URP wing of Jubilee has written to the Registrar of political parties seeking fresh registration and have further submitted a new symbol for the Party.
In 2015 , Deputy President William Ruto led United Republican Party (URP) disbandment and its members joined the Jubilee Alliance Party (JAP) ahead of the 2017 polls.
Top leaders and voters in the Rift Valley region publicly stated that the plans to fold the party and merge it with President Uhuru Kenyatta’s The National Alliance Party (TNA) were ill-conceived and should be put on hold.
As it is, reality has since sank in as the TNA faction led by President Uhuru Kenyatta and a huge chunk of Mt. Kenya have shown open hostility towards DP Ruto and his cohorts.
Senate Majority Leader Kipchumba Murkomen has since admitted all is not well in Jubilee and claimed the rifts have been caused by clique of “individuals serving within government at the Office of the President”.
“We have a concern about the existence of a small wing of individuals serving within government at the Office of the President, government ministries who are spending most of their time to plant discord in the Jubilee Party.”
The Elgeyo Marakwet senator claimed those fighting Mr Ruto were out to curtail his 2022 presidential ambition, and cause a fallout between him and the president.
“If the president and deputy president do not sit down together and say the direction that these things are taking is not useful to Jubilee as a party, the government, Kenya as a nation and in the legacy of the president; if they do not face those issues fairly and squarely and bring those persons within government into account, such small cracks will cause a bigger problem,” he said.
“These same people are influencing direction of… the government… with only a single agenda… separating the president and his deputy,” he claimed.
Mr Kenyatta’s directive for lifestyle audit on all public servants in the on the ongoing corruption purge, Mr Murkomen says, has made matters worse.
In fact, the order caught Mr Ruto off-guard, he says.
“Unfortunately, because those people (who he alleges are fighting the DP) have responsibility over the policy of the government, we have situations where things like lifestyle audit are now in place without the knowledge of anybody who is governing in Jubilee,” he said.
“The lifestyle audit is about 2022 elections, it is a principal called kicking-the-ladder symptom as there are people who want to ascend to those positions of power and they want to curtail other people.”
He claimed the scrutiny on civil servants’ wealth is targeting Mr Kenyatta’s deputy, the self-declared son of a peasant.
“Has it ever occurred to you that Raila Odinga who is a hundred times richer than William Ruto, no one asks for his lifestyle audit?” he said.
“Because of succession politics, those people have been assembling there and saying we want to stop him from moving…”.
He said it was Mr Ruto’s detractors at Mr Kenyatta’s office who leaked information about the lifestyle audit to Machakos Governor Alfred Mutua.
“In the very way Governor Mutua spoke about lifestyle audit and directly to the deputy president and why the lifestyle audit has something about stopping the deputy president, we have discovered after research that truly there are people from the Office of the President who gave that information to governor Mutua and they are working together,” he claimed.
“Unfortunately, Governor Mutua was too impatient so, he went announcing it early.”
He said the president’s lifestyle audit declaration is not backed by law.
“It was a declaration by Governor Mutua, picked by the president a few days later. Then Mutua making that statement directly to the deputy president,” he said.
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