Former State House Comptroller Matere Keriri has revealed behind the scenes power struggle that eventually led to the technical death of Narc goverment.
Before defeating KANU in 2002, the opposition politicians had signed an MoU with Mwai Kibaki, their candidate in which the structure of power arrangement was crafted.
Upon defeating Uhuru Kenyatta, the Narc coalition would then plunge into unprecedented chaos, forcing the country into a referendum in 2005 in which Kibaki lost.
But Keriri, a powerful insider at that time, admits that he played part in frustrating Raila Odinga's push to be appointed Prime Minister as agreed earlier on.
In his interview with the Standard, Keriri said he devised a mechanism where Odinga and his team were denied direct access to State House where Kibaki was recuperating after an accident.
"In the MoU, whose contents were only known to eight beneficiaries, Raila was to become the Prime Minister but since there was no such provision in the Constitution, we blocked the move resulting in the acrimony that followed," Matere says.
Upon sensing that the MoU had been disowned, Odinga ganged up with his allies among them Kalonzo Musyoka, branding those close to Kibaki as 'Mt Kenya mafia'.
"On seeing this (access to State House) was not working, Raila realised our group was opposed to his push to be appointed the Prime Minister. He ganged up (with other Narc Summit leaders) to brand us as Mt Kenya mafia," Matere says, walking this writer on his farm.
And in a sensational claim, Matere, 85, alleges that after Kibaki loyalists scuttled the implementation of the MoU, ‘the Narc renegades led by Raila set up former First Lady the late Lucy Kibaki against me.’
"When Kibaki took over power, he was sick and susceptible to manipulation by those who wanted to benefit from his presidency. On learning very fast the game that the clique led by Raila had started, we developed some measures to keep them away from Kibaki after he declined to honour the MOU," Matere says.
Although Raila pulled out of government in 2005, he would later be appointed Prime Minister three years later after a contested 2007 presidential polls in which he claimed victory.