End of road for Kibaki’s PNU party
What you need to know:
- Most of its members decamped to The National Alliance (TNA) of President Uhuru Kenyatta.
- Signs of trouble in the once most powerful party in the country came to the open last month after auctioneers acting on a warrant of attachment descended on its headquarters on Musa Gitau Lane, off Waiyaki Way and seized its property
The last vehicle used by former President Mwai Kibaki to State House, the Party of National Unity, has been deregistered.
Doubts as to whether PNU still existed were put to rest when Registrar of Political Parties Lucy Ndung’u declared in a gazette notice Friday that it had been “effectively deregistered.”
She did not give any reasons why she decided to deregister the party. The registrar has the right to deregister a party that contravenes the Political Parties Act.
PNU has largely been inactive after the death of its chairman, Prof George Saitoti, in a helicopter crash in June 2012.
Most of its members decamped to The National Alliance (TNA) of President Uhuru Kenyatta.
PNU has a pact with TNA where it surrendered its right to field individual candidates during the last election and to support President Kenyatta’s bid.
Signs of trouble in the once most powerful party in the country came to the open last month after auctioneers acting on a warrant of attachment descended on its headquarters on Musa Gitau Lane, off Waiyaki Way and seized its property
INELIGIBLE FOR FUNDING
Flogin East Africa was seeking to recover a Sh1.5 million debt for supply of membership cards in October 2012 that was still unpaid.
Without its own candidates in the last general election, the party was ineligible to receive funding from the political parties fund and abandoned by its members including the former president and it was only a matter of time before it folded up.
Kibaki even chose to be silent in the run up to the general election when the party he formed in late 2007 after it became apparent then NARC chairperson Charity Ngilu was unwilling to team up with him like in 2007 and instead opting to support former Prime Minister Raila Odinga’s bid for president.
PNU formed hurriedly two months to the election as a coalition of parties performed dismally winning only 43 seats in parliament against ODMs 99 seats. However its candidate Mwai Kibaki was declared winner in the elections leading to widespread violence until a power sharing deal was brokered by Koffi Annan.
Its last known records indicate former cabinet minister Amos Kimunya as the party’s secretary general, while Starehe MP Maina Kamanda is the organising secretary.
Its deregistration leaves ODM and KANU as the longest surviving parties.
