Fear has gripped the Jubilee government ahead of the 2017 general elections concerning happenings in URP wing of Deputy President William Ruto. Already political analysts aver, if the unfolding events whether genuine or sponsored by opposition are not controlled, it is likely to cost the president his second bid.
Already a letter purported to have origins in the office of the DP is in the hands of Cord propaganda team and is set to be used in future political games. Although the matter is under police investigations, the damage has already been done whichever way investigations go because Cord followers are unlikely to believe different. In the letter, Ruto is alleged to be fronting a firm AA Bayusuf and Sons to be subcontracted by China Roads and Bridges Corporation Ltd on the Standard Gauge Railway Line.
And as the letter was in circulation, the Lang’ata Road Primary School playground landgrabbing saga is turning out to be one of those initially apparently inconsequential business-as-usual events that soon escalate into political focal points and produce earthquakes.
The Arab Spring of a few years ago that deposed more than three longterm strongman regimes started with a single despondent hawker setting himself ablaze in Tunisia.
The teargassing of Lang’ata Road Primary School kids by riot police defending the fencing off of their playground by a grabber signaled that something is very wrong at the very top in the Jubilee administration and a political earthquake is in the offing in 2015, just two years ahead of the do-or-die 2017 presidential race.
Already the opposition is planning to unmask Ruto as the Mr Big, or chief grabber, behind the playground scam.The naming is to happen when Raila Odinga, is back from India, on semi-official business.
Ruto’s unmasking will be one of the sweetest moments for Raila, the man the DP denied the privilege and pleasure of becoming Kenya’s fourth president when he chose instead to be Uhuru’s running mate in 2013.
President Uhuru Kenyatta’s reaction to the attack on schoolchildren that immediately gave his administration a brand new bad name across the world has been that of a national chief executive and Commander-in-Chief who is not fully informed of the goings-on inside his own paramount institution, the presidency.
The president’s supporters are already getting jittery at the URP’s modus operandi.They blame the 50-50 power sharing formula before 2013 as having left Uhuru at the mercy of URP.
Many say the URP wing in Jubilee is at the stage of primitive accumulation in capital formation. They say that URP was mimicking the robber barons of the 19th and early 20th centuries who built the United States of America.
Infact, when a one Patrick Osero, a businessman who also happens to be the chairman of the Agricultural Finance Corporation, a key state corporation, claimed ownership of the multi-million-shillings Weston Hotel near Wilson Airport many were left wondering. First it is no secret Osero’s position at AFC was brokered by Ruto and the two are close. Osero stood a Sh6m surety for the DP during a criminal case during the Kibaki era. Reports say, fearing for any eventuality at the ICC, Ruto of late has been transferring his investments to third parties. ICC can give a decree to have the properties confiscated and sold to compensate post-election victims if found guilty.
The Weston hotel has been linked in some quarters to the grabbing of the school playground.
It has been an open secret for years that the Weston is in fact one of Ruto’s key pet projects. Until recently he visited the hotel project on a virtually daily basis, particularly evenings and late nights.
A recent opposition meeting erupted with shock and surprise when Osero broke cover and sought to divert attention from Ruto. We are reliably informed that very senior Cord operatives connected the dots, added two and two together and hit the jackpot.
A top secret dossier was quickly prepared by Cord strategists while Ruto was away at The Hague attending to his case.
The report informed the opposition key players that Ruto not only influenced Osero’s appointment to the AFC, a key parastatal, but had also 15 years ago grabbed the land the Weston Hotel now stands on from the Kenya Civil Aviation Authority, a strategic state corporation.
The grab of the KCAA land was in the final years of the Kanu era. The development of the Weston Hotel started only five years ago, and Ruto is on video footage taking visitors around the project in 2010 and boasting of how he likes to build things.
The Cord strategists want the KCAA land repossessed which would almost certainly mean the demolition of the Weston Hotel or its confiscation.
KCAA was established on October 24 2002 by the Civil Aviation (Amendment) Act, 2002 with the primary functions of regulation and oversight of aviation safety and security; economic regulation of air services and development of civil aviation; provision of air navigation services, and training of aviation personnel.
KCAA is guided by the provisions of the convention on international civil aviation, related ICAO Standards and Recommended Practices, the Kenya Civil Aviation Act, 2013 and the civil aviation regulations.
To this day, and several CEOs down the road, the KCAA’s institutional memory of losing one of its most prime real estates to the grabbers and developers of the Weston Hotel is still felt keenly. One of the most eyecatching features of the KCAA website today reads as follows:
Corruption Ends Here!
KCAA is a corruption free zone
To report:
Dedicated Tel no. +254 20 822519
email: [email protected] www.kcaa.or.ke
Or drop your note at our integrity boxes at KCAA offices
To opposition, the Weston Hotel is an icon of impunity and should be demolished by the Air Force in a show of might and precision as spectacular as the sinking of the drugs ship in the Indian Ocean in 2014 supervised by the president himself.
Another late night meeting of by opposition had top on the list was the KPC Ngong Forest Land Scandal. Ruto was on trial charged with defrauding the Kenya Pipeline Company of huge amounts of money through dubious land deals. The Constitutional Court suspended further hearing of the case due to complaints by Ruto that the prosecution was politically engineered.
Then came the maize scandal of early 2009. After parliamentary debate on a maize scandal, Ruto was accused of illegally selling maize by Ikolomani MP Bonny Khalwale. Fake documents bearing the National Cereals and Produce Board seal that linked Ruto to the illegal sale of maize were rejected by parliament’s then deputy speaker.
Ruto attributed the maize scandal allegations and claims of his involvement in corruption to the work of his “political enemies”.
A report by the Law Society of Kenya blacklisting of Ruto on January 16 2012 is also part of the strategy. On that date, LSK published information on Ruto as one of the public officials mentioned adversely in various reports on issues ranging from corruption to economic crimes.
LSK advised voters not to vote for those mentioned in the report as they had previously been massively compromised.
The opposition is also linking URP to mega scams at National Social Security Fund. The Tassia project and extension of Hazina Towers has raised eyebrows in the manner NSSF is using the workers money. They even claim Uhuru cannot sack cabinet secretaries associated with corrupt deals such as the Energy boss Davis Chirchir whose name has featured prominently in the IEBC chicken -gate Scandal.
Back in the Bayussuf-China Road letter, it was recently claimed Ruto had crossed swords with Nairobi senator Mike Sonko after Ruto took 60 lorries to the SGR site where Sonko has over 200 trucks doing the work Bayussuf lorries in the letter were ostensibly to do. It was alleged that Ruto’s front in the scheme is a one Langat who is the accountant at his Harambee Annexe House.
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