President Kenyatta convenes Jubilee crisis meeting

President Uhuru Kenyatta has convened a Jubilee Parliamentary Group crisis meeting set for Tuesday, July 3 to try mend the cracks that threaten to tear apart the ruling party.

The decision to convene the PG meeting was arrived at on Friday when President Kenyatta met the party’s leadership from the two chambers of Parliament at State House, Nairobi.

Claims of Deputy President William Ruto being left out in key decision making in government will be top on the agenda at the meeting convened to give warring camps in Jubilee an opportunity to air their grievances, after weeks of friction between lawmakers allied to the president against those in the deputy president’s team.

Ruto’s allies claim he has been sidelined in key government decision making, and that some key operatives around the president were isolating him ostensibly to scuttle the 2022 succession game plan in Jubilee.

The deputy president’s critics in Jubilee, however, claim his early 2022 campaigns would shift the country’s attention from the President’s Big 4 Agenda and derail his legacy.

The march 9th handshake between Kenyatta and NASA leader Raila Odinga has also sparked jitters in Jubilee, and fueled suspicion on who was the president’s preferred successor.

Ruto has opted to keep a low profile, while letting his lieutenants take on those alleged to be derailing his 2022 bid. An influential Cabinet Secretary, a senior State House official and a top Jubilee Party official are among those claimed to be leading the anti-Ruto bandwagon.

Whether the Tuesday meeting will thrash out the deep-seated mistrust within the Jubilee administration remains the big question.

Sources have disclosed that Jubilee MPs will demand that the president outlines the content of his pact with Odinga, and whether it had altered the succession plan in the party.

Kenyatta has prioritised the fight against corruption, the Big 4 Agenda and Building Bridges Initiative as his legacy pillars, however, Ruto’s allies claim the fight against graft was targeting him.