Today is not any other ordinary day for Kenyans, many will be waiting to hear if the President will make a similar bold statement about graft when he delivers his address to the joint sitting of Parliament.
Today’s address will probably be the first time that the President will be addressing Parliament when Jubilee troops are divided, with one fraction backing his deputy’s bid to succeed him while the other is vehemently opposed to it.
Speculation has been rampant that he could use the speech to purge his Cabinet of members who have been implicated in various corruption scandals.
Many people will today be glued to TV sets, radios and social media platforms to listen to President Uhuru Kenyatta give an audit of his government, in the annual State of the Nation address.
With echoes of one he delivered four years ago when he shocked the nation by tabling a list of government officials, including Cabinet secretaries, linked to corruption cases, many Kenyans will be eager to hear his next step in the ongoing war on graft.
The 2015 State of the Nation address saw
In the past month, several Cabinet secretaries have record statements with the Directorate of Criminal Investigations in connection with the Arror and Kimwarer dams’ projects. The investigations are seen as part of the President’s pledge to eradicate corruption in public offices.
Speaking to Kenyans during a visit to Namibia two weeks ago, Uhuru made one of his most ruthless anti-graft statements yet, saying he would spare neither his family members nor close political allies in the war.
“If you are corrupt we will fight you. You can be my brother or my sister or my closest political ally but if you are corrupt we will fight you,” he said.
Unlike the 2015 Cabinet purge when the Jubilee family was largely reading from the same script, the party is now sharply divided, with Deputy President William Ruto’s allies reading malice and politics in the corruption investigations and pronouncements by the President on the vice.
Some politicians allied to the DP have angrily dismissed the investigations as aimed at frustrating their man’s plans to succeed Uhuru in the 2022 elections.
The situation in Jubilee has not been helped by the close working relationship between the President and Opposition leader Raila Odinga, the product of the a post-election deal that ended the 2017 presidential election dispute.
Ruto and his allies have never hidden their suspicion of the Handshake, accusing Raila of entering into the deal with a hidden agenda to wreck the ruling party and advance his own political interests.
The question in the minds of Kenyans is how high the President is willing to go in the corruption probe and prosecutions and if he is willing to sacrifice Jubilee to reach his goal of eradicating graft. The latter Jubilee faction has found willing allies in Opposition legislators, particularly those of Raila’s ODM party.
It will be interesting to watch how the two factions will behave today, or whether the President, who is the party leader, will address the division in the party, which, observers say, could undermine the delivery of the government’s development programmes, especially the Big Four agenda.
Away from Jubilee politics, the President could address the expected withdrawal of Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) from Somalia. Reports have it that Kenya has been slowly pulling out its forces from parts of Somalia, a move which has been questioned by Amison member states.
The related matter of the diplomatic spat between Kenya and Somalia over territorial waters dispute is likely to feature in the speech. In February, Kenya recalled its ambassador in Mogadishu for consultations over a maritime border dispute that involves lucrative offshore oil and gas deposits.
The President will most likely use the speech to update the country on the strides taken in the implementation of his flagship projects under the Big Four agenda. With less than four years to go before the end of his second and final term, Uhuru will need to assure the country that the agenda is on course.
The implementation of the National Integrated Information Management Systems (NIIMS), otherwise known as “Huduma Namba”, is also likely to feature in the address in the face of complaints by senators that it is being implemented without the necessary legal structures.
The President’s speech is in fulfilment of Article 132 (1) (c) of the Constitution which requires him to address a special sitting of Parliament once every year, or at any other time, on measures taken and the progress achieved in the realisation of the national values, referred to in Article 10 of the Constitution.