DEPUTY President William Ruto has said his relationship with President Uhuru Kenyatta remains intact.
He has also repeated calls on the UN to close the Dadaab refugee camp and relocate 500,000 Somalis.
Ruto assured Jubilee supporters that there are no cracks in the Jubilee administration, calling on them to ignore “rumours in the media”.
“We know where we have come from and where we are going. The President and I are very united, let the newspapers write, we will read them and, after, we shall use them to wrap meat,” Ruto said yesterday.
He was presiding over a fundraising function at ACK St Polycarp, Nairobi.
Ruto’s remarks were sparked by the Star’s exclusive report on Saturday, in which we said Kenyatta had turned down two invites to the Rift Valley in the last month alone.
Kenyatta was to be the chief guest at the close on Friday of the Nandi Investment Conference and Exhibition, but did not show up. Ruto took over the role of chief guest in his boss’s absence, but made no mention of Kenyatta sending his apologies for not showing up.
The absence triggered a flurry of reactions from the politically sensitive Nandi region. Many wondered whether the bond between Ruto and Kenyatta had weakened.
Meanwhile, Kenyatta’s spokesman Manoah Esipisu has denied reports that the President has been snubbing invites from the Deputy President. He said the President had missed the latest event due to other pressing engagements, especially after the Garisa attacks.
The statement was a clarification of the Star story over the weekend that Kenyatta had snubbed two Ruto invites. Last month he was expected at the ASK Show in Eldoret but he skipped the event.
“At no time has the President snubbed an invite to an event to which he has been invited by his Deputy. Any suggestion that the President did not honour the Rift Valley events because they were not canvassed properly or were not in his diary are false and malicious,” Esipisu added.
He added that Joshua Kutunny, whom the Star report quoted, is not responsible for the President’s diary.
On Dadaab, Ruto said the government has intelligence that the largest refugee camp in Africa is being used as an al Shabaab breeding ground.
“The way America changed after 9/11 is the way Kenya will change after Garissa. We are determined to secure Kenyans and their property and what we are doing is for the good of Kenyans”.
– the-star.co.ke
