Meru Governor Peter Munya: Ameru not clear about what they’ll gain in Jubilee Alliance Party

Tucked in a lonesome corner at a Nairobi hotel and striking a pensive posture only 15 hours before President Uhuru Kenyatta’s visit to Meru County, Governor Peter Ngatirau Munya cuts the image of Mark Antony in William Shakespeare’s classic, Antony & Cleopatra.

In the classic, the Roman general meets the Egyptian queen for the first time in Tarsus city in Turkey as she makes a grand entry into the city through River Cydnus (today’s Berdan River) in a royal barge steered by a mermaid.

Shakespeare records that so outpouring was Cleopatra’s reception by the city people that Antony, a general who had conquered the city, was left enthroned in the market-place, sitting lonely and whistling alone to the air “which, but for vacancy, had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too”.

On the day of the interview with Munya, Thursday afternoon to be precise, an advance party of Lands Minister Charity Ngilu and Senate Majority Leader Kindiki Kithure was already on the ground “preparing the way for the President”.

But the errant boy of Meru politics was keen to keep his finger firmly on the pulse of the grand visit.

He had just emerged from the final preparatory meeting at the Office of the President in the hallowed company of other area leaders and would be heading to Meru immediately after the hurriedly convened interview: “I am told they are already there...” he said of the advance team while dismissing any talk of “protocol feuds” among area leaders.

Clear protocol

For Munya, when it comes to a presidential visit in any county, protocol is as clear as day: “It’s simple. MPs are the MCs when he visits their constituencies. They introduce fellow MPs and area MCAs before the Senator takes over and introduces other Senators who may be visiting.

The Senator also invites the Governor who then invites the Deputy President or the President depending on attendance.”

But in the protocol arrangement that Munya spells out, Kindiki, who was recently accorded a double coronation as a Nchuri Njeke elder and community spokesman, has neither slot nor role.

Question: Senator Kindiki is a national leader, the Majority Leader in the Senate, he surely must have a special place in the scheme of things?

Munya: There is no Senate in Meru. He is Majority Leader in the Senate, not in Meru. When he comes to Meru County, he is a visitor like any other Senator.

Q: The perception out there is that he is the most senior regional leader by virtue of his position. There is even talk that he wants to be running mate of a presidential candidate.

A: Kithure is simply a man hell-bent on grooming himself and who is running faster than his legs can carry him, a man who will soon run out of luck.

Q: I thought you were friends. You taught together at the university. What has become of all that?

A: But that was then. I am not very close to him. We meet in political rallies here and there. In the last polls he was on the other side and I was on this other side so we never interacted a lot. I do not know much about him.

And true to Munya’s word, it took the personal intervention of the President to have Kindiki get a chance to “greet the people” at Kathera in Imenti on the first day of the two-day tour.

For a man who sticks out his neck on issues and speaks out his mind, Munya chuckles and gently rubs his eyes as if to pay keen attention to the question of transferring CDF to the management of county governments.

“I told them a long time ago when I was still an MP. Having sat at the Naivasha constitutional talks, I knew there was absolutely no place for CDF in the constitutional order we have at the moment. I told them but they didn’t see it coming,” he says.

The Governor believes nothing can salvage the CDF because, as he puts it, the High Court ruling was based on very solid grounds.

He fights off the rebel tag and charges that he is not the errant boy of Meru politics, only admitting that his defence of the county government he runs has put him at constant risk of disagreeing with national government. Its natural, he says, that there will be friction here and there.

“Those who look at me as a rebel are people who do not understand the new set up introduced by the new katiba. David Ndii has told them that the cheese has moved but they are still stuck to the old ways. I cannot help them much,” he says capping it with a light chuckle.

A staunch “pesa mashinani” vocalist, Munya has rubbed salt into the Jubilee injury by rejecting Jubilee Alliance Party which is meant to merge all Jubilee-affiliate parties, including his Alliance Party of Kenya, aka the “bus”.

“I have said I am not in JAP. What is in it for us? What will guarantee our interests once we are swallowed? Where is it coming from? These are the questions we have been grappling with. Even Senator Kiraitu himself has demanded certain clarifications by asking to be shown where the bedroom is and where the parking for our bus is located within this JAP compound.”

And if the man’s fighting streak is anything to go by, one could believe him. He survived the Narc wave of 2002 and won Tigania East parliamentary seat on a Safina ticket at his first stab on elective politics. He also managed to get re-elected into the tenth Parliament in 2007.

In the last polls, he resisted overtures to dissolve APK for TNA and carried the day. When the final vote was counted, he won the governorship but temporarily lost it in court only to win it back by the decision of the Supreme Court.

“We will be running again because we believe there is so much more we can do for our people,” he says in response to a question as to whether he will defend his seat in 2017.

Question: What if the ground shifts towards JAP and you are left whistling alone in the market-place like Shakespeare’s Mark Antony?

Munya: It is not the ground that moves. It is us who move the ground. The ground has not moved and it will not move. I am carrying the people with me. The question for me is the vision. And that I have. The people will decide.