RUTO TELLS GIDEON HE CAN'T BE PRESIDENT

Deputy President William Ruto has laughed off Baringo senator Gideon Moi’s presidential ambitions, calling him a greenhorn whose ambitions were “premature and ill-advised”.

Political leaders allied to Mr Ruto’s United Republican Party, who accompanied the Deputy President on a tour of the North Rift yesterday, also allayed fears of emergence of another political kingpin in the region.
They spoke two days after Mr Moi toured the area and drummed up support for his Kanu party.

While addressing the public at a harambee in Kiplombe Ward of Uasin Gishu County yesterday, the Deputy President called Mr Moi a political greenhorn who “wasn’t ripe or seasoned enough to run for the presidency in the 2017 General Election.”

Said the DP in Kalenjin: “Someone who just stepped into politics the other day is very fast to heed to uncalculated advice to run the biggest race in the country.”

He added that the Baringo senator and son of former President Daniel arap Moi “was being used as a tool to divide the Kalenjin vote” and asked the people to shun calls for alternative leadership other than that offered by the Jubilee Alliance Party.

Elgeyo Marakwet Senator Kipchumba Murkomen said his Baringo counterpart was engaging himself in “a political race he cannot win”.
“No one can ever go into a fight alone and win,” said Mr Murkomen.

Samburu West MP Jonathan Lelelit termed Mr Moi’s Kanu as “an old party that had no place in a modern society, which needs sober and creative leadership” while Uasin Gishu Senator Isaac Melly and Governor Jackson Mandago both promised to shore up support and make the North Rift “a Jubilee stronghold.”

Political tension in the Rift Valley has risen a few notches in the past few days, after Kanu announced it would front the Baringo senator for the presidency in 2017.

On Thursday, Mr Moi and Kanu Secretary-General Nick Salat, who were on a week-long, meet-the-people tour of Nandi and Uasin Gishu counties, vowed that Kanu would not dissolve and follow Mr Ruto’s URP and President Uhuru Kenyatta’s The National Alliance party in the merged Jubilee Alliance Party.

Mr Moi also addressed the thorny issue of maize farming, saying the government should increase the vote for purchase of maize from farmers from Sh2.7 billion to Sh5 billion.

Mr Ruto has been under pressure to reassure the farmers that the government would address their plight.