Homa Bay Town Member of Parliament Peter Kaluma has said that Kenya’s Deputy President William Ruto will eventually form or be part of a coalition before the crucial 2022 presidential election.
Speaking to KTN News on Monday, August 16, night, Kaluma who is also a member of the Parliamentary Justice and Legal Affairs Committee in the National Assembly said it is almost impossible for anyone to win the presidency in Kenya without a coalition.
“It is too early to talk about coalitions that will approach the elections in finality. William Ruto will be in some form of coalition arrangement,” he said.
The ODM legislator further said that the DP wants to consolidate the base of the United Democratic Alliance so that the party has more say in coalition negotiations.
“William Ruto is simply strengthening the base of UDA, which for all intent and purposes, by color and manner, is the former URP (United republican Party which was William Ruto’s party before folding it to join Jubilee party),” Kaluma added.
He said William Ruto who has expressed his ambitions to succeed retiring president Uhuru Kenyatta knows that he will not get the 50 percent plus one vote required for a presidential aspirant to be declared the winner if he goes into the 2022 General election without entering into a formidable coalition.
“If you look at the structure for our constitution, getting 50 percent plus one vote, then you get at least 25 percent votes in the majority of counties, put that together with the fact of our ethnicized politics, not just regional politics,
“So the fact of the matter is that coalitions will shape our politics going into the 2022 General Election,” he said.
It is understood that the second in command has critisised ‘politics of alliance making’ saying that alliances are tribal and has vowed to build UDA to be the next ‘big tent’ political party to replace the floundering Jubilee Party.
Ruto is positioning UDA as a catch-all outfit that will serve the broad spectrum of interests from the hustlers reeling from economic disenfranchisement and tribalism.
He hopes his supporters will coalesce around the idea of transforming the economy to invest more in the bottom rungs.
