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Citizen Weekly

Sunday 7 December 2014

RUTO NOW GROOMS BITOK TO REPLACE AUTOCRATIC MANDAGO

Former Uasin Gishu gubernatorial candidate Julius Bitok is being groomed by Deputy President William Ruto to take over the plum post currently being held by  Jackson Mandago.
Bitok is the new ambassador to Khartoum, thanks to Ruto’s political influence. Nothing can stop the good professor from ascending to the oval gubernatorial office in 2017, with Ruto firmly behind him and masterminding the spanner works.
Until his appointment as Kenya’s envoy to Khartoum in the Sudan, Prof Bitok had a short stint as State House financial consultant.
He also held various administrative positions in both Moi University and Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology.
Mandago has seriously lost ground in the expansive Uasin Gishu county, something that has sent the deputy president back to drawing board. It is for reason that the deputy president has found it prudent to pick Bitok to take over from Mandago as it seems to have dawned on Ruto that Bitok can effectively play the role of creating togetherness and oneness in the cosmopolitan county which has been torn apart by Mandago modus operandi.
It is not lost on observers that Mandago has shunned dictation by Ruto, and by extension the national government, in his control and running of the trouble-ridden Uasin Gishu county.
Governor Mandago cannot be said to be a close and dependable ally of the deputy president, who is now seeking to have his own man at the helm of the troubled county in 2017.
Ruto desperately wants Bitok as governor of Uasin Gishu to perform the crucial role of unifying disenchanted communities ahead of 2022, when President Uhuru Kenyatta’s term constitutionally ends and Ruto prepares to succeed him.
Political pundits aver that Ruto would want Uasin Gishu to vote for him as a block in 2022 for the presidency.
The deputy president in his  calculation in the country’s political chessboard has decided to speedily groom Bitok to take over from the beleaguered Mandago who has become an eyesore politically.
Mandago is said to be currently mastering 35pc of the Kalenjin votes but the rest of the non-Kalenjin population has out rightly rejected him because of his Machiavellian antics.
Though the governor is said to be mending fences with his foes in order to retain his coveted gubernatorial position, he is secretly still marginalising others by using three influential ministers in his county government.
Locals have discovered that the governor is operating from the periphery in harassing them by fronting the ministers as his henchmen to do the dirty job of marginalisation on his behalf, a sorry situation that has irritated non-Kalenjins.
New harassment includes witch-hunting among boda boda cyclists, evictions in Kidiwa, Uhuru and Pioneer estates where locals have lived for decades, eviction of smallscale traders from the central business district, discrimination in allocation of jobs and other opportunities in the county and the arbitrary removal of nurses and workers, previously serving in past civic authorities.

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