News Analysis Leo Odera Omolo In Kericho Town.
FOLLOWING the recent ousting of Uhuru Kenyatta as the national chairman of the Kenya African National Union {KANU} the appointment of its interim officials and its planned revitalization politics of the South Rift regions is likely to take new dimension.
The vote’s rich region of the Rift Valley Province will be voting for close to sixteen members of Parliament following the recent realignment of the various constituencies and the creation of close to five new ones.
It is being estimated after the next voters registration exercise, the South Rift could register close to 2 million or slightly more voters as the result of the inclusion in the voter rolls of youths who have attained the ages of 18 years and issued with the new generation identity cards.
However, more attention will be focused on politics of the Kipsigis land, an area where three major political parties will be competing for close to 1.8 million votes in eleven parliamentary electoral areas.
The Kapsigis land has been blessed with three additional parliamentary Commission {IEBC], which were hived out of Kipkellion, Belgut and Bomet. The three additional sets were added on top of the existing eight sets bringing total parliamentary representations in the Kipsigisland to eleven.
The Kipsigis sub-tribe of the most populous sub-tribe of the larger Kalenjin ethnic groups occupies the two most populous Counties of Kericho and Bomet.
The constituencies include Kipkellion East, Kipkellion West, Belgut, Sigowet, Konoin, Buret, Sotik, Chepalungu, Bomet East and Bomet West.
Members of the Kipsigis community, however have extended the stakes in several neighbouring districts, and constituencies in Kuresoi East, Kuresoi West, Kilgoris, Rongai, Subukia, Narok South, Narok West and Molo.
As the result of mutual mistrust between the Kipsigis and their cousins in the North Rift, particularly the Nandis, Keiyos and Tugen, the recently formed United Republican Party of Kenya {URP}, which the Eldoret North MP William Ruto has declared that he will use as his vehicle to the State House, the re surging KANU influence in Kipsigisland could derail Ruto’s presidential ambition.
Moreover the influence and popularity of the Orange Democratic Movement {ODM} has yet to be fizzled out in the region. The party leader Raila Odinga, who is also the Prime Minister of Kenya still enjoys enormous backing and support of the Kipsigis people therefore anyone dismissing the party as “finished” in the region is not telling Kenyans the truth.
URP could have overtaken the ODM, but its leader William Ruto made two major blunders and several tactical errors.
Ruto is credited to have sponsored the move which saw the coup which ousted the former United Democratic Movement {UDM}, Deputy Chief of the General Staff and Vice Commander of all the combined armed forces of Kenya Lt.Gen.John Arap Koech a highly respected and an influential Kipsigis man. He replaced Koech with the former national chairman of the Kenya National Union of Teachers Joseph Chirchir a fellow Kipisigs from Buret s .
Grieved Gen. Koech resisted the take over and moved to court. But while the matter was still being handled by the Court, the same Ruto having assumed that he had already bagged the Kipsigis in his safe basket, felt it was time to bring the Maasais on board and brought in the former Speaker of the National Assembly Francis ole Kaparo whom he made the interim chairman of the UDM and kicked Chirchir out, though the latter resisted the move an action which caused a serious split in the party hierarchy.
Ruto’s supporters within the Kipsigis community whose numbers were swelling up day by day started dwindling. His popularity in the South Rift took a nose dive. Members of this ultra conservative saw the Eldoret North MP as someone who is pursuing the old Daniel Moi’s policy of “use and dump”.
During his twenty years long rein of power the retired President Daniel Arap Moi used several political elites in Kipsigisland and dumped them mysteriously after using them against each other.
The retired President made sue that none of the Kipsigis politician during each and every general election before they matured up and gained national recognition. Those used by Moi and dumped include the ate Alexander Bii who was pitted against Moi’s contemporary the late Dr Taaitta Araap Toweett in the voluntarily resigned and insisted in seeking for fresh mandate from the electorate voters who had voted for him in 1963 on a KADU ticket..
Toweett recaptured the Buret seat in 1969,but was later removed to pave the way for Moi’s newly fond friend in Prof.Jonathan Ngulolu Arap Ng’eno. In 1978. Another man used to eliminate other Kipsigis leaders the mightier Kipkalia Kones.
This stigma of use and dump is still very fresh in the mind and hearts of the Kipsigis people, making them suspicious of their cousin from the North. The community had run into difficulties with Moi when thy sought for his assistance so that they could buy an acquire some of the foreign owned tea plantations and factories in the region.
Instead of getting the assistance from Moi, the latter is alleged to have acquired some of the firms for himself and his families. The farms include Kaisugu Limited now owned by Moi’s family. Mau Forest Tea Estate and Factory was also acquired by Moi, but after the dismantling of its tea processing machineries, which were later reinstalled at his own Kiptagich Tea Factory in Kuresoi, the former President handed the 920 acres bear tea estate minus its processing plant to his former errand boy and roving ambassador, the former nominated MP Mark Too, who later sold the farm at an exorbitant price in excess of Kshs 270 million to a group of Kipsigis farmers and traders numbering about 43,000 shareholders under the business flagship Yasang’wan Company Limited.
Moi and some of his closest friends from the North Rift also allegedly acquired stakes at the Kipkebe Tea Estate and factory in Sotik and also in the Sotik Highland Tea Company. The two firms are located in Bureti district, while Kaisugu Limited and Mau Forest tea companies are in Kericho district.
The Kipsigis felt the Moi’s KANU regime had favored their cousins fro the three sub-tribes in the north, namely the Keiyos, Tugens and the Nandis at the expense of the close to 9 other sub-tribes that forms the larger Kalenjin community. And that the Northerners had not only marginalized the Kipsigis politically, but also economically.
Endowed with an area with the highly fertile highlands, which produces close to 60 per cent of tea, and arguably advantaged with men and omen with highest education, the Kipsigis people have stretched their influence to the neighboring districts due to their lust for land and settlement.
The present Kuresoi constituency is represented by Zakayo K. Cheruiyot the former powerful PS in-charge of Internal Security and Provincial Administration. Kuresoi has received extra additional parliamentary constituency and will now be represented in the next parliament by two MPs.
A member of the Kipsigis community can easily bag the Kilgoris seat in the neighboring Tans-Mara district due to the its massive settlement in the region which started in 1961 and has since brought their voters strength almost at par with those of the indigenous Maasai people at 50-50.
Many Kipsigis people have settled in both Narok West and Narok South constituency where they have the swing votes. The same could be said of Rongai and Subukia as well Molo constituencies in Nakuru.Since independence in 1963, many Kipsigis people moved out of the region, bought farms and settled in other areas like Koibatek, Cheranganyi, Nandi Hills, Tans-Nzoia, Laikipia and Nandi North
In comparison with other Kalenjin ethnic groups, the Kipsigis are arguably much more wealthier due to tea excessive farming and also favorable trades with their neighbors in milk, vegetables, maize and other foodstuff, Due to he presence of larger number of workers in he tea plantations and factories, the circulation of money in the two Counties of Bomet and Kericho is the highest. This ha reduced the poverty index n the region drastically.
The political history of this region is that the Kipsigis people have been supportive to KANU ever since the dissolution of KADU in 1965. But the community charged its political allegiance to KANU drastically in 2002after the retired President Daniel Moi had anointed Uhuru Kenyatta as his successor.
However, not all of them had ditched and abandoned KANU. But in 2007 the community voted for ODM and its presidential aspirant Raila Odinga on man-to-man basis returning all eight of its MPs on ODM ticket.
Two people were credited for having succeeded in vigorously campaigning and persuading the Kipsigis to abandon KANU altogether and voted for ODM. These were the late Kipkalia Kones, and the Lt.Gen {rtd} John Arap Koech.
But things did not work well immediately soon after the appointment of the ODM members in the coalition government cabinet. Some of the MP of the Kipsigis region disapproved the appointment of three Nandis – all fro the North Rift, whereas the majority Kipsigis people who gave the ODM close to 1.2 million voters ended up with only one cabinet slot.
Arithmetically, the ODM had harvested close to 900,000 voters in both Kericho and Bomet Counties, whereas the combined votes garnered by the party in the entire Nandi region was less than.240,000 But the party had taken into consideration the seniority in the party ranks. Henry Kosgei, the Tinderet MP is the national chairman of the party, while William Ruto, the MP for Eldoret North happen to be the Second Deputy party leader, and as such there was no way the Prime minister Raila Odinga could have left them out of the cabinet.
The most outspoken MP was the former Minister in the Moi regime Isack Ruto the Chepalungu MP who took Raila Odinga head-on accusing him of having short-changed his community in the cabinet appointments. Coincidentally, the thorny issue of evicting the illegal squatters at the contentious Mau Forest came in and fueled more disagreement between Kalenjin MPs allied to William Ruto and Raila Odinga.
Our of the eight MPs fro the Kipsigis community, only four bolted out and joined William Ruto in rebellion against Raila. Four of them stayed on and maintained their unswerving loyalty to the party. These are Franklin Bett the Minister for Roads, Magerer Lang’at an Assistant minister for Energy, Mrs Beatrice Kones, an Assistant Minister for home Affairs and Dr. Joyce Laboso the MP for Sotik in whose constituency anti-Raila leaflets surfaced last week.
The team which rebelled and abandoned the ODM and moved out with William Ruto include Isack Ruto {Chepalungu}, Dr Julius Kones {Konoin}, Charles Keter {Belgut} and Benjamin Lang’at {Ainamoi}.
However, none of the two groups can claim having upper hand a far as popularity inside Kipsigisland is concerned. Opinions are divided between URP and ODMN with KANU trailing the two parties in third position.
The perception that William Ruto and his URP is the most popular leaders and calls the shots in Kipsigis region is not true. When the time for the actual election came, the battle for political supremacy ill be fought in three prongs, namely URP, KANU an ODM, Nicholas Biwott’s Vision Party of Kenya and the UDM could share the spoilt and also succeed in harvesting one or two seats each. It will also depend on ho each party could sustain its presence up to the finishing line.
William Ruto’s flirtation with Uhuru Kenyatta, however, is not well taken by the Kipsigis people who blames Uhuru’s father the founding president for having facilitated the massive settlement of Kikuyus in the regions the Kipsigis people considered as their God given land in the rift Valley. It is also imperative that the Kipsigis and the Kikuyus have fought over the same land ever since 1992-93, 1996-97 and 2007 incurring heavy loses in terms of lives of human being, property and homes.
The reconciliation between members of the two communities appears to be within only he lips of their politicians, but not well cemented in the grass root, and this need more public relations exercises as well as civic education. The same could be said of the reconciliation between the Kisiis and Kipsigis people along the Borabu-Sotik volatile district borders.
Here is no single political party which controls the population in the South Rift region of the expansive Rift Valley Province, and many of the parties could merge victorious comes the next polls.
Ends
