RUTO FOR PRESIDENT 2012

Defiant Agriculture minister William Ruto on Saturday said he would not climb down from his presidential ambitions and asked his Rift Valley supporters to forgive him for leading them to support Mr Raila Odinga for president in 2007.

The political heat in the Orange party will climb to a new high as Mr Odinga, the party leader, stages what is expected to be a political show of might with a rally at the Tononoka grounds in Mombasa on Sunday.

The Prime Minister is holding a rally at the back yard of Tourism minister Najib Balala who chose to skip party functions and attend a ministerial event-turned-political rally in Kacheliba on Saturday.

The Kacheliba rally was attended by Mr Ruto who said the event was more important than his own party’s NEC since the former was about promoting tourism and creating jobs.

Mr Balala was preaching one political message of change in Kacheliba as a group of ODM leaders from the Coast allied to Mr Odinga called for the minister’s sacking.

The leaders told the PM to replace Mr Balala in the Cabinet with Kisauni MP Ali Hassan Joho during a meeting of ODM MPs and delegates from the Coast Province in Mombasa on Saturday.

“We as the local leaders are demanding the sacking of Balala and his replacement with Joho,” former Cabinet minister Katana Ngala said.

Mr Joho, who was the master of ceremonies during the meeting held at the Wild Waters Hotel, went a notch higher to suggest that the country should go for fresh elections should President Kibaki block the sacking.

The Constitution provides that the PM nominates MPs for appointment to the Cabinet in the grand coalition arrangement while the President makes the appointment. The PM is also expected by the same law to consult the President if he wishes to relieve MPs from his party of Cabinet positions.

But Mr Odinga rejected the sacking calls and instead said he would warn the troublesome ministers and give them a chance to apologise and return to the fold.

Mr Odinga said that he would not be shaken and sought to assure his supporters in ODM that the party would ultimately be elected to power.
“ODM is strong, has a reason and strength to get where it wants,” he said.

In an apparent swipe at Mr Balala, Mr Odinga paraded Mombasa mayor Ahmed Mohdhar alongside ministers and MPs present saying they were part of his team. Mr Mohdhar is an archrival of Mr Balala in whose Mvita constituency Mr Odinga will address today’s rally.

“Our team is strong. We should look ahead where we are going and know our friends and enemies. I’ve seen where we are going and I’m sure we’ll get there. Balala has slid and should come back,” he said. “I’ve heard what you have said. The important thing is the party’s discipline but we will not throw them out. We’ll tell them they have slid and should come back and apologise and we should give them a warning just like Muslims do before divorce.”

A number of leaders who spoke at the meeting accused Mr Balala of showing disrespect to Mr Odinga and betraying the party goal of attaining power. Mr Odinga, however, said that ODM would not be distracted from its march to State House.

In reference to Sunday’s rally Mr Odinga said: “Tomorrow, all of Kenya will be in Mombasa and you will all see the face of Kenya. We know where we are coming from and we are sure we will get where we are going. We have no fear and we will not be shaken. We came from Egypt, through Mt Sinai to Canaan and some people want to take us back,” he said.

Mr Odinga criticised former President Moi for pushing for what the PM called an imperial presidency saying that the days of an absolute ruler were long gone.

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Mr Balala, a member of ODM’s top leadership council named Pentagon, skipped the party’s NEC meeting and instead attended a cultural event hosted by Information minister Samuel Poghisio.

Mr Odinga was accompanied by more than 10 ministers among them Dr Sally Kosgey and Mr Henry Kosgey, who are from Mr Ruto’s north Rift backyard.

On Sunay, Mr Odinga leads his party into a rally to shore up party support in the face of what is seen as the most severe unity test for the party since its formation nearly four years ago.

The PM arrived in Mombasa on Friday night to entertainment by traditional dance troupes before he began a series of meetings yesterday with 23 MPs, including three ministers, from arid and semi-arid areas at the Continental Hotel in Mombasa.

The meeting attended by Special Programmes minister Naomi Shaban, Mohammed Kuti (Livestock Development) and the minister for Northern Kenya and Other Arid Lands Mohammed Elmi mainly dwelt on conservation issues.

Dr Shaban and Dr Kuti are allied to PNU, the other half of the grand coalition.

Also present was ODM vice chairman Aden Duale, who only last week joined Mr Ruto, at a rally in Mombasa, in vilifying the PM over the Mau evictions and Mr David Musila, ODM-Kenya MP Mwingi South.

Mr Odinga said that the fight for conservation of the environment was for posterity.

“When you remove people from government forest, some people start crying that you are hurting them,” said the PM.

The PM said it was unfortunate that some politicians had not yet grasped the gravity of the matter or chosen to ignore it altogether and were now playing cheap politics with it even though the national forest cover had fallen from 12 per cent at independence to 1.7 per cent.

“As leaders we must lead from the front and be ready even to bite the bullet on this very critical matter to our country. Let’s not be part of the pack but lead from the front to ensure that we reverse the effects of climate change,” he said.

The PM said it was wrong for politicians to say the human rights of those who had plundered the forests were being violated, when they had encroached ,decimated the forests and exposed fellow Kenyans to the vagaries of bad weather by their selfish actions.

Tribalism should not be introduced in national matters like environmental conservation, he said.

Mr Odinga at the same decried the rampant cattle rustling in the arid areas, saying it was a retrogressive practice.
Competition of scarce resources which is thought to fuel the practice, said the PM, can be stemmed by bringing the level of development in area at par with the rest of the country.

He said the ASAL lands had huge potential to be the bread baskets of the country with the application of appropriate technology and investment of resources.

“Wind alone has the potential to produce 1,000 MW of power in the area... and with this power we can set up industries in the region,” he added.

The Mombasa meeting came as Mr Ruto said that he was not opposed to environmental conservation.

Speaking last Friday night at a talkshow, Mr Ruto accused his opponents of misinterpreting his stand on the controversial Mau forest eviction to depict him as a person who never cared about environment.

“Politics should be dissociated from the Mau saga. I fully support environmental conservation in the country except the evictees must be treated in a humane way … I know I have taken a costly position on the matter,” he said.

The minister said the conservation of forests must go beyond Mau for the country to achieve 10 per cent forest cover.

“Other forests should be conserved as well…we have a responsibility as a government to ensure all the important water towers are safe,” Mr Ruto said.

He clarified that a section of the Rift Valley leaders were not resisting the Mau evictions as was being portrayed in some quarters.

“Our position is that the victims should be given alternative settlements and those with title deeds duly compensated,” Ruto asserted.

The minister said the recent fundraiser for Mau victims at the Panafric Hotel in Nairobi was done in good faith despite the political statements that shrouded it.

“ I do not have an inch of land in Mau, my problem is with the manner these people were being evicted without being given alternative settlements by the Government and that is why we decided to support them by holding the harambee,” he noted. “ I am happy that the Government is already internalizing the matter and we should have an acceptable solution soon.”

The Eldoret North MP defended the squatters without title deeds saying 80 per cent of Kenyans did not have the vital document and lack of it “ does not make anybody a lesser Kenyan”.

And on Saturday, in an apparent reference to the Ruto-led group of Rift Valley MPs, Mr Odinga wondered why leaders were crying wolf and opposing his efforts to conserve the environment and in particular the Mau Forest.

Mr Kuti and Dr Shaban were among ten ministers and more than 50 MPs who attended a fundraiser for the Mau evictees organised by Mr Ruto. The occasion was turned into a political forum to bash Mr Odinga for removing squatters from the country’s largest water tower.

He later attended a meeting of ODM’s National Executive Committee at the Wild Waters Hotel that is expected to come up with a common party position on the harmonised draft constitution.

At least ten Cabinet ministers were present at the deliberations in a show of solidarity with Mr Odinga. They were: Deputy Prime Minister Musalia Mudavadi, Mr James Orengo (Lands), Joe Nyanga (Cooperatives), Dalmas Otieno (Public Service), Fred Gumo (Regional Development), Otieno Kajwang (Immigration), Sally Kosgey (Higher Education), Henry Kosgey (Industrialisation), Anyang Nyong’o (Medical Services), Amason Kingi (East Africa Community) and Paul Otuoma (Fisheries). Deputy House Speaker Farah Maalim was also in attendance.

Also present were: MPs Elizabeth Ongoro, Rachael Shebesh, Ramadhan Kajembe, Alfred Sambu , Hassan Ali Joho, who is also the ODM organising secretary and party vice chair Aden Duale.

However, Rift MPs opposed to the PM gave the meeting a wide berth.

Later in the day, the PM will meet with Muslim leaders before hosting ODM Coast delegates and councillors at the same hotel.

He will host a cocktail of ODM MPs in the evening.

Mr Odinga will hold a breakfast meeting Sunday morning ahead of a rally at Tononoka Grounds in Tourism minister Najib Balala’s Mvita constituency.

Mr Balala, who has also criticised Mr Odinga over the Mau evictions, is in Nakuru to attended a cultural event.

Rift MPs are in Pokot for a rally that will hosted by Information minister Samuel Poghisio, where Agriculture minister Ruto is expected.

The Mau evictions have ignited a war of words between Mr Odinga on one hand and Rift Valley MPs on the other with the latter accusing the PM of carrying out resettlement in an inhumane manner.