former Gatanga MP Peter Kenneth has already exhibited signs of being Central Kenya’s presidential candidate in 2022.
Where will Ruto’s mathematics fall with his flower girls? I have said before and I will repeat it that, the enemies of Rift Valley are not Bomet Governor Isaac Rutto and Gideon Moi.
This duo is not sowing seeds of discordingthe region as Jubilee politicians want us to believe. Rutto and Gideon are building bridges destroyed by a myopic regime that sees nothing positivein other elected leaders.
It is no wonder, a section of the region’s politicians have curtly told JP to let the duo be because their popularity cannot be reversed by mere rhetoric by people scared that they may soon be
relegated to oblivion. Back to Cheboi: He wa nts to be in the good books of Jubilee to shield himself from any legal action if he is found culpable in the rot bedevilling his administration.
If Gideon is unpopular as JP playersallege, why did more than 30 MCAs from the county defect to Kanu recently? Food for thought