Keep off Mau, Raila tells Moi

• Prime Minister Raila Odinga accuses former President Moi of interfering in plans to conserve Mau forest and warns him to stay away
  

The quickening pace of events was evidently not what the Rift Valley MPs who met President Kibaki two weeks ago had bargained for.

Nor may they have imagined the PM – who they kept out of that meeting – would re-emerge in an even more powerful role as the chief enforcer of Mau’s environmental reclamation. And this, with President Kibaki’s full backing.

The President has not been speaking like the same person who the Rift Valley group sought to portray as having reached a quiet understanding with them – behind the PM’s back.

While touring the Coast last week, the President directed that those who had encroached on the Mau ecosystem be arrested and prosecuted.

On Wednesday, when he launched the strategic plan for the PM’s office, the President asked Mr Odinga to take charge of the restoration of water towers “without delay”.

Following the earlier meeting at Harambee House with the President, the Rift Valley MPs indicated that they had been promised the evictions would not be carried out until everybody – not just the 1,962 title holders the government says are genuine – was compensated. They further implied that the evictions would be carried out over two years.

Air grievances

The same Rift Valley MPs who had sought to air their grievances directly to the President but officials familiar with what was discussed say no underhand deal was made.

Mr Odinga was the first person to be “fully briefed” by the President about the meeting after the MPs left.

One of the officials privy to what happened told the Sunday Nation that the President avoided dwelling on the Mau issue by pointedly telling the MPs the matter was being dealt with by the PM’s office as per an earlier government decision.

Our source was of the impression that the MPs had not come so much about the Mau, but rather to seek common ground in “shutting out” Mr Odinga.

Somebody in the PM’s circles had learnt of an elaborate plan where particular MPs in the delegation had been selected by the group to raise specific issues, one being to invite the President to tour the Rift Valley accompanied exclusively by themselves. This would presumably send a loaded message to the PM.

According to the source, the group wanted Higher Education minister Sally Kosgei to raise the matter but they were uncertain whether she would be present because nobody was sure she would agree to join a delegation which was openly being seen to be undercutting the PM.

In case she refused to come like her Cabinet colleague Henry Kosgey, the group reportedly had lined up assistant minister for Co-operatives Linah Kilimo, who gets along fine with the President, to score that point.

Building bridges