By Anwar Saddat
With every passing day as the arm of the clock turns and we inch closer to 8/8/17, the prospect of a second term for president Uhuru Kenyatta is becoming very bleak.
Trailing the NASA Presidential candidate in 31 out of the 47 counties according to NIS polling data and with a discouraged base fatigued by higher unemployment; higher costs of living; higher inflation; and the president’s inability to fight corruption, Jubilee insiders and political strategists are coming to terms that it will be practically impossible for president Uhuru Kenyatta to win a second term.
Behind the show of toughness by the Jubilee principals, there is a general understanding within President Uhuru’s camp that they failed to read the the mood of the Kenyan people. According to a senior Jubilee member close to the president, the woes facing the Jubilee party can be traced to two things:
1. Jubilee’s inability to demonstrate to the Kenyan people that it understood the hardships that Kenyans are going through. He says that Jubilee’s continued insistence that ” The economy was doing better ” while companies were closing down and people losing their jobs portrayed them as an elitist regime out of touch with reality.
The former vocal Jubilee legislator says that “Jubilee spent a lot of time trying to show what they have done and in the process made trivial, the complaints of those Kenyans that were hurting under tough economic times. When Kenyans couldn’t find Unga or when the prices of the commodities were high, we kept telling Kenyans that it was because Kenyans had a lot of money. Many Kenyans took that as an insult to their integrity.”
2. Rather than bring people together, as a party, we were busy fighting them. We failed to build bridges and this has come to bite us, especially in Rift Valley and Meru, says another Jubilee strategist and former presidential advisor. “We have lost allies in Ukambani, Rift Valley, and western kenya; allies who would have made a difference especially under the current circumstance” say the source.
With 13 days to the elections, President Uhuru Kenyatta will require more than a miracle to force a runoff. That is why President Uhuru Kenyatta is turning to his allies with IEBC for help. President Uhuru Kenyatta is hoping that they will come through for him, as the people of kenya turns their back on President Uhuru Kenyatta for his inability to deliver on his election promises to improve the lives of ordinary Kenyans.
According to their plans, IEBC will deliberately mess up the election thereby creating tension and the perfect environment to justify the deployment of security forces.
IEBC begun to play ball yesterday by declaring that they will not release real time final results announced at the polling stations as is stated within the Kenyan law. IEBC has also threatened media houses against transmitting real time results as they come from the polling stations.
The question remains, will IEBC succeed in saving the rejected Jubilee regime? Will IEBC push kenya over the cliff because they must save a regime that Kenyans have overwhelming rejected for their inability to deliver on their promises? Will CHEBUKATI decide to return a favor to president Uhuru Kenyatta for appointing him IEBC chairman or will he deliver to Kenyans a free, fair, credible, and transparent polls?
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