Former President Uhuru Kenyatta is expected to resign as the chairman of Azimio la Umoja One Kenya Coalition Council and leader of Jubilee Party.
The Jubilee Party leadership has said it does not want to entangle him as he continues with the peace initiatives he is spearheading.
President Kenyatta used the Jubilee Party to clinch the presidency in the 2017 General Election. For the August 2022 polls, the party joined others to form Azimio, which had Mr Raila Odinga as the presidential candidate.
Jubilee’s director of elections Kanini Kega announced that President Kenyatta will soon be handing over the party’s leadership mantle to focus on his new role.
“I am sure he has planned for a date when he will be handing over the leadership mantle of the party to someone else so that we have a new leadership in our Jubilee Party as well as the Azimio coalition. He is a person who has earned honours in all our neighbouring countries and we want to release him as a party,” Mr Kega said.
“Our former President has been given lots of jobs of bringing peace to various countries in Africa. We do not want to tie his hands with so many obligations here in the country,” he added.
Mr Kega appealed to the former Head of State to hand over to a competent person.
“Even as he proceeds with his new tasks, we need him to give to us someone who will spearhead this party bravely. However, he should not leave us completely because we need him to continue being one of the elders that will be offering guidance to us in the party,” the former Kieni MP said.
However, Jubilee vice-chair David Murathe, one of the ex-Head of State’s closest allies, insisted that President Kenyatta was not hanging his boots yet.
“Uhuru will not quit as Jubilee Party leader; he will now focus his energies on revamping the party,” said Mr Murathe.
The former President, he said, would quit his role as Azimio Council chairman, with a plan to drop the council altogether for the outfit to then be run by the ex-Kakamega Governor Wycliffe Oparanya-led Executive Council and Mr Raila Odinga.
“This will avoid a clash with Raila, who is party leader,” said Mr Murathe.
The revelation comes at a time when Jubilee politicians are aligning themselves to the Kenya Kwanza coalition that is led by President William Ruto. Former Gatundu North MP Anne Wanjiku Kibe recently tendered her resignation from the party.
But, Mr Kega said that the party’s top leadership is strategising on how to make the party vibrant and appealed to members not to exit.
“I am saddened to hear some leaders like Anne Kibe and others decamping from the Jubilee,” Mr Kega said.
“Don’t be deceived to jump from Jubilee to any other party. You should not leave your house just because you have been promised a better one elsewhere that does not belong to you,” Mr Kega said. “I am beseeching those who are still in the party to stay put.”
Recently, Mr Kega announced that he will rally the Mt Kenya region behind the Deputy President but from within his Jubilee Party.
“The senior-most politician that we have at the moment in Mt Kenya is DP Rigathi Gachagua and we will all be under that umbrella. But people have been misconstruing that to mean we are leaving our political parties,” Mr Kega said.
“I want to make it clear that we are coming together under our own outfits at the moment. If in future we will be able to work on those other things, then it will be okay,” he added.
