Intrigues in the battle for top State House job

President Uhuru Kenyatta chairs a special Cabinet meeting at State House, Nairobi. All eyes are trained on State House with the presidential repeat election looming. PHOTO | FILE | NATION MEDIA GROUP

What you need to know:

  • Jubilee insists it has the numbers and does not need to resort to dirty tricks to win the votes.
  • Both Jubilee and Nasa are also accusing each other of employing tactics aimed at disenfranchising voters in areas hostile to each camp.
  • There are claims some of the defectors may be having pending audit queries and, to avoid being hunted down, they have been blackmailed.
  • Inspector-General of Police Joseph Boinnet says they have deployed officers to monitor and arrest hate-mongers.

Jubilee and the National Super Alliance (Nasa) have sharpened their campaign strategies that include what appear to be underhand tactics ranging from intimidating election officials to scaremongering.

While they will not come out in the open, some senior officials at the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) are scared stiff and have shared chilling concerns with their confidantes about threats on their lives.

The threats, the officials say, come in the form of text messages and callers acting on instructions from powerful forces to bully them.

Jubilee, however, insists it has the numbers and does not need to resort to dirty tricks to win the votes.

The party’s vice- chairman, David Murathe, in an interview with the Nation, maintained that President Uhuru Kenyatta’s winning strategy remained intact and will be deployed accordingly.

DEFEAT ODINGA

“You must acknowledge the fact that no one is disputing the number of votes the President got. They have only faulted the transmission method. We will defeat Raila Odinga (the Nasa presidential candidate) again, and this time round, it will be more comprehensive,” he said.

Both Jubilee and Nasa are also accusing each other of employing tactics aimed at disenfranchising voters in areas hostile to each camp.

The opposition has, for example, accused the ruling party of using chiefs and other administrators to offer voters money in exchange for their national Identity Cards (IDs), a requirement to vote, with the intention of suppressing voter turnout on Election Day.

After last month’s election, hundreds of IDs were found dumped in a market in Makueni County by unknown people in what was later explained to have everything to do with the elections.

SELL IDS

“Jubilee has been giving chiefs money to buy ID cards. Do not sell your ID for Sh1,000,” Nasa principal and head of campaigns Musalia Mudavadi told supporters in Narok yesterday.

The Spokesman for the Interior Ministry under which the chiefs fall, Mwenda Njoka, however, denied this.

“Such would amount to an electoral offence. Chiefs have no role in elections and whoever is saying such things needs to give specific information so we can take it up,” he said.

The motivation is the deeply rooted worry by Mr Kenyatta and Mr Odinga of prospects of voter-fatigue hurting their chances of victory in the repeat presidential poll slated for October 17.

So serious is the concern that the two camps are working on ways to excite their bases, the situation having been worsened by the fact that the five other elective positions, which helped boost turnout, are settled.

CAMPAIGN MACHENERY

In response, both Mr Kenyatta and Mr Odinga have quickly reactivated their campaign machineries and sent their strategists back to the drawing board to devise winning formulas.

There are also hushed explanations in the corridors of power as to why some of the tough-talking opposition politicians had to reconsider their support for the opposition.

There are claims some of the defectors may be having pending audit queries and, to avoid being hunted down, they have been blackmailed.

Worried that the seat could slip through their hands, some politicians like Gatundu South MP Moses Kuria and Kiambu Governor Ferdinand Waititu have also opted for scaremongering as a way of bolstering voter turnout.

Their supposed incitement of supporters against some 70,000 residents who voted for Mr Odinga in Mr Kenyatta’s home county has attracted criticism from the public with calls on the authorities to rein them in before it sparks off retaliatory attacks among supporters of the opposition chief.

HATE MONGERS

Inspector-General of Police Joseph Boinnet says they have deployed officers to monitor and arrest hate-mongers.

“We are working with the National Cohesion and Integration Commission to guarantee cohesion during and after the elections,” he said.

IEBC chairman Wafula Chebukati and CEO Ezra Chiloba were not available for comment on the increasingly dangerous job of overseeing elections.

Nasa is equally wielding a similar card, calling on supporters to reject Jubilee on grounds it has mismanaged the economy, trampled upon civil rights and that things can only get worse should Mr Kenyatta be re-elected.

The head of Nasa technical committee Dr David Ndii said the coming election offers Kenya an opportunity to choose between dictatorship and democracy, with Mr Odinga offering the chance for democracy.

FUNDRAISERS

“It is a referendum on the system of government we want going forward.”

Mr Odinga has resorted to internal fundraisers to help push the campaigns to the homestretch with reports indicating that Jubilee had blocked millions of shillings from international networks to starve it of cash before the August 8 elections.

The Interior ministry holds that allowing such monies into the country would be tantamount to accessioning regime change and interference with the country’s sovereignty.

A source in the Interior docket told the Nation the ministry had instructed its officers to be on high alert and, working with the Central Bank of Kenya, intercept any such monies that may be brought in between now and next month.

Meanwhile, Mr Kenyatta will have to work overtime in the two Gusii counties of Nyamira and Kisii to explain that his virulent remarks on the Supreme Court, which have drawn widespread condemnation, are not in any way directed at the community where Chief Justice David Maraga comes from.

DAVID MARAGA

His remark, that “Justice Maraga na wakora wake (his crooks)” had clandestinely overturned the popular will of the people, has given the Nasa brigade ammunition to camp in the region. The CJ hails from Nyamira county.

The electoral commission has become another battleground for the two titans with sharp divisions on which officials from the secretariat should quit in the wake of revelations that some of the senior officials are culpable for the shambolic polls.

The tussle is over whether the CEO should carry the blame for the shambolic elections after Chairman Wafula Chebukati wrote him a terse memo demanding answers on what could have gone terribly wrong.

PROSECUTED

While Nasa wants the CEO and other senior secretariat staff to be sacked and prosecuted, Jubilee is, on the other hand, standing by them and instead has issued out a parallel list of those they want sacked.

ODM director of elections Junet Mohamed said the opposition will not go into another round of elections with IEBC as currently constituted.

“We will not just campaign for the sake of it. We have realised these elections are not about strategy, plans or voters. It is about IEBC, specifically about people who will oversee them,” he said.

NASA ULTIMATUMS

Dr Ndii added: “We have a rogue secretariat at IEBC. They are victims of capture by Jubilee, a pattern replicated in other institutions that should otherwise be independent.”

But the President, in various political rallies, has said the Nasa ultimatums were a sign they were ill-prepared for the polls. “Raila has been busy issuing demands because he is not ready for the elections. We are, however, warning him against threatening us with mass action,” Mr Kenyatta said.