Jayne Kihara: Uhuru will be disappointed

Naivasha MP Jayne Kihara speaks at a past function. [File, Standard]

Naivasha MP Jayne Kihara is convinced President William Ruto's administration is going to succeed beyond the expectations and predictions of his critics.

She says former President Uhuru Kenyatta drove fear into Mt Kenya voters that they would live to regret their decision if they supported Ruto.

Kihara says that while campaigning for his preferred successor in the 2022 presidential elections, Uhuru would threaten Mt Kenya voters that they would live to regret it if they dared elect Ruto.

But on voting day, Ruto's Kenya Kwanza side won nearly all elective positions in the region.

Addressing a function presided over by Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua at Kianyaga High School in Kirinyaga County recently, Kihara fired the first salvo.

"When issuing title deeds to land owners in Ndeiya, Kiambu County, weeks to the elections, the retired president predicted it would not take three months before dire consequences befell us," she said.

"Well, it is seven months now and he will be disappointed this administration will succeed beyond his cynical predications. We are calling him out to quit attempting to force his own predictions to come to pass by aiding anti-government mass protests from the shadows and join Azimio protests in the open," added Kihara.

Kihara called on the retired president to come clean on his role in the ongoing mass protests organised by Azimio over a raft of political and social-economic demands. Azimio wants the government to among other things lower the cost of living, open electoral servers and involve the coalition in the selection process of electoral commissioners.

It was the first time an elected leader from Mt Kenya region had directly linked the retired president with the mass protests that were threatening to disrupt activities and paralyse the economy.

Linking the former president with activities whose state objective was to bring down the UDA administration paints the retired head of state in un-statesman colours. It also puts him on the defensive. And unless he declares his stand on the matter, he would share responsibility if things escalate.

"We must tell Uhuru if he is not in this maandamano (mass protests) thing, he should come out. We have heard him say Raila is still his leader. What we are saying is if you have a hand in this maandamao come out, come out and talk openly.

"I come from the Rift Valley where we have tasted (politically instigated) clashes. Our former president, you were taken to The Hague (cited by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity). I almost landed there with you. Our former president come out and tell us your position on this maandamano," she said.

After Kihara fired the first salvo, it has since opened a flood gate of statements around Uhuru's link with the anti-government protests organised by Azimio whose governing council he chairs. However the leaders have not provided any evidence linking the former president to the protests.

The public challenge to the retired president and insinuations that he was the financial muscle behind the Movement for Defence of Democracy (MDD) mass demonstrations that rocked some cities and towns in the last two weeks, preceded an attack on the Kenyatta family property -- Northlands City. The land houses several major commercial enterprises operated by the family of founding President Jomo Kenyatta.

The choice of the soft-spoken MP for Naivasha to fire the first salvo against Uhuru rather newly installed UDA chair and Embu Governor Cecily Mbarire, or chair of the Council of Governors and Kirinyaga Governor Anne Waiguru is loaded with significance.

To start with, Naivasha is in Nakuru County which featured prominently in the International Criminal Court (ICC) intervention in Kenya in the aftermath of the 2007-2008 post-election violence (PEV), and in which Kihara and Uhuru featured prominently. The attempt to draw parallels of the MDD protests leading to PEV scenarios goes without saying.

Two, away from the public limelight, Kihara has been an influential subterranean player in shaping the political events of the last two decades in Mt Kenya region.

Her underground work in shepherding the Mt Kenya region to vote for Ruto only came to light at the first thanksgiving church event in Kiambu County after Ruto was declared the winner of the 2022 presidential contest.

It was Gachagua who let the cat out of the bag when he introduced Kihara as the host and convener of the UDA War Council for Mt Kenya strategy at her house throughout the road to the August 9 elections.

The war council, which was charged with strategy to ensure the Mt Kenya region remained solidly behind the Ruto-Rigathi ticket, was behind the seamless campaign and messaging that locked the region firmly in UDA's vote basket.

Ruto would once in a while drop in for briefing and consultation but the execution was left to the council under Gachagua's overall leadership.

"Among our strategies was to ensure the national secretariat left the messaging to Mt Kenya region to us in order to deal with a vicious and well-oiled Jubilee. Jubilee employed tactics to sway sympathy sentiments to their side through state agencies, councils of elders and the Mt Kenya Foundation (MKF) among others. They had unleashed on us a vicious narrative that an "outsider" (Ruto) had disrespected a sitting head of state and a son of the region. We beat them hands down, and here we are," she recalls.

The war council caucusing codenamed 'Birthday parties' stealthily rolled out pro-UDA counter-strategies against the onslaught by the more publicly famous combined efforts of the Mt Kenya Foundation (MKF) business lobby, the Jubilee party, the state machinery and the remnants of the defunct old Gema functionaries on the Azimio side.

Kihara has been a stealth grassroots operator since she joined elective politics in 2003 when she was elected Naivasha MP in a by-election. The seat fell vacant following the death of her husband Paul Kihara, soon after he had been re-elected Naivasha MP in the December 2002 General Election.

Her election plunged her into the deep end of constitutional making politics as the country was in the middle of a constitutional review and the constitutional conference underway at the Bomas of Kenya where MPs were among key delegates.

"It soon became apparent the Liberal Democratic side (LDP) faction of Narc led by Raila Odinga commanded a dominant sway with the delegates in pushing for an agenda that Mt Kenya felt was not in tandem with their aspirations on governance in the contentious discourse around presidential and parliamentary systems of governance and how many devolved units the country should have. The ruling party, Narc, was split, our former party, the Democratic Party (DP) had become moribund and President Mwai Kibaki was indisposed. There was uncertainty," she says.

The fact that the senior most Cabinet ministers from Mt Kenya, Dr Chris Murungaru, Kiraitu Murungi, Martha Karua and others had no political clout to organise a counter strategy to contain the LDP and Raila Odinga manoeuvres at Bomas did not make things any easier, she recalls.

"LDP leadership was meeting delegates every night in their hotels to mobilise for every day's deliberations. It is at this point I offered to host the Mt Kenya side of Narc backbenchers in my house, but with strict instructions they would be driving themselves and come without security to make it as discreet as possible. The first meeting saw 11 MPs come, at the second meeting 23 MPs turned up and we had a quorum to push business. The rest is history," she said in an interview last Friday.

The Bomas draft and its contentious clauses never saw the light of day.

It is this caucusing that also gave birth to a splinter lobby inside Narc by the name National Reform Initiative (Nari), that would latter evolve into Narc-Kenya to counter LDP (and later engrafted with Kanu elements to form Orange Democratic Movement, ODM) to duel at the 2005 referendum campaigns, and Kibaki re-election campaigns in 2007.

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