Elders back effort to unite G7 bigwigs

By Athman Amran

Elders are engaged in a last minute attempt to unite Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka, Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta, and Eldoret North MP William Ruto ahead of the General Election.

The Kikuyu, Kamba, Kalenjin, Kisii elders, and opinion leaders are worried the unity, which began through the G7 Alliance, is now shaky.

They fear without approaching the elections united, chances of any of the three leaders becoming president would be slim.

Last Sunday, Kikuyu and Kamba Council of Elders had dinner with Kalonzo at his Karen residence in Nairobi where discussions centered on politics and national unity.

Kamba Council of Elders chairman Sam Muumbi and his Kikuyu Council of Elders counterpart Simon Wachira Kiago led 20 representatives of the two communities in the discussions. The elders supported the VP’s strategy of using elders to seek support.

Earlier, Kamba and Kalenjin elders encouraged Ruto, the leader of the United Republican Party, and Kalonzo to form an alliance.

At the Sunday dinner, the Kamba and Kikuyu elders urged Uhuru and the VP to begin discussions under the patronage of the elders.

Joint primaries

They called on Uhuru and the VP to honour a protocol they signed together with the late Internal Security Minister George Saitoti, in which the three had agreed to hold a joint nomination and pick one of them as presidential candidate.

“You should work together to expand the protocol to include other like-minded leaders,” Kiago said during the dinner as he presented a memorandum to Kalonzo, saying they were determined to see peaceful elections.

“We have started a process of reaching out and talking to others with the aim of promoting understanding and respect for democracy,” Kiago said.

He said the formation of a PNU coalition between PNU and ODM-Kenya in early 2008 in which Kalonzo was named Vice-President helped stabilise the country.

Efforts to bring the leaders together comes at a time the VP is becoming impatient with his colleagues in the G7, who have not shown firm commitment in ensuring unity in nominating one of them as presidential candidate.

“We will work with the G7 Alliance. We will get together somehow. But if people play it hard, I will go my own way,” Kalonzo said two weeks back when leaders from Kisii and Nyamira counties visited him at his Karen home in Nairobi.

The leaders included former MPs Jimmy Angweny, Geoffrey Masanya, and Mwencha Okioma.

Some Kisii and Nyamira leaders had wanted members of the G7 Alliance to stick together and proposed that the VP, being senior among them, should be the alliance’s presidential candidate.

The push to have the leaders unite also follows moves by individual members, which have indicated the G7 Alliance members were not reading from the same script.

This was so especially after Uhuru formed an alliance between his TNA, the Party of National Unity, the Alliance Party of Kenya associated with Energy minister Kiraitu Murungi and the Grand National Union.

Uhuru’s move seemed to have ignored an earlier agreement between Uhuru, Kalonzo and Saitoti to elect one of them as president in a free and fair nomination.