Ajabu Africa News

By:

STAR TEAM

Posted:

Jul,02-2019 21:15:55

Deputy President William Ruto yesterday refused to take questions relating to his claims that Mt Kenya cabinet secretaries were plotting to eliminate him ahead of the 2022 elections.

The DP brushed off attempts by a battery of journalists to get him to speak on the matter after a press conference on female genital mutilation at his Karen residence office in Nairobi.

Instead, the DP waved at journalists, turned his back and retreated into his office. His security guards then ordered journalists out of the compound.

The DP is also yet to record a statement with the DCI despite telling the President that his life was in danger.

On Monday, cabinet secretaries Peter Munya, Sicily Kariuki and Joseph Mucheru appeared at the Directorate of Criminal Investigations to record statements after a letter allegedly authored by a minister and revealing the alleged assassination plot, appeared online.

The mystery letter had accused them of plotting to assassinate the Deputy President during a series of meetings held at Hotel La Mada.

The DP made his first public appearance on the day a new audio clip surfaced on the internet purportedly by a PS who was explaining what transpired on May 14 when the CSs and other state officers met.

"People take the assassination conversation seriously because there is a background to it," Senate Majority Leader Kipchumba Murkomen, a close ally of Ruto, said.

"I said before there are people in the office of the President who do not want to see the President and Deputy President together. There have been direct instructions by the PS Interior Karanja Kibicho to county commissioners that they should not attend his meetings. Now you are being told there are meetings at La Mada," he added.

The new audio clip, purportedly a recording of a sitting principal secretary, is likely to give the DCI detectives a fresh headache.

It comes at a time when the sleuths are still scratching their heads over the authenticity of the letter that made the assassination claims against the DP.

Trade CS Peter Munya who is out of the country dismissed the contents of the recording insisting no such discussion took place.

"The people who faked the letter are the same ones who have gone and released that audio," Munya said.

The speaker in the audio claims they were summoned to a meeting at the La Mada Hotel through an SMS by Interior CS Kibicho.

However, no specific agenda was stated in the text.

At the hotel, a man who ushered them in took away their phones, the clip alleges.

"As he walked us inside, he also asked that we leave our phones. He took our phones and I remember we walked together with a colleague of mine and a PS who had a laptop and it was also taken away," the distorted male voice explains.

According to the alleged PS, he initially thought it was a meeting of the National Development Implementation Technical Committee chaired by Kibicho.

The committee consisting of 11 PSs, the Solicitor General and the head of the Presidential Delivery Unit and supervises the implementation of government projects across the country.

However, at the meeting, the man claims it became clear that was not a normal government meeting.

"Some CS started coming, at that moment, it became clear it was not the technical committee. The technical committee does not have CSs," he explains.

He, however, notes that Agriculture CS Mwangi Kiunjuri was conspicuously absent.

Before the meeting kicked off, he names a powerful woman who works at State House whom he says walked in.

The said lady was the secretary, taking minutes during the meeting.

"She went directly to PS Kibicho and sat next to him and they had a conversation. The meeting was chaired by PS Interior. It was him who was in charge of the meeting," the audio clip states.

The man claims that the agenda of the meeting were three: Huduma Namba, the referendum and retaining power.

However, before delving into the first agendum, ICT CS Joe Mucheru stood up, briefly addressed the gathering saying he could not sit through the entire meeting.

"He [Mucheru] said he was going to the airport, he has a plane to catch. He wanted to fly to Rwanda where he said he had an ICT-related meeting," the man claims.

He goes on: "He then said he was going to be bound with [sic] what we discussed and he wished us well and so he left."

Mucheru alongside CSs Peter Munya (Industrialisation) Sicily Kariuki (Health) and James Macharia (Transport) were summoned by the DCI on Monday to record statements on the alleged murder plot against Ruto.

According to the audio, leaders at the meeting were asked to return to their rural homes and mobilise their backyards for the registration of Huduma Namba.

Leaders were told that a referendum would be conducted before 2022 despite opposition by the Ruto brigade.

"They told us the referendum was going to happen whether Deputy President Ruto wanted it or not. They told us to go to our villages where we were born and whip up emotion, ask people to support the referendum when it comes," the man in the audio claims.

He quotes one of the speakers in the meeting who confidently suggested that the state would rig the referendum if it proved a hard tackle.

"Once the referendum was done, even if the side that the government was going to support did not win, they were going to rig it [...] he said that is why we should go and help people in the villages to register for Huduma number so that when the time to rig comes, we will use it to rig, whatever it takes," he quotes the speaker.

The said speaker went on to chest thump that power will never leave Mt Kenya.

The audio refers to another CS who allegedly told the meeting that "no African President has ever relinquished power".

"He gave some examples including Museveni and he said we have to do everything to stop Ruto," he quotes the CS.

To reinforce his point, a controversial PS allegedly stood up and said they would do anything to stop the DP.

"To stop Ruto includes doing the impossible, including you know what happened to Saitoti," the audio claims.

The PS also allegedly threatened that MPs from Mt Kenya who are allies of the DP would be crushed.

In the letter that has been doing rounds on social media and which is a subject of an investigation by the DCI, the issue of retaining power and the Huduma Namba was not mentioned.

On Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Kipchumba Murkomen said Munya talked to Ruto with an unacceptably condescending attitude.

He also accused Kibicho of ordering county commissioners to keep away from Ruto’s meetings

"A PS having the audacity, first of all, to withdraw county commissioners attending the DP's meetings and thereafter to purport to be reporting the DP to the DCI. Honesty in which country in the world?" Murkomen said.

He went on, "The President doesn't need criminal culpability to act. This is just a simple administrative action. They say those whom the gods want to destroy, they first make them mad and I think these guys are fattening themselves for slaughter."

Source:

The Star