| PHOTO: | DP Ruto on Campaign trail |
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By:
Moses Odhiambo
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| Posted:
Feb,14-2022 23:08:50
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In a bombshell announcement, Deputy President William Ruto on Monday said he will renounce a second term if he fails to keep his first-term promises.
The Star, meantime, has established Ruto will announce his running mate and release his manifesto late next month.
The stunning promise of seeking only one term if he fails to deliver was made in Nyeri, home of former President Mwai Kibaki who turned around the economy after former President Daniel Moi.
Virtually all presidents say they have kept most of their promises and deserve another term.
Ruto also revealed President Uhuru Kenyatta had promised to support him after he completes his own two-term, 10-year tenure.
“I know we had a conversation with the President about my supporting his 10 years and his returning a hand for my 10 years," Ruto disclosed.
He went on, "However, I don’t want 10 years now; I want us to agree on a five-year plan. If successful, add five more. If I fail, let us get a new person [as president]".
Previously Ruto has said he supported President Uhuru Kenyatta unconditionally.
The Star has established the DP's camp will at the end of March hold a National Delegates Convention for his United Democratic Alliance to officially launch his manifesto.
The event is tentatively scheduled for between March 26 and April 1. It will also be attended by Ruto's Kenya Kwanza partners Musalia Mudavadi (ANC) and Ford Kenya's Moses Wetang'ula.
It will be at the UDA delegates summit that Ruto is to announce his running mate, a choice that is said to be the DP's biggest dilemma.
"We have a clear programme that will see us officially commission the hustlers manifesto at the end of March and also get to know the second-in-command," a senior member of the Hustler Nation said.
The NDC will be the culmination of a series of grassroots consultations that will take Ruto to all 47 counties to collect views that will inform his blueprint.
The roadmap to Ruto's big day at Kasarani or Nyayo Stadium was unveiled in Nyeri on Monday.
"We want to be held accountable for what we agree with each county. Our word is our bond,” Ruto said during a meeting with Nyeri sector leaders.
The crescendo of the countrywide conversations would then culminate into the Nairobi event in which Ruto and his running mate will publicly sign commitment charters.
The charters will be signed at the county and national levels and will be used to hold leadership accountable to the priorities of the people. “The leaders will come back here with a structured agreement that we would sign as UDA aspirants. This will help us keep a track record of the issues we agree on,” Ruto said.
Some of the key politicians touted as possible Ruto running mate include Musalia, Mathira MP Rigathi Gachagua and Kandara MP Alice Wahome.
The DP's manifesto roadmap appears to borrow heavily from ODM boss Raila Odinga's countrywide Azimio tours.
Raila traversed the country meeting select groups and opinion leaders to collect views on their challenges and possible solutions.
But Ruto said his approach is based on specific deliverables that will bring a major shift in the country's politics.
“We have minimums of what we must deliver when we are a government. We don’t want to be like our friends, 'kitendawili, tibim and tialala', who are voted for. But at the end, it wouldn’t be known why they were voted for,” he said.
“In his (Kibaki) footsteps, we are starting this conversation with Kenyans who will vote in August. We will have these public engagements in every county," he said.
Ruto is going flat out to fortify support for his UDA side whose momentum, it has been argued, has been punctured, more so in Mt Kenya, by the President’s declaration he would support Raila.
The formal consultations, he said, would be build on the conversations the UDA party has held with leaders in Western, Nyanza, Ukambani, Coast and Rift Valley.
In September last year, the DP held a meeting in Nanyuki with his Tangatanga troops from the region to craft the Mt Kenya economic blueprint.
UDA strategists Augustine Cheruiyot, Mugambi Mureithi, Muchiri Miano, Turkana Governor Josphat Nanok, economist David Ndii and Eliud Owalo will spearhead the engagements.
While Ndii started with Nyeri on Monday, Owalo was in Siaya where he held talks with informal sector workers from the Raila’s stronghold.
Owalo, when asked whether the plan was a copy of Raila's strategy, said, "Raila has not engaged sector leaders. We are meeting representatives of the various sectors in the value chain. Raila was meeting politicians.”
He said they will break into several teams to cover more ground considering the time constraints of the August 9 general election.
"We have rich human resources to handle the meetings," Owalo said.
UDA seems to be keen on capitalising on the growing concern in political quarters that the Raila campaign appears as a an extension of the Jubilee administration, with all its baggage.
This narrative has been advanced in the Kenya Kwanza rallies where leaders have asked Kenyans to reject Raila terming him a ‘state project’.
Nyeri senator hopeful Kabando wa Kabando referred to this assertion when he argued that it could be the case of the ODM leader’s campaign either “by default or by plan".
“My friend, hero Raila Odinga's campaign format appears so unwisely pro-establishment, deliberately limited. But five months is a very long time in politics; Ruto's crusade seems like a juggernaut,” Kabando tweeted.
Ruto, in the new plan to counter the growing narrative around Raila’s prospects, seeks to engage sectors of health, education, the labour movement, infrastructure, devolution, and private players to incorporate their views in his agenda.
In a departure from Jubilee, UDA seeks to put money in projects that encourage labour intensive efforts compared to models that are capital intensive like Uhuru’s Big Four.
The plan also calls for putting more effort into the Micro Small and Medium Enterprises on grounds they are the sources of 80 per cent of jobs in Kenya — about eight million.
The DP said the meetings he has planned are in line with his promise that “the conversation will not be about leaders and positions and sharing of power.”
Ruto took a swipe at Raila’s team for not having a well-laid-out plan to document the requests and said his team would develop a framework for following up on the promises.
The Deputy President has been under fire over unmet Jubilee promises of stadiums for every county, laptops for schools, mega dams for every county, and better returns for farmers.
He, therefore, promised a different outcome after the August race, saying his campaign team would take note of the needs expressed by the people and follow through with their implementation.
“We must agree that every leader being given a chance to lead must fulfil the promises made to Kenyans," Ruto said. " I believe I am a hard worker and those (actions and projects) we agree on will be implemented. If I am defeated, give [the job to] someone else,” he restated.
“We don’t want to play politics as we used to play before. We are changing this going in August so that it is important to the voter and the elected leader,” Ruto added.
At the Nyeri event, residents implored the UDA fraternity to initiate interventions in the tea, coffee, macadamia, milk avocado sectors as well as fisheries and light industries.
They also pushed for subsidies for fertiliser and seeds. They asked for the best breeds of fingerlings, cattle and other crops to increase their earnings.
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Source:
The Star
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