Ruto hits out at Matiang’i over properties listing

Deputy President William Ruto has dismissed Interior Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i remarks that his security detail comprises 257 police officers who guard him, his homes and properties across the country.

In a statement, Ruto’s secretary of communication David Mugonyi accused the CS of lacking the understanding of his Ruto’s security concerns and using the platform provided to him by Parliament to allegedly propagate falsehoods about the DP’s properties and security deployment.

Mugonyi said the DP does not deploy security to himself or to anyone else.

“The Cabinet Secretary desecrated the hallowed precincts of Parliament, exploiting it as a forum to propagate malicious falsehoods and assaulted the dignity of that institution by recklessly publishing inaccurate data purporting to be the property interests and security deployments of the Deputy President. In fact, most of the property listed DO NOT belong to the Deputy President,” he said.

He noted that Ruto has been in office since 2013 and it is deceitful for Matiang’i to suddenly realise that his residence was not a protected area and not entitled to GSU protection.

“This realisation nine years after the fact, in the context of many other orchestrated political machination against the Deputy President, clearly indicate that Dr Matiang’i was acting in explicit pursuit of a malevolent political agenda,” said Mugonyi.

He said Ruto was elected to discharge and fulfill a critical constitutional mandate and his security is therefore necessary to ensure that the same is not undermined.

“There are precedents where his security has been breached. Each of these breaches has not only threatened our constitutional order; it has caused anxiety, tension and despondency among the citizens of Kenya,” said Mugonyi.

He claimed that the CS was not interested in understanding concerns about the security of the DP.

“Dr Matiang’i has abused public resources and the power of his office to score cheap points in a futile attempt to humiliate, disparage, denigrate and ridicule the person and the Office of the Deputy President for political propaganda,” said Mugonyi.

He further claimed that the CS conducted himself in a manner totally unbecoming of the holder of such high office and has attempted to profile the DP as ineligible to receive services from the Ministry of Interior.

By singling out the DP and casting adverse attention, to the particulars of his security arrangements, Mugonyi said Matiang’i discriminated against the Office and the person of the DP, potentially exposing him to further security threats.

“To underscore Matiang’i’s recklessness, property allocated to the Deputy President in his statement to Parliament are in fact not his,” said Mugonyi.

He said that Ruto was on record as early as 2018 declaring readiness to undergo a lifestyle audit as per the President’s directive and associating him with some property was therefore unnecessary and malicious.

“It is dishonest of Dr Matiang’i to compare offices from an obsolete constitutional and historical era, and which preexisted the Office of Deputy President, when it is elementary that the Office of the Deputy President is established by the 2010 Constitution,” said Mugonyi.

Mugonyi said that the matter of the DP’s security was settled by the National Security Council, hence any abrupt changes should have been communicated and approved first.

He was responding to the revalations made by Matiang’i at the Parliamentary Committee on Administration and National Security, that Ruto is the most guarded DP in Kenya’s history.

He said Matiang’i said that a total of 257 officers deployed to guard him as well as secure his residences and properties.