Deputy President William Ruto’s State House bid appears to be getting slippery after a section of UDA aspirants threatened to ditch the outfit ahead of the 2022 elections.
The aspirants majority of who are from the vote-rich coastal region claim they are being mistreated stating that their efforts to meet their party leader has been in vain.
Led by UDA senatorial aspirant Caroline Chilango, the leaders accused Malindi MP Aisha Jumwa and her Kilifi North counterpart Owen Baya of dictatorship.
“We fully support our party leader and the Deputy President William Ruto but the way some Kilifi grassroots leaders’ are managing UDA makes it difficult and now we even feel it is better to go to other parties,” Chilango said.
She urged the deputy president to immediately schedule a meeting with all UDA aspirants in Kilifi County failure to which they will walk out of the UDA party.
This comes even after the deputy president made two trips to the coastal region have to cure the widening cracks within UDA.
During Ruto’s six-day tour of the Coast in October, divisions had already emerged within two factions, one led by politician Mohammed Tenge and the other team supporting former Senator Hassan Omar.
Ruto’s tour this week seems to have worsened the already fragile relation after UDA coordinator Mohammed Tenge was roughed up by alleged hired goons on Saturday night.
Tenge accused his colleagues of colluding with a sitting MP and a UDA national official from Mombasa to block some of them from accessing the party leader.
“It is such a pity that those of us who have put in efforts and used our own resources to popularise the party in Mombasa are the ones who are being treated like trash by people who have hijacked the party for their selfish political interests,” Tenge said.
