NAIROBI, Kenya, Oct 4- Leaders allied to Deputy President William Ruto have accused their rivals of planning and inciting youth to cause violence that left one person dead and scores injured in Murang’a on Sunday.
The chaos occurred when Tanga Tanga youths supporting Ruto’s Hustler Movement clashed with a group of Kieleweke youths opposed to his visit to Murang’a where he was scheduled to preside over a fundraiser.
The theatre of the violence was Kenol on the Thika-Murang’a highway, where transport was paralysed for several hours, prompting police to lob teargas and lob tear gas to disperse the warring factions. Ruto eventually made it to the church where he presided over a fundraiser.
His host, Kandara MP Alice Wahome, accused police of ignoring her calls to report the alleged plot.
“I had called police to alert them of the plans to disrupt Deputy President’s meeting, but no one picked my calls,” MP Wahome said.
Ruto was accompanied by several MPs who also accused security forces of failing to stop the violence.
“Instead of stopping those planning to disrupt the meeting, they came to hurl teargas to congregants right inside the church,” Wahome claimed.
Naivasha Member of Parliament Jane Kihara and her counterpart Kiharu MP Ndindi Nyoro called for “political maturity” as the country draws closer to the 2022 General Election.
“I cried a tear of bitterness because of where we’ve reached as a country. How do you teargas people while in the church?” Wahome said.
The meeting, coming just two days after a statement by Jubilee Secretary General Raphael Tuju that a resolution had been passed to evict Ruto as the party’s deputy leader, was no doubt expected to be the venue of high-octane politics.
It was also expected to be a defining moment for Ruto’s support base in Central Kenya, where he has been accused of wrestling it from his boss, President Uhuru Kenyatta.
Last month, similar chaos were witnessed in Kisii on a day Ruto was set to hold a meeting with the youth, to popularize his hustler movement which critics see as early campaigns having fallen out with Kenyatta who is retiring in 2022 when his second and final term ends.
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