• The former county chief seeks to reclaim the Bomet seat next year.
• He said he will serve for one term if he wins. He will use the CCM ticket in the contest.
Former Bomet Governor Isaac Rutto has maintained he will not fold his Chama Cha Mashinani party despite his pledge to support Deputy President William Ruto's presidential bid.
Rutto said his party shares in the ‘hustler’ ideology being advanced by the DP and sees no need of winding it up or merging it with any other party as proposed by some leaders.
The former county chief seeks to reclaim the Bomet seat next year. He said he will serve for one term if he wins. He will use the CCM ticket in the contest.
Rutto said the era of the electorate deciding along party lines is long gone and what matters today is one’s agenda for the people.
“Whoever is agitating for the folding of political parties is wrong…we are not going back to the single-party era. What we are only encouraging is a collaboration among parties,” he said.
“The tendency of voting on the common ‘suit pattern’ is not applicable anymore…in fact, those trying to go that way will terribly fail in the coming election because people have moved away from that, people look at an individual and not the party,” he said.
Speaking during an interview, the CCM party boss blamed the ongoing wars within Jubilee on the dissolution and merger of the United Republican Party (URP) and The National Alliance (TNA).
He said if the parties would have remained as they were, there would be no wrangles in the ruling party.
"Everyone would be having their own house to run to but see now, there is nowhere to seek refuge.”
Noting it was a lesson to all leaders against folding or merging their parties during the electioneering, the former governor Rutto said he was opposed to the merger, having been one of URP founders, hence he chose to create his own party.
On the move by President Uhuru Kenyatta to unite ODM leader Raila Odinga and other leaders under the One Kenya Alliance, he said people should not read too much into it.
He said with the President's exit drawing closer, there is absolutely nothing wrong with him uniting leaders. After all, Kenyans are the ones to choose their next president, he said.
“People should not be bothered by what Uhuru is doing. It normally happens to everyone when you are leaving; you have to ensure everything is okay,” he said.