Sunday, October 23, 2011

Jitters over cancellation of Raila tour of Central region



By Gakuu Mathenge
Intervention by Central Region’s political and business leaders prompted the postponement of Prime Minister Raila Odinga’s planned tour of Nyeri County on Friday.
The last minute postponement has generated heat, with speculation rife that succession politics had ruined it.
A meeting of leading businessmen and senior elders from the region with the PM at his Karen home on Wednesday evening prevailed upon him to postpone the tour to allow for "more inclusive planning and to bring more leaders on board".
Among leading businessmen and elders from the region, who attended the meeting was University of Nairobi Chancellor JB Wanjui.
Wanjui was among President Kibaki’s Democratic Party Council of Elders that featured wealthy businessmen whose interests cut across many sectors of the economy.
Sources said it was felt more leaders be brought on board in preparation for the tour to cover the whole region, and not just Nyeri County.
"This way, the Nyeri tour becomes the beginning or entry point. There is a feeling the region needs to open up and welcome the PM. The notion that the region belonged to so and so is no longer viable," a source, who attended the meeting said.
The tour of the PM was being coordinated from the Central PC Jasper Rugut’s office, and among reasons given for the last minute postponement was bad weather especially in Aberdares Forest, where the PM planned to plant a tree on the spot where Mau Mau freedom movement’s leader Dedan Kimathi was captured at Karuna-ini.
President Kibaki is set to retire next year, and Central region’s estimated five million votes makes it a rich hunting grounds for aspiring successors.
Any move by the PM and other leading contenders regarding the region is watched closely. So far leading businessmen Charles Njonjo, Stanley Githunguri and Peter Kuguru are among opinion leaders who have publicly warmed up to the PM.
Signs have been apparent lately that businessmen, among them Njenga Karume, have fallen out of favour with presumed PNU de facto leader Uhuru Kenyatta.
Generational change
Uhuru seems keen to cut a profile of the face of a generational change, and mostly appears in public with youthful MPs, and avoids the old guard. Although players are till cautious, the new re-alignments are bound to take shape ahead of next year’s presidential race.
Mathira MP Ephraim Maina, who had earlier organised a meeting of Nyeri County civic leaders in preparation for the visit, said planting a tree at Karuna-ini was a sentimental matter to the PM and his tour would not have been complete without it.
"It is a sentimental matter to the PM, and he really wanted to plant the tree on the spot where Kimathi was captured in 1956 but the weather was unfavourable. Otherwise the people of Nyeri County were ready and are still ready to welcome him any other time," Maina said on the telephone.
PNU politicians, led by Chief Whip Johnstone Muthama, were on the PM’s neck last week over remarks attributed to him in court to the effect that President Kibaki should take political responsibility for killings by security agencies during the post-election violence. "The cancellation of the trip had nothing to do with the court comments. By the time the PM decided to cancel the function, he had sufficiently explained his words in court were taken out of context and that he never targeted the President," the PM’s spokesman Dennis Onyango said.
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