Githunguri Member of Parliament (MP) Gathoni Wamuchomba threatened that a section of leaders from the Mt Kenya region will withdraw their support for President William Ruto if nominated MP Joseph Wainaina and Health Cabinet Secretary (CS) Aden Duale are not arrested for alleged hate speech utterances.
Wamuchomba said that the leaders have made inciteful remarks that could spark ethnic clashes, yet they remain unchecked.
MP Wamuchomba questioned why the law is being applied selectively, as leaders allied to Ruto’s administration are enjoying immunity from being apprehended.
She warned that the trend will snowball into a dire state of the nation if it is not nipped in the bud, and the defection will happen if her demand is not met within three days.
“The bubble is growing bigger every day. The time for Kenya to rapture is coming if nothing is done,” she said.
“We are going to speak, and we are going to demand the arrest of the culprits. If the arrest of Joseph Wainaina and CS Duale is not going to happen in the next three days, some of us who have been supporting William Ruto will walk away when he really needs us.”
She defended her support for President Ruto, saying she was driven by her need to advise him, but her ambition turned sour after leadership trained its guns on the citizens.
“I have been supporting him, believing that he can improve. I felt I had the responsibility to support him, pray for him and advise him,” she noted.
“But the more we support him, the more he is messing, the more his people are messing up.”
This comes after a circulating video of MP Wainaina sparked outrage, where he allegedly intimated that people from the Kikuyu community who do not support President Ruto’s re-election should leave Uasin Gishu County.
Wainaina has since argued that he was misquoted and that he does not encourage any form of ethnic violence.
“I live here (Uasin Gishu), my family lives here and my children live here. If I am to say that the Kikuyu should leave, shouldn’t I be the first to leave? How can I say that they be haunted?” he said in a video he shared online.
“It is your right to vote for who you’d want to vote for.”
CS Duale, in July, he came under fire when he allegedly compared the Somali and Kikuyu communities, recounting what he described as historical discrimination against Somalis under former Presidents Jomo Kenyatta, Mwai Kibaki and Uhuru Kenyatta while crediting Ruto for ending the said trend.
Duale, in his defence, said he was taken out of context and explained that the phrase “Waraabe la-tagis bartay, ka-ridis waa ku dhib,” – translated as a reference to a hyena – was a well-known Somali proverb and not an attack on any community.
“It is a figurative expression about the difficulty of ending entrenched habits or long-enjoyed advantages. It was never directed at any community or intended to demean anyone,” he said.
A number of other leaders are under probe over their remarks they made.
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