UhuRuto ‘ugly’ duel was long in the making
President William Ruto (right) and his predecessor Uhuru Kenyatta.
Like a marriage irreparably damaged, former President Uhuru Kenyatta and his allies might have by 2019 figured out that it was risky for them if his deputy, William Ruto took power.
After the August 9, 2022 General Election, the writing was clearly on the wall.
After riding on Dr Ruto’s “help” to win two terms, Mr Kenyatta in March 2018 reached a truce with his nemesis Raila Odinga. With that, the isolation of his deputy began.
In a dramatic instalment to this political fallout, Dr Ruto and his Kenya Kwanza alliance triumphed over a Mr Kenyatta-backed Azimio la Umoja, with Mr Odinga as the presidential candidate in last year’s elections.
Since then, the Uhuru-Ruto relationship has gone from bad to worse, with the President in recent days accusing his predecessor of sponsoring the opposition protests rocking the country.
But the decision by Mr Kenyatta on Friday evening to take the war to his successor’s doorstep, daring the President to arrest him and to leave his family alone, exposes the extent the pair’s disagreements have gone.
Mr Kenyatta was furious at police for attempting to raid his son’s home. Days earlier, security had been withdrawn from his mother-Mama Ngina’s, home.
While on the one hand Mr Kenyatta’s move to come out in the open against his successor could allow Dr Ruto a spin-off sympathy on how his former boss had treated him and continued to fight him — and perhaps why the population of Mt Kenya turned against him, there is the risk that as a former President, still with a political clout and say, could have the masses rally behind him.
It is even trickier that the battle has now been personalised, with Mr Kenyatta saying he will do whatever it takes to protect his family.
Whichever way it goes, the duel is one for political observers to document in history – given the ex-Jubilee pair’s love-hate relationship, and the President’s continued bid to retain the Mountain, with an eye on the 2027 election.
“The fact that I am silent does not mean I am scared. Come for me. What does my mother have to do with anything? What do my children got to do with anything? You know where I am. Come for me,” Mr Kenyatta said on Friday.
As a pointer to the strained relations with his successor, Mr Kenyatta when asked whether he had spoken to President Ruto, responded: “You have a tête-à-tête with somebody who wants to talk with you; (President Ruto) has not shown any indication that he wants to talk to me, and as a retired person, why should I go look for somebody who does not want to talk to me.”
Mr Joseph Kaguthi, a long-serving administrator who served in the colonial government and the succeeding four regimes of Jomo Kenyatta, Daniel Moi, Mwai Kibaki and Uhuru Kenyatta, says the revenge by Dr Ruto and team against Mr Kenyatta was not too far – and there were signs all over.
“As a man with my experience and a top administrator, I knew the seeds that were being planted were those of possible revenge in an event that Dr Ruto prevailed in the ballot. Not necessarily from him, but from his ‘system’,” he said.
As Mr Kaguthi witnesses the daily attacks on Mr Kenyatta, his family and business interests, he says: “It appears the former President is going to feature prominently in the list of perceived enemies of this new regime and it is not amusing for both parties”.
“Mr Kenyatta’s regime had done an extremely wonderful job cutting off the legs of Ruto, only that in the execution of that plan, all in it had blinded themselves on a possibility of if he survived and pulled a fast one on them”.
With Dr Ruto’s victory, the humiliation of Mr Kenyatta and Mr Odinga’s post-election political activities, the three of them, it appears, were bound to become the centre of attraction.
Jubilee Party Secretary-General Jeremiah Kioni believes President Ruto’s regime has “degenerated into witch-hunt and revenge”.
He specifically cites Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua as a man “whose whole concept about government is that of belittling and lording others to a point of sanctioning and influencing raw acts of revenge against remnants of Kenyatta loyalists”.
In the Friday attack on President Ruto, Mr Kenyatta insisted he will not relinquish his Jubilee party – with Ruto-allied Kanini Kega and Nominated MP Sabina Chege already angling to take over – to “puppeteers out to destroy our democracy.”
The only way he will relinquish his Jubilee party leadership post, Mr Kenyatta says, is if members are given the choice to decide who takes over “not this other unacceptable plans I am seeing of trying to hijack a party”.
Former Murang’a Governor Mwangi wa Iria, who now backs Mr Odinga, agrees with Mr Kioni that Dr Ruto’s regime is out on a revenge spree against Mr Kenyatta.
He cites the raid on the Kenyatta family-owned Northlands Farm.
But Transport Cabinet Secretary Kipchumba Murkomen, who is considered an insider in Dr Ruto’s administration, disagrees with the talk of revenge.
“That fear of President Ruto succeeding is making Mr Kenyatta and his allies feel remorseful and to cover up the discovery, is fuelling all manner of derailments against the Kenya Kwanza Alliance by riding on the enigmatic novelty of violent contestations of Mr Odinga,” Mr Murkomen said.
President Ruto’s United Democratic Alliance Secretary-General, Cleophas Malala, thinks the former president is out to destabilise his successor.
“If this party (UDA) was to be told to accuse Mr Kenyatta, it would press three charges – disrespect for our President, scheming disintegration of the government and spreading hopelessness and despair amongst Kenyans through Mr Odinga,” Mr Malala said.
Last week, President Ruto named Mr Kenyatta as a sponsor of protests in a grand plan to have Mr Odinga “join government through the backdoor”.
“I want to tell my friend Uhuru, leave Raila. Stop giving him money to burn Nairobi. You are a former president; be a gentleman,” the President said in Maai Mahiu, Nakuru County.
“We supported you when you were president. Now that you backed Raila and he lost in the presidential election, leave him. If you do not, we will chase you out of town with that friend of yours," he said.
On Friday, Mr Kenyatta pushed back against the accusations by Dr Ruto that he was behind the opposition protests in the country since March when Mr Odinga asked his supporters to pour to the streets, to demonstrate against the skyrocketing cost of basic commodities, the planned recruitment of electoral commissioners and the Finance Act, 2023.
The opposition Azimio la Umoja One Kenya Coalition calls the Act punitive and amounts to taxing overburdened Kenyans.
“I have ignored all that (about him funding Azimio protests) because I have asked myself, how? Have you seen me in those events? Have you seen me talk about those events? Now you say that because of my association with Raila, am I not supposed to talk with my friends. Is that a crime in Kenya?” asked Mr Kenyatta.
But as the government – led by President Ruto himself insists that Mr Kenyatta is out to destabilise the Kenya Kwanza administration – those allied to the former president have demanded evidence.
Kirinyaga County Jubilee Party Chairman Muriithi Kang’ara said Kenyans deserve to be told the truth, after a thorough investigation.
Former Laikipia Governor Ndiritu Muriithi termed the allegations as scapegoat stuff that seeks to cover up the cluelessness of the Kenya Kwanza government.
“They have borrowed at a higher rate than the Handshake era. They only unleash propaganda in the hope that with time they will learn how to work with the little they have, to patiently build the economy like the third president of Kenya Mwai Kibaki did from 2003 to 2013,” Mr Muriithi said.
Homa Bay Senator Moses Kajwang said “the conflict between Mr Kenyatta and the Kenya Kwanza Alliance government is simply that of escapism after Ruto and his men realised that they cannot get the brains to work like Kibaki or the magnanimity of thought to work like Mr Kenyatta, not forgetting lack of resilience to be like Mr Odinga”.
“In that mix of deficiencies, they are bound to unleash all manner of propaganda and falsehoods against Mr Kenyatta, Mr Odinga and the Handshake to a point of getting mischievous, in trying to subvert the freedom and rights therein dictated by the Constitution in order to stifle voices of discontent in the way bad governance is being served,” Mr Kajwang said.
Meanwhile, the Kikuyu Council of Elders has warned President Ruto and his allies against sustained attacks on Mr Kenyatta, saying the former Head of State should enjoy peace in retirement.
“Mr Kenyatta has held on very well against the onslaught and to many, he is just a victim of bad politics. But he is human, he has friends who believe in him and he is a politician. The government should not make a bad situation get worse,” Council chairman Wachira Kiago said.
Murang’a Woman Rep Betty Maina said she is against “this habit of demonising Mr Kenyatta”, adding that he should be respected as a son of Mt Kenya.
“Despite his shortcomings, Mr Kenyatta has those legacy acts and speeches that continue to shape Mt Kenya region even when he is out of office. The best that can be done is for area residents to insulate him against attacks,” the lawmaker said.
But National Assembly Majority Leader Kimani Ichung’wa believes Mr Kenyatta abused the respect and honour Mt Kenya people had placed on him by working hard to “wrong” them in the succession battle hence the negative emotions he continues to elicit “are well earned and irreversible”.
Former Chief Administrative Secretary Zack Kinuthia believes Mr Kenyatta is too big a mountain to be moved by President Ruto.
He says though his influence is not as large as it was when he was president, Mr Kenyatta cannot just be wished away.
“It is impossible to dim Uhuru. He is etched inside a rock as a colossus. Not even time will erase his name, affluence and influence,” Mr Kinuthia said.
Mr Kenyatta has since announced that no one can take his right and freedom to engage in politics, even after calls escalated demanding that he quits active electoral theatrics and remain a “statesman”.
