One would have thought that a lengthy sojourn in the United States would have accorded former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua the perfect space—away from the daily grind of local politics and the usual retinue of praise singers and hangers-on—to sit back and reflect deeply on what he must do to deliver on the stated goal of reducing Dr William Ruto to a one-term presidency.
The Gachagua we are seeing evidently did not come back any much the wiser. Instead of accelerated efforts to build a united opposition and to craft strategies that show the voters real and workable policies, programmes and action plans, we are stuck with the same old ‘Ruto Must Go’ and ‘Wantam’ sloganeering.
Catchy slogans will, of course, excite the masses. They are an essential element of any political campaign but are not by themselves substitutes for reasoned, sober and well-thought-out campaign platforms.
One might argue that it is too early to start unveiling manifestos and policy documents with elections still two years away and alliances still being cobbled together, but it can never be too early to demonstrate what one stands for besides the pursuit of power.
And what we are seeing from Mr Gachagua is nothing no more edifying than the rush to replace President Ruto at State House, backed by half-baked policy pronouncements around promises to discontinue the incumbent’s pet projects, rather than any clear ideological and philosophical standpoints.
Worse, it has become all about the man himself rather than about the people, and about the need to craft a working coalition with other opposition leaders.
It is indeed baffling that Mr Gachagua has shifted focus to his own presidential campaign, while he knows full well that he is ineligible to vie for or hold public office as long as the impeachment, which deposed him as Deputy President still stands.
He might well be hoping against hope that his legal challenges seeking to overturn the impeachment are successful. If indeed that happened, Mr Gachagua would be eligible and would have every right to run for president.
And there can be no doubt that he would be a formidable candidate. However, any such calculations ignore the fact that the populous region cannot deliver the presidency on its own. It can only do so in partnership with other significant regional vote baskets.
Mr Gachagua has always been a divisive figure. The ethnic bigotry he openly displayed during his stint as President Ruto’s deputy played a critical role in helping mobilise numbers for his impeachment, which essentially boiled down to most other communities rallying together to cut him down to size, and in essence to jointly counter perceived Mt Kenya arrogance, sense of entitlement and the threat of hegemonistic designs.
Since then, the broad-based government alliance, headed by President Ruto and former opposition leader Raila Odinga, has put in full-swing efforts to isolate the Mt Kenya region by grouping all the other regions around the 41 versus 1 strategy adopted by the ODM of Raila, Ruto and Musalia Mudavadi in 2007. It was a grouping that nearly dethroned then President Mwai Kibaki until electoral sleight of hand secured the incumbent a highly contentious victory.
With his morima obsession now transferred to the presidential election stage, Mr Gachagua becomes President Ruto’s best ally in helping push the narrative of a populous region out to extend its domination of the Kenyan political and economic space.
It is already clear that President Ruto’s campaign machinery is determined to divide the opposition. Mr Gachagua is doing it for them with a reckless adventurism that places a quest based almost solely on Mt Kenya vote numbers above the wider interests of the nascent opposition alliance. Figures such as former Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka, former Interior Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i and former Defence CS Eugene Wamalwa might not be amused being reduced to the periphery.
President Ruto will also naturally move to divide and dilute the Mt Kenya vote by sponsoring a Manchurian candidate from the region, but he could even do something far more effective by ensuring that Mr Gachagua is on the ballot.
All he has to do is manipulate ongoing litigation so that puny responses from the Attorney-General and the lawyers representing Parliament sabotage the challenges to Mr Gachagua’s case against impeachment.
The former DP on the presidential ballot will be sweet music in President Ruto’s ears, for that is all he needs to rally the rest of the nation against a polarising character who represents the worst of ethnic jingoism.
