Deputy President William Ruto has given a raft of conditions that ought to be implemented in the upcoming presidential debate scheduled for Tuesday, July 26.

Ruto, through his presidential secretariat took issues with the manner in which the Deputy Presidential Debate was handled at the Catholic University of Eastern Africa saying it focused more on sideshows and ignored issues facing Kenyans.

"His appearance is pegged on the condition that the moderators will allocate equal time to issues that are affecting Kenyans. We have made a formal request to the presidential debate secretariat to make public the time allocations to issues facing Kenyans,” said Hussein Mohamed, the Director of Communication.

Earlier this week, Ruto had remained non-committal on whether or not he will attend the much-anticipated Presidential Debate until, Hussain confirmed that the DP will face-off with his key political rival Raila Odinga.

“I confirm that Ruto will attend the debate and in the 1hr and 30 mins we should be given details on the slated time for debating issues facing Kenyans.”

Hussein faulted the debate panelists for focusing on personalities and political relationships instead of real issues eating up ordinary Mwananchi.

“While we have no objections to any question that will be asked in this debate we object to trivializing such important engagement to the detriment of Kenyans. The debate is about the people, it is not about the media, it’s about us,” Mohamed said.

Early June, Ruto had threatened to boycott the planned presidential debate alleging media bias against his campaign.

Through his presidential team, the DP cited unequal allocation of coverage, compounded by biased framing and negative profiling of the Kenya Kwanza Alliance campaign and personalities affiliated to it.

Citizen TV’s Yvonne Okwara and Eric Latiff of Spice FM and KTN News are set to moderate the presidential debate between Ruto and Odinga.