Barring a calamity or a Barack Obama-type disruptor happening on the Kenyan political scene in the next nine months, the two horses in the 2022 presidential race will be William Ruto and Raila Odinga.
The prospect of a contest between two of Kenya’s cleverest and extremely hardworking politicians is simply mouthwatering.
Dr Ruto, the Deputy President, appears to be approaching the race like a marathon – having started his campaigns almost four years ago.
Mr Odinga, the former Prime Minister, is only now jogging around the start line, preparing for a sprint.
Of the two sets of faithful crowds, Dr Ruto’s are probably the more upbeat about victory at this stage – excited by the heaven-on-earth promises of the Deputy President’s populist Hustler Nation messaging and his popularity ratings in the populous Mt Kenya region. But with the real 2022 election game only just beginning, they had better start tempering their expectations as well.
Part of the reason Dr Ruto has been looked at as the runaway front runner is that he has been running all alone. Sooner or later, the Deputy President will surely start looking over his shoulders nervously as Mr Odinga begins chasing him in every corner of the country, with the exception of North Rift and parts of South Rift.
For the neutrals, one of the tidbits about the political duels between the two over the years is that Mr Odinga loves a race against Dr Ruto.
There is this past footage where at the height of the Jubilee factional wars over Mr Odinga’s Handshake deal with President Uhuru Kenyatta, the Deputy President nearly evokes a sense of foreboding about his political battles with the former PM.
“You can’t chase me from ODM and then follow me to Jubilee and chase me again,” declares Dr Ruto.
Well, everyone knows who left that fight with a bloody nose. In their only direct duel so far, the ODM party leader prevailed as well, beating his younger opponent and three others to the 2007 presidential ticket in the party primaries.
Another small interesting detail picked out of that contest is how little Dr Ruto’s campaign messaging has changed. Like now, when the Deputy President’s campaign is amplifying Mr Odinga’s perceived unelectability in the Mt Kenya region, he sought to stoke similar fears in the run-up to the 2007 ODM primaries, most memorably at the widely reported Palacina meeting.
The disputed results of that year’s election, in which Mr Odinga perhaps had his best performance so far, suggest the notion of his unelectability in any part of the country is wrong.
Granted, the ODM party leader has performed dismally in Mt Kenya in 2007, 2013 and 2017. But in those elections, he was up against Mwai Kibaki and Uhuru Kenyatta – not William Ruto.
The Deputy President’s campaign might yet discover why the Nigerian author Babafemi Badejo described Mr Odinga as an enigma (agwambo) in Kenyan politics.
