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Monica Juma quits race for Commonwealth job

Kenya's Energy Cabinet Secretary Monica Juma.

Kenya's Energy Cabinet Secretary Monica Juma. PHOTO | PSCU

Energy Cabinet Secretary Monica Juma has pulled out of the race for the secretary-general of 53-nation Commonwealth, suggesting divisions in the club of mainly former British colonies about her candidature.

Sources in government confirmed to the Business Daily that Dr Juma, who has been a key figure in President Uhuru Kenyatta’s government, had withdrawn her candidature.

“Yes…she [Dr Juma] has withdrawn,” one source told the Business Daily.

Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald had earlier in a report published on Saturday said that Kenya had formally communicated Dr Juma’s withdrawal citing lack of adequate backing from Commonwealth countries for Kenya’s bid.

“This week Kenya’s Foreign Ministry said that it had ‘become apparent that some member states of the Commonwealth are uncomfortable and/or unwilling to provide their support for our candidate’,” reported the publication.

“In essence, this means that we have not coalesced consensus among all the member states, a situation that could precipitate a raucous campaign that could further fracture, rather than cohere, the Commonwealth family,” the publication quoted a statement from Kenya’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs as saying.

The ministry was quoted as maintaining “that a change of leadership was still needed at the top of the Secretariat and that Juma’s withdrawal would allow time for another candidate to enter the race and build the consensus that the Kenyan candidate could not.”

Elections for the top job are set for June in Kigali, Rwanda.

The Business Daily could not obtain the statement or get additional details from Dr Juma on why she or Kenya abandoned the spirited bid despite repeated phones queries.

Dr Juma had been seen as a strong contender to replace Dominican-born British diplomat and long-serving politician Patricia Janet Scotland.

Ms Scotland is serving as the sixth secretary-general of the Commonwealth.

The Commonwealth brings together a quarter of the world’s countries and a third of the world’s population.

It includes developed nations such as Britain, Canada and Australia, emerging economies like India, Nigeria and Malaysia and small island states such as Tuvalu and Barbados.

Ms Scotland was elected at the 2015 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting and took office on April 1, 2016.

Dr Juma was first endorsed for the top job by President Kenyatta last year, calling her “an exemplar of what we in the Commonwealth hold.”

In a brochure she released in September, Dr Juma said she wanted to change the perception of the Commonwealth as an organisation whose need is the past.

“I intend to deliver an effective secretariat, driven by member states’ priorities that optimise and draw from the diverse advantages and potential Commonwealth,” she had said in the pitch.

Dr Juma said she was “quite confident, actually” of securing the support to win.

She initially served as Kenya’s Ambassador to Ethiopia and Djibouti, and Permanent Representative to the African Union before 2013.

Her withdrawal from the race comes as a boost for Ms Scotland, who is bidding for a second and final four-year term as the head of the Commonwealth Secretariat.

The delayed Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) is set to go ahead in Kigali, Rwanda in June, leaving any new rival just four months to gather the required votes.

That makes it more than likely that Ms Scotland’s re-election will go uncontested and that her term will be extended for a second time, observers said.

The former British Labour minister under former British premier Tony Blair, attorney-general under ex-premier Gordon Brown and a lifelong member of the British House of Lords has already enjoyed an extension to her first term after CHOGM was postponed in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The Commonwealth Secretariat is responsible for the day-to-day running of the alliance, including facilitating co-operation among member states.

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