Is William Ruto planning to quit government before the elections? A little bird whispers to this publication a section of the DP’s think tank wants him out of government a month before the elections and he may consider this new option after previously insisting on not resigning from post.
According to the source, a resignation in July should pull the carpet under President Uhuru Kenyatta’s feet when he least expects and it will also be at a time Raila Odinga is too busy on the campaign trail to lend the president a hand in running government like he currently does from outside.
Plotters of this scheme argue, quitting the government a month to the polls is likely to raise William Ruto’s political profile and have him go to the ballot without the baggage and failures of Jubilee. With the project tag, DP Ruto’s top strategists are convinced Kenyans will vote against Raila Odinga as a protest of the regime’s failures.
Read: You cannot lecture President Uhuru on his home turf, Murathe to DP Ruto
In August last year, the deputy president said he will quit government at his own time and that those pushing him to resign forgot he had a huge stake in the Jubilee administration.
“We are not guests in any place. We join parties by choice and leave by choice. Nobody should ask why we are still here,” said Ruto when asked why he was still in a government that he believes has failed to deliver on its pre-election pledges.
In the same month (August) last year, while meeting media editors at State House in Nairobi, President Uhuru Kenyatta told his deputy to resign from the government if he was dissatisfied with its operations and the direction it is moving in. Uhuru told off the DP for criticizing the same government that he serves yet being unwilling to ship out, hence leaving the country in a state of confusion over his stand.
Read: President Uhuru’s Chief of Staff Nzioka Waita to resign from office?
“I have an agenda that I was elected on, and that work must continue, and it would really be the honorable thing that if you’re not happy with it that you would actually step aside and allow those who want to move on, and then take your agenda to the people. Which is what happens in any normal democracy, because you can’t have your cake and eat it,” he said.
“You can’t, on the one hand, say ‘I’m not going,’ and then at the same time ‘I don’t agree.’ You’ve got to decide because you must be principled in that endeavor. So that you don’t confuse people; on the one hand you want to sing the praises of a government, that you’re saying ‘we have done this’ and you want to ride on them, but yet on the other side of your mouth you’re talking another language.”
