Interior Principal Secretary Karanja Kibicho has dismissed Deputy President William Ruto’s claims that the government was behind the distribution of inciteful leaflets in Eldoret, Uasin Gishu County, and that the State is actively attempting to create chaos at the ballot box in order to derail his presidential bid.
The PS’s comments follow DP Ruto’s claim on Thursday that he had information that leaflets were distributed to communities in the Rift Valley region this week, warning them of potential chaos in the August polls.
He also claimed that a closed-door meeting, whose agenda he claims was to plan for the aforementioned uproar, took place recently in Nakuru County and was organized and attended by senior government officials led by President Uhuru Kenyatta.
Kibicho slammed DP Ruto on Citizen TV on Thursday for allegedly playing the sympathy card and lying to Kenyans by making false accusations that he can’t seem to back up with concrete evidence.
“When you hold a position as big as the DP of a country try, try and persuade yourself to be truthful, it is the honorable thing to do. The last time I stepped foot in Nakuru was two years ago and it is shameful for a DP to imagine that we were in Nakuru plotting anything. He is speaking as if we were there planning things. It is shameful to lie on cameras on such a grave thing,” said Kibicho.
He also refuted DP Ruto’s claims that the State is conspiring with National Government Administration Officers (NGAOs) to ensure that the elections are marred by violence, stating that it is standard practice for the Interior Ministry to hold regular security meetings with the said officers during any electioneering period.
“These are masters of reverse psychology…we have been meeting our chiefs from 2017. Our administration officers are the chairs of the security committees in their jurisdiction. We are having an election whose temperature is high; what irresponsible PS and CS would we be if we don’t check on what is happening on the ground during an election?” he posed.
“We need to be given a break and be allowed to do our work because we do not meet them (NGAOs) in the forests, we meet with them out in the open and we always brief the media.”
Kibicho also remarked on the fate of the nine Moi University students detained for allegedly distributing hate speech leaflets in Eldoret, noting that investigations are still ongoing and that more arrests will be made soon.
“The people who have authored them and who have connections to them are in our custody and they’re being interrogated and we shall get to the bottom of this. We shall get to know the masterminds behind them. More arrests are following not just the nine, because these campaigns didn’t start one week ago when the leaflets started showing up, these campaigns started a long time ago.”
Similarly, despite ruffling a few feathers, the PS reiterated that the Ministry of Interior and all agencies under it will continue to carry out their mandate.
