With Jubilee MPs requesting a Parliamentary Group meeting before State of the Nation address next Thursday, Bahati MP Kimani Ngunjiri, a Ruto supporter, said the Jubilee Party was in flames and must be salvaged.
It is also feared that pro-Ruto MPs may take advantage of parliamentary privilege to disrupt Uhuru’s address or stage an open rebellion including walkouts.
Uhuru’s anti-graft fight has caused jitters within Jubilee and Ruto has openly claimed the eradication spearheaded by Director of Criminal Investigations George Kinoti aims to shatter his presidential dream.
However, Nyaribari Chache MP Richard
The Defence and Foreign Relations Committee vice chairman said that in light of the handshake, Jubilee MPs no longer have any superior influence over the President compared to others. “I don’t support the idea of monopolising the President,” Tong’i said.
On his part, Kiambu MP Jude Njomo said the President’s State of the Nation Address next week is, “not special, it’s like any other and doesn’t call for a preceding PG”.
“It is the prerogative of the President to call for a PG as the party leader. There is been a lot of noise around but that doesn’t warrant anything extraordinary to warrant a PG,” the MP told the Star on phone.
The law requires that the President addresses a special sitting of Parliament once every year to submit for debate a report on the progress made in fulfilling international obligations.
Article 132 of the Constitution also provides that the President shall, during that occasion, submit a report on all measures taken and the progress in the realisation of national values.
But despite pressure from Ruto’s allies, it has emerged that the President men are not sleeping easy either. There are murmurs that some ex-Jubilee MPs who lost in the last elections are pushing for Ruto’s impeachment.
But nominated MP Maina Kamanda, the harshest critic of Ruto, declined to directly indicate whether the impeachment motion was on the cards. “On the impeachment, let us wait and see,” the former Starehe MP said in a tactful response on Monday.
As the impeachment plot was being hatched, some former and current MPs in the ‘Stop Ruto Movement’ are already planning a major anti-Ruto rally within Uhuru’s Central Kenya backyard to push for his removal.
Multiple sources said the planners were contemplating holding the rally in Kiambu’s Kirigiti, Githunguri, or in Murang’a over the issue of graft. The leaders would use clergy and musicians to mobilise the region to turn up for the rally tentatively planned for April.