With just over 50 days before the August 9 General Election, President Uhuru Kenyatta is facing rebellion and defiance from close allies and associates that he promoted to plum positions in his government.
The President’s endorsement of ODM leader Raila Odinga against his deputy William Ruto has cost him several key allies, raising the question of whether they are disloyal or simply fulfilling an unwritten promise to back the DP at the end of his final term.
The Ruto camp maintains that the President betrayed the DP by backing Mr Odinga, his erstwhile opponent in the last two elections.
But Mr Kenyatta is undeterred, defying friends, including the DP himself, and charting his own succession agenda.
Just as his political godfather, President Daniel Arap Moi, defied most of his close associates to back him for President in 2002, he has followed the same script.
The only difference is that he is backing an experienced political tactician who has made four attempts at the top seat, becoming runner-up in the last three.
But the Azimio la Umoja One Kenya presidential candidate insists he is not an individual’s project but a project of the people of Kenya.
“It’s very insincere for some people to say I’m somebody’s project. I’ve been a presidential candidate, a prime minister and I’ve even won elections,” Mr Odinga said recently.
At the height of Moi succession politics in 2002, Mr Odinga led a mass walkout from Kanu, with several leaders, including former vice-president George Saitoti, former ministers Joseph Kamotho and Kalonzo Musyoka , William Ole Ntimama and Fred Gumo.
Two decades later, President Kenyatta is witnessing a similar revolt over his choice of successor, even though his schemes began a little earlier, thus enabling him to streamline the path to succession by axing disloyal members in his camp.
At least 12 key figures in President Kenyatta’s administration shifted their loyalty from him to DP Ruto, though he had appointed them to key state jobs or helped them win their seats in the last two polls.
They include National Assembly Speaker Justin Muturi, his Senate counterpart, Mr Kenneth Lusaka, Kirinyaga Governor Anne Waiguru , Gatundu South MP Moses Kuria, former National Assembly majority leader Aden Duale, former Senate majority chief whip Susan Kihika and her National Assembly counterpart Benjamin Washiali.
Others are Murang’a Senator Irungu Kang’ata, who was nominated to replace Ms Kihika before penning a controversial letter to the President and jumping ship; former chief administrative secretary (CAS) Ababu Namwamba; Kiambu Senator Kimani Wamatangi; and ex-governors Mike Sonko (Nairobi) and Ferdinand Waititu (Kiambu).
For Mr Muturi, his friendship with President Kenyatta dates back to nearly three decades. He was a close ally of the President and stuck with him even after he lost the 2002 presidential election to Mwai Kibaki.
Mr Muturi is serving as the seventh Speaker of the National Assembly, having been elected into office in 2013 after President Kenyatta proposed him.
He is the first Speaker to serve in that role following the re-establishment of a bicameral Parliament after the 2010 Constitution was adopted.
On March 28, 2013, he won the Speaker slot after a second round of voting by MPs, beating former Speaker Kenneth Marende by 219 to 129.
Mr Muturi was first elected as a member of Kanu to represent Siakago constituency following a 1999 by-election. He won re-election in 2002 and President Kenyatta fronted him as opposition chief whip and chairperson of the Public Investments Committee in the 10th Parliament.
In 2013, President Kenyatta picked and fronted him as the National Assembly Speaker after he had unsuccessfully contested the Mbeere North parliamentary seat under TNA but lost to Mr Muriuki Njagagua.
With the President’s support, he was able to successfully defend the Speaker’s seat after the 2017 elections. But in April, in what President Kenyatta’s allies believe was a clear case of betrayal, Mr Muturi, the Democratic Party leader, joined the Kenya Kwanza alliance, which the DP leads.
Right to make own political decisions
Mr Muturi, who now believes the President has demonstrated “dictatorial tendencies”, was bullish on Sunday, insisting that as an adult he has a right to make his own political decisions.
“Wachana na hiyo mambo ya urafiki bwana. Watu ni wazima kila mtu anafuata vile akili yake inamwambia” (Leave alone the issues of friendship. We’re adults who follow what their brains command,” Mr Muturi told the Nation .
Jubilee director of elections and Kieni MP Kanini Kega said most of the DP’s allies, particularly those from the Mt Kenya region, have benefited immensely from President Kenyatta and lamented that they had decided to betray him.
“It’s betrayal of the highest order! Although we will not be surprised if they do an about-turn before the election,” Mr Kega told the Nation .
Mr Muturi’s Senate counterpart, Mr Lusaka, a former district officer during the Kanu regime and an ex-permanent secretary in the Kibaki administration, was more diplomatic, arguing that his move to the DP’s camp does not mean he is an enemy of the President.
“I’ve a deep relationship with both the President and his deputy. In fact, when I lost as governor of Bungoma in 2017 it was the President who proposed my name for Speaker,” Mr Lusaka told the Nation .
He said his move to Ford Kenya, which alongside DP Ruto’s United Democratic Alliance (UDA) forms part of the Kenya Kwanza alliance, was for strategic reasons.
Another notable key Kenyatta ally now fighting him is Mr Kuria, the Gatundu South MP.
Mr Kuria rose to fame in 2013 when he won unopposed the Gatundu South MP’s seat in a by-election courtesy of President Kenyatta following the death of Mr Joseph Ngugi . He was re-elected under the President’s Jubilee Party in 2017, but a few years later he shifted allegiance to DP Ruto and ended up forming his own party, Chama Cha Kazi.
Mr Duale, a dyed-in-the-wool supporter of President Kenyatta between 2013 and 2017, rose to the position of National Assembly majority leader before he shifted his loyalty to the DP and was shown the door.
Political analyst and Multimedia University don Prof Gitile Naituli opines that most of the leaders who defected to the Dr Ruto’s camp, particularly from the Mt Kenya region “thought the DP’s presidential bid was unstoppable and so they felt joining his side was the surest way to accommodate them into the government after Uhuru’s retirement this year”.
“Initially, it looked like Ruto was unstoppable and these people wanted to be in government. They thought that President Kenyatta would force a running mate on Raila, but that did not work and Raila picked Martha Karua and has now shifted the trajectory of the outcome of elections to his side,” Prof Naituli said.
The other possibility is that they were never real friends with the President but just friends of convenience, Prof Naituli adds.
“It may just have been friendship of convenience because he (President Kenyatta) was in power so there was no real loyalty. So when the test of that friendship came, it could not be sustained because there was no real friendship.”
Senator Kang’ata, whom President Kenyatta nominated to replace Ms Kihika as Senate majority chief whip, dashed to the DP Ruto’s camp a few months later after penning a controversial letter warning the Head of State against his Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) project and support for Mr Odinga.
On Sunday, Mr Kang’ata justified his move to the DP’s camp although he was elected on the President’s Jubilee ticket to represent Murang’a.
“We noted his ship was sinking. We decided to disembark to avoid sinking. Even the skewed Infotrak opinion poll has affirmed Jubilee is unpopular in the region.
“Let the President retire in peace but alone. We’re not in the business of acting like pharaohs of yore, [getting] buried with his servants. No, we don't,” Mr Kang’ata said.
Mr Washiali, the Mumias East MP who was hounded from the National Assembly majority whip position over his loyalty to the DP, insists the President overstretched his mandate as ‘Jubilee was not his individual party’.
“The Jubilee Party was not Uhuru’s. We all contributed to its formation. I contributed the UDF party, of which I was party leader. Ruto contributed URP and Uhuru contributed TNA,” Mr Washiali told the Nation .
Ms Waiguru, the Kirinyaga governor, had been a close ally of the President, having been appointed to the powerful Devolution Cabinet Secretary post in 2013 and nominated by Jubilee to run for the Kirinyaga governor’s seat in 2017.
The President’s closeness to Ms Waiguru was even evident when unlike with Sonko and Mr Waititu, who were ousted by the Senate after their respective assemblies impeached them, Ms Waiguru survived the axe in 2020 after the President and Mr Odinga mobilised their troops in the Senate to save her.
For Sonko, a former close ally of the President who was even among his associates who escorted him to The Hague during the hearing of his ICC cases in 2014, his case was a matter of fate, having fallen out with the President and joined the DP’s brigade before making an about-turn and joining Kalonzo Musyoka’s Wiper party.
As for Mr Namwamba, President Kenyatta appointed him chief administrative secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs after he lost his Budalang’i MP seat to Raphael Wanjala of ODM.
Ms Kihika was also kicked out of the Senate majority chief whip post, as was Mr Wamatangi, after they shifted their allegiance from Mr Kenyatta to DP Ruto.
