DP WILLIAM RUTO HEARTFELT MESSAGE TO PRESIDENT UHURU KENYATTA

Deputy President William Ruto has revealed what he whispered to President Uhuru Kenyatta during the BBI launch at the Bomas of Kenya last year.

The Deputy President said he told his boss that he was about to hand over the relay baton to an opponent.

This was after the Head of State publicly chastised Ruto for being impatient to take over power and was running in the wrong direction.

Speaking in an interview with KTN News on Thursday night, the DP said he felt that the remarks by the President, although in jest, were handing rivals an undue advantage.

“The President was speaking in jest there when he said that. If you want to know what I was telling him is that he was almost handing over the baton to a member of a different team. That is all I was telling him,” the DP said.

According to Ruto, while the President was concerned that he was running in the opposite direction instead of waiting for the baton at the right position, the DP was equally worried that Uhuru was overlooking him.

“I mean you can only hand over a baton to a member of your team in a relay. I was telling him that the rest of us were worried that he was almost handing over the baton, maybe inadvertently, to a member of a different team and that is why he was laughing,” Ruto said.

This was a loaded political message that lifted the lid on the feelings within the DP’s camp at a time when Uhuru is working closely with ODM boss Raila Odinga.

The opposition leader who was then present at the Bomas had burst into laughter as Uhuru tore into Ruto. This prompted Ruto to approach the president with a whisper.

Much to the chagrin of his deputy, Uhuru had compared Ruto to a relay runner who had picked the baton before dashing into the wrong direction.

“I was telling Kisii leaders the other day when they visited me, Ruto is like a relay runner who was waiting for the baton to be passed, my brother William has turned his back and is running in the wrong direction,” Uhuru said.

The remarks by the President were a heavy political punch to Ruto in reference to his premature 2022 succession campaigns at a time the country was seeing solutions to its ills through the BBI.

But on Thursday night, Ruto said both the president and himself were wrong because while one was running in the opposite direction, the other was passing over the baton to a member of a rival team.

Recently, the DP has complained that the President’s handshake with the ODM boss disrupted the Jubilee development programmes.

However, when asked if he was concerned that his roles had been taken up by Interior Cabinet secretary Fred Matiang’i, Ruto said it was the way the President wanted his second term delivered.

“We had a discussion and the president suggested that this is how he wanted his second term to look like and he wanted to try other hands to assist him in the delivery of functions,” Ruto said.

The DP noted that, nevertheless, he was okay with the decision.

“You have never heard me complain that the duties that would naturally be undertaken by the deputy president have been assigned to someone else,” he said.

The President had in 2019 made Matiang’i the ‘Super minister’ and named him the chairman of the National Development Implementation and Communication Committee of the Cabinet.

The committee oversees all government development projects in the country.

Sourced from The Star