A politician who drinks his own Kool-Aid is an amateur. A clever politician makes his own Kool-Aid and serves it to others. This is the reason President William Ruto will win his second term going away – early in the morning, and convincingly. In Kenya’s lingua-franca, President Ruto is “tutam.” Imagine this.
President Ruto is the most successful of all Kenyan presidents since the founding of the republic. You must be a Martian to even doubt this ironclad basic fact. Figure this – he hasn’t even served two terms yet. Today, he dwarfs all his predecessors -- Jomo Kenyatta, who served for 15 years, Daniel arap Moi who ruled for 24, Mwai Kibaki who did 10, and Uhuru Kenyatta who did lip service to the country in his 10.
Why am I so confident? In a democracy anything is possible. What is not possible is the impossible. You can use the most microscopic lens to scan the political landscape. Even if you are vision-impaired, you will notice small dots on the political map. In the middle of those dots is a towering tree.
That mugumo tree is President Ruto. Surrounding him are several minions, some of whom suffer illusions of grandeur. One such sufferer is impeached ex-Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua , the disgraced man from Mathira who is only known for vituperative hate speech.
The other is former Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka , who this round has made the wrong bet. The third is Mr Kenyatta. In his case, hell hath no fury than a woman scorned.
Those three – Mr Musyoka, Mr Gachagua, and Mr Kenyatta – are the only actual opponents that President Ruto will face next year. Two of them, Mr Gachagua and Mr Kenyatta can’t be on the ballot. Mr Gachagua is impeached and constitutionally barred from running for any public office in Kenya unless the impeachment is vacated.
Mr Kenyatta can’t contest the presidency because a person who occupied the office of president for ten years is constitutionally ineligible to run for that office ever again. This leaves Mr Musyoka as the only live candidate among the Big Three who can go mano-a-mano against President Ruto. In this contest, any Kenyan with even a single brain cell knows President Ruto will have Mr Musyoka for breakfast.
You may wonder why I have included Mr Kenyatta in the Big Three as a contestant. That’s because Mr Kenyatta is a dark horse. A very dark horse. But not in the way you might imagine the term. Mr Kenyatta is a wounded animal. Call him a lion in winter. And he knows the winters of New England in the United States because he went to college near Boston, Massachusetts. He is about to experience another winter, only it will be in the tropics of Kenya next year. Mr Kenyatta is the power behind the opposition, though he can’t stand the ego-bloated Mr Gachagua. They are unlikely to work together. Mr Kenyatta detests Mr Gachagua, the foulmouthed and self-regarding son of Wamunyoro.
Mr Kenyatta gets along better with Mr Musyoka, but he despises him, and has stiffed him in the past. He may string Mr Musyoka along but will never back him because he thinks the man from Tseikuru lacks the courage to go the distance. To him, Mr Musyoka has no killer instinct. Mr Musyoka is duping himself if he thinks his GEMA “cousins” will front him for the presidency. It’s rumoured Mr Musyoka is part Meru, but that won’t save his bacon in the Mountain. Mr Kenyatta is more likely to back Dr Fred Matiang’i, the man from Gusiiland who served as a pit bull in his cabinet. Problem is Dr Matiang’i has proven an inept, awkward, and a lackluster campaigner.
This leaves Mr Kenyatta with only one second-tier candidate, the greenhorn Nairobi Senator Edwin Sifuna. Mr Sifuna, who had fallen out with Mr Odinga, has good demagogic skills. Mr Odinga was planning to put him out to pasture at the ODM delegates conference last year. Mr Odinga’s death has allowed Mr Sifuna to pretend that he’s carrying baba’s mantle.
Nothing could be farther from the truth. Mr Sifuna was an irritant to Baba in his rapprochement with President Ruto. In Mr Sifuna, Mr Kenyatta has found the so-called useful idiot. That’s why my good friend Pauline Njoroge, a savvy Kenyatta acolyte, has put Mr Sifuna on a tight leash. In nomenclature, Mr Sifuna is a dog whose owner is Mr Kenyatta.
Apart from the toxic tribal hate directed at President Ruto, there’s not a sane Kenyan who truly believes any of these opposition minions will send him home in 2027. None. They are all deer caught in the headlights.
None has anything close to an outline of governance. I have supervised PhDs. I would never allow any of them in my classroom. None of them can hold a candle to President Ruto. Made-up hate isn’t a campaign strategy. That’s why President Ruto should prepare for coronation next August.
Makau Mutua is SUNY Distinguished Professor and Margaret W. Wong Professor at Buffalo Law School, The State University of New York. @makaumutua.
