Jubilee to seek advisory on DP Ruto’s impeachment
William Ruto may soon get himself in a tight spot fighting to retain his position as the deputy president should the Jubilee party proceed with its intention to impeach him from office.
This comes after Jubilee Party Vice Chair David Murathe revealed that the ruling party is planning to remove DP Ruto and his allies from their political seats for "promoting the affairs of the United Democratic Alliance (UDA) party."
Speaking in an interview with Citizen TV, Murathe claimed that Ruto ceased to be a member of the Jubilee Party after he participated in UDA's National Delegates Conference, where he was nominated as the party's presidential candidate.
According to Murathe, it is unconstitutional for DP Ruto to jump to another political party away from that which he was elected into office and continue serving in the same capacity.
The former Gatanga MP called on Ruto to voluntarily resign from the office or wait for his impeachment.
"It was a resolution in our NDC that all those people who will be promoting the affairs of other parties will be deemed to have resigned from Jubilee," Murathe said.
Adding: "I don't know how the president can be in Jubilee and his Deputy is in UDA. To save Kenyans from all these dramas, the honourable thing for the Deputy President to do after he has officially been nominated as a UDA candidate is to resign. How can they be still enjoying state security or receiving delegates at the Karen mansion yet they have been deemed to have resigned from the party that sponsored them to their positions?"
Murathe, who noted that impeaching the DP might be a challenge, stated that Jubilee will seek an advisory opinion to know the grounds that Ruto stands to continue serving as the deputy president despite quitting the party that sponsored him to office.
"Impeaching the DP is a bit different but we are going to ask for an advisory opinion. When the DP first ran with President Uhuru Kenyatta in 2013 he ran on a TNA ticket despite being the leader of URP. We issued him (Ruto) with the TNA membership because the presidential ticket had to have one identity. The presidential ticket says that if the president is in TNA his deputy too has to be in TNA and that is the reason why you cannot have a president who is in Jubilee and the deputy who is in UDA," Murathe explained.
