Deputy President William Ruto has opened a new war front with the State House over NIS role in politics
The second in command claims abuse of intelligence information and services to the advantage of his main competitor, Mr Raila Odinga.
Deputy President William Ruto has launched a scathing attack to state house over what he says is abuse of intelligence information and services to the advantage of his main competitor, Mr Raila Odinga.
In a letter, the DP’s United Democratic Alliance (UDA) raised complaints with the Intelligence Service Complaints Board over what they term misuse of national security organs to advance political interests of Mr Odinga’s Azimio la Umoja One Kenya Coalition.
Mr Odinga has been endorsed by President Uhuru Kenyatta for the presidency and has enjoyed presence of key Cabinet Secretaries and government officials, some of whom have openly expressed confidence about the former prime minister’s impending win in August.
Ruto’s war with CSs in campaigns echoes Raila’s 2017 poll petition to the Supreme Court. The party said the use of NIS as a political tool to further interests of a political party poses a threat to a peaceful electoral process.
This, the UDA party says, will lead to compromising of the electoral process “through the unlawful, unconstitutional and reckless use of intelligence information”.
Consequently, the Dr Ruto-led party gave the board and National Intelligence Service (NIS) boss 14 days to provide an explanation, failure to which they will resort to legal action.
They argued that it is within the mandate of NIS to ensure no actor within the public or private sector leverages its resources to undermine the ongoing pursuit of a free and fair electoral process,” UDA said in the letter.
It went ahead: “Whereas such utterances would ordinarily be dismissed as unfounded, populist, insignificant and inconsequential, they are in this instance of grave concern to our client considering that the source of such information has been attributed to NIS reports by none other than the Principal Secretary of Interior and Coordination of National Government whose Cabinet Secretary sits in the National Security Council.”
DP Ruto had swiftly responded to the claims by the Interior PS, daring Dr Kibicho to make the report public if they are certain Mr Odinga is leading in the polls.