A Jubilee supporter celebrates outside the Supreme Court on October 25, 2017, after a case seeking to stop the presidential election was halted. [Photo: NMG]An initiative by diverse interest groups collapsed after failing to agree on a common position to present to President Uhuru Kenyatta and National Super Alliance leader Raila Odinga.According to Daily Nation columnist, Macharia Gaitho, a meeting last Saturday at the Muthaiga Country Club hosted by business people was the last in a series of quiet gatherings in the past two weeks involving a cross-section of interest groups, who were all keen to broker a ceasefire and prevent an eruption of ethnic and political violence over the contentious election."It was against this worrying background that the various groups were separately trying to break the impasse with the hope that Kenyatta and Odinga would pay more attention to a united front representative of a wide cross-section of Kenyan society," Gaitho writes on Thursday's Nation.However, Gaitho notes, the gathering dubbed the multi-sectoral forum agreed to disengage soon after failing to agree on which of the two positions on the table was to be adopted.He says that one option was to place before President Kenyatta, Raila Odinga, and IEBC chairman Wafula Chebukati a proposal to postpone the repeat election, pending a reform of the electoral management team to enable it to deliver free, fair and credible election within the Constitution as ordered by the Supreme Court.The second option, he adds, was to present to the same three principal players a proposal for the election to proceed unhindered, provided that the poll would be followed by an all-inclusive national dialogue to seek lasting solutions to the issues that divide Kenyans every electoral cycle."All this was, however, put on hold after the collapse of the Saturday talks where the forum groups agreed to disengage on the common front and free each group to pursue its own path. But the sector was sent reeling when Odinga announced his withdrawal from the repeat presidential election, forcing the all-inclusive group to fall apart," Gaitho writes. 

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