Governor Anne Waiguru has asked National Assembly Speaker Justin Muturi to reach out to the voters and seek support than bank on ‘insignificant oath’.
Breaking her silence at the height of the raging debate stirred by Muturi’s activities, the Kirinyanga county boss said the “enthronements have little meaning politically.”
She said this would be so if there were no consultations and consensus with the leaders and the people of Mt Kenya.
“While one cannot begrudge Speaker Muturi and others of their desire for some form of enthronement, without consultations and consensus, such enthronements have little meaning politically.”
The governor was of the view that the ceremonies will not give the speaker an upper hand “because the people of Mt Kenya never had cultural kingpins and spokespersons.”
She held that it was until the colonialists came and installed the generally unpopular “paramount chiefs” that the idea of kingships came to be.
“Ultimately Speaker Muturi and others seeking votes from Mt Kenya and elsewhere will have to go to the ground and seek votes from the only legitimate determinants of leadership, the people,” Waiguru said in statement on Friday.
Waiguru, who is equally nursing political ambitions in her bid to take over from President Uhuru Kenyatta, said the latter has not vacated his seat hence remains the region’s leader politically.
“Culturally, we don’t inherit one when they are still alive,” the county chief said, joining the fray of the likes of Murang’a Governor Mwangi Wa Iria who has dismissed Muturi’s coronation.
The Speaker will be enthroned in an elaborate ceremony targeted to bring more than 6,000 elders from the nine clans of the greater Gema.
The event, political pundits say, is set to elevate him to a higher pedestal, not only in the region’s politics but also nationally.
Murang’a council of elders’ secretary-general Samuel Ruru Ng'anga recently said elders from the greater Mt Kenya were in agreement that the speaker be elevated to the post.
Ruru said they were seized of the fact that President Kenyatta was still at the reins of the region's leadership, and hence Muturi would only serve as spokesman.
“Yes, we have the President but we are making Muturi the spokesman of the region. We want anybody who wants to engage the region to do so through the spokesman,” he said.
He was part of a team of elders that visited the speaker’s residence to check if he complied with conditions for his crowning.
Ruru said his counterparts from Mt Kenya counties agreed after ‘extensive consultations that have lasted months’ that Muturi should take up the role of spokesman.
Former Gatanga MP Peter Kenneth, Wa Iria, Agriculture CS Peter Munya, former Agriculture CS Mwangi Kiunjuri, and ex-Kiambu governor William Kabogo are jostling to succeed Uhuru.