William Ruto: How State plans to block my campaign

Deputy President William Ruto has alleged an elaborate State-sponsored campaign to scuttle his 2022 State House bid through chaos and painting him as an unwanted man in some parts of the country. 

Dr Ruto Tuesday said the Murang’a violence where two people, 21-year-old Christopher Kariuki and Peter Mbothu, 15, were killed on Sunday, was not an isolated one, but part of a broad plan to lock him out of some areas. 

“It is not just the Murang’a case. I went to Kisii, and youth were organised to burn tyres and cause chaos. I went to Kajiado and the county commissioner threatened people against coming to my meetings,” Dr Ruto said Tuesday at his Karen office.

“Now I go to Murang’a, and they organise the youth to cause violence because they want to take us back to the dark days of zoning areas and regions to say that some people are not welcome there.”

He was speaking when he met grassroots leaders from Narok County accompanied by 11 MPs.

“We will not accept to be taken back to the politics of balkanising the country along tribal enclaves. We want to have one united country.”

Deep state

It is not the first time Kenya’s second-in-command is accusing President Kenyatta and his regime of fighting his bid to occupy State House in 2022 — having claimed on several occasions that the so-called “deep state” had been activated to “finish” him.

Dr Ruto Tuesday claimed double-standards in the ongoing investigations into the Murang’a chaos, saying leaders who incited violence before his arrival had not been brought to book.

“Do not say we will not follow this issue because those who did it are in your political camp. Everybody must be made to account. They are known,” he told police.

The DP fingered Inspector-General of Police Hillary Mutyambai, saying he was being used by powerful forces in government to fight him.

“I want to ask the Inspector-General of Police not to accept to participate in political assignments given by people who do not have the authority to give those instructions. The reason why the Constitution made the police service independent and the IG independent of any office is so that they can serve the entirety of the people of Kenya, protect their lives and property irrespective of their political persuasion, social standing, and the region they come from,” the DP said.

Demean his office

Angered by the Murang’a clashes, the DP had told a crowd in Githurai, Nairobi, that there are some people in government that he said were out to demean his office.

“They threw teargas at a church, where a whole Deputy President was worshipping. So I ask them: Even if you despise me this much, can we at least respect the seat that these people gave me?” he asked.

But Jubilee vice-chairman David Murathe has insisted that Dr Ruto has been provoking the President, wondering why the DP’s church harambees were only mostly in Mt Kenya and “the DP does not have these shenanigans in his backyard.”

This, even as the Kikuyu Council of Elders yesterday told off the Deputy President over early 2022 campaigns, as they warned him that there was no “leadership vacuum in Mt Kenya.”

Led by their national chairman Kimani Maigua and secretary Ndung’u Karau and accompanied by Kiama Kiama, a cultural group of the elders, they asked Dr Ruto to stop the early 2022 campaigns.

They pledged to support the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) as well as President Kenyatta’s development agenda.

But in Eldoret Tuesday, DP Ruto’s allies led by Jubilee deputy secretary-general Caleb Kositany asked the Head of State to break his silence on the woes facing his deputy both in government and in Jubilee. “The President is free to support any person other than DP Ruto if he so wishes. We will not hold it against him but what we want from him as the President is that his deputy be respected because he contributed to this presidency,” Mr Kositany told journalists at AIC Itigo Secondary School in his constituency.

Kanu secretary-general Nick Salat warned the DP against disrespecting the presidency, while ODM director of elections Junet Mohamed described the DP as a “dangerous man.”

Reporting by Patrick Lang’at, Justus Ochieng and Onyango K’Onyango