DEPUTY President William Ruto's United Republican Party is reluctant to dissolve and merge with President Uhuru Kenyatta's The National Alliance.
The Star has established that there has been attempts to have the two parties which currently make up the ruling Jubilee Coalition to be merged into one.
Jubilee Members of the National Assembly and the Senate are today scheduled to hold a meeting where the matter is to be discussed.
However, URP is hesitant and its officials even stayed away from a ceremony that was set to launch the Jubilee Centre which will house a joint secretariat in Westlands.
"Following the concerns raised, there is a feeling that we need to make wider consultations on the matter before making a final decision on how to handle the issue," a senior Jubilee official told the Star.
Sources within the two parties have now revealed that some officials in URP are concerned that the party will be overshadowed by TNA group and be rendered irrelevant by the time of the next elections in 2017.
These URP officials are among those who blocked last week's announcement of former Garsen MP Danson Mungatana as the Jubilee Coalition spokesman. Mungatana was present during the opening ceremony yesterday.
The URP officials say Mungatana is not fit to hold the position of Jubilee spokesman as he would only be championing the TNA agenda at the coast and not URP's agenda.
The officials said the idea of having a Jubilee spokesman and a joint secretariat was geared towards ensuring that URP and TNA merge.
"This whole idea was mooted two weeks ago by one Joshua Kuttuny and Nancy Gitau who are advisors to the president. They want the two parties to merge into one and have a joint secretariat. We are opposed to it because Kuttuny's idea is not the best for URP. We don’t support it," said a senior URP official who requested anonymity.
The official said merging the two parties will render URP dormant and lead to a loss of identity. "We stand for family values and devolution. TNA stands for something else. We don’t want to loose our identity," he said.
The official added they will present the matter to the URP's national executive council to decide if they should merge and who from the party should be fronted as the Coalition spokesman.
URP had previously agreed to the merger plan but is reported to have asked for more time to allow for "wider consultations" on the matter.
Last week when Mungatana was to be announced as the Jubilee spokesman, the TNA officials received calls from the Office of the President allegedly from Kutuny and Nancy who asked that the plan be put on hold.
At a press conference at the Jubilee Centre, TNA secretary general Onyango Oloo said interviews were going on. "In a week's time, we will announce the person," Oloo said.
He said the selection panel comprising officials from both URP and TNA had narrowed the list of applicants down to three people— two men and a woman.
There were no URP officials at the official launch of the centre and the subsequent press conference. Contacted for a comment, Kaparo, who is the URP chairman, said he was not aware of the function "I am in the village now doing farm work," he said on the phone.
TNA urged people not to read anything sinister in having the two coalition partners run under a single secretariat.
TNA Director of Communication Machel Waikenda the two parties were working towards having a joint secretariat because they needed some form of uniformity since they were both committed to the implementation of the Jubilee manifesto.
"It is our intention to run the affairs of the Jubilee government, especially political affairs, in a coordinated manner," Waikenda said.
Sources in the alliance told the Star that among those identified to be the leaders of the new political team are Kaparo from URP and Mungatana from TNA.
Others to be included, and who will be the link to the Presidency, are political adviser Joshua Kuttuny and long-serving State House adviser Nancy Gitau.
The President and his Deputy have remained silent on political matters even as wrangles threatened to split Uhuru's TNA as some Central Kenya politicians plotted a take-over.
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