Uhuru to bring Raila to government to displace Ruto – Weekly Citizen

Plans by Uhuru Kenyatta to form a government of national unity is a move to force DP William Ruto out of the Jubilee government. We have information, those behind the move argue, Ruto will not agree to share or hold cabinet meetings with ODM leader Raila Odinga if he lands the position of chief secretary as it is planned. Already Raila is acting defacto chief secretary as he has been meeting governors, cabinet secretaries, principal secretaries, parasatal bosses, cabines assistant secretaries and most recent Nairobi Metropolitan boss Major General Mohammed Badi at his Upper Hill offices. Raila hosting Uhuru’s elder sister Kristina Pratt at his Capitol Hill office in Nairobi last year after he presided over a luncheoncum fundraiser for PCEA Kangoya Child Development Centre in Kiambu with president’s cousin and former Kiambu Woman Rep Anna Nyokabi was a political signal. After a date with Pratt, Raila also held talks with Doris Moi. Another move to force Ruto resign that backfired was a cabinet reshuffle last year that brought in new faces without Ruto input.

Kristina Pratt

Ruto allies in cabinet were also sacked. The decision to hand Interior cabinet secretary Fred Matiang’i more powers in coordinating cabinet activities was aimed at provoking Ruto to bolt out bur failed. Sources say, to have Ruto resign, apart from Raila factor, is to have coalition of parties that formed Jubilee start operating independently and forge another alliance with ODM and Kanu of Gideon Moi come 2022. To further isolate and humiliate his deputy, Uhuru at the advice of powerful forces in the system has resorted to ruling by executive orders, a one-man executive show that does not need consultation with his deputy in running the Jubilee government. This has however ironically gone well with Ruto who does not want to be close to Uhuru whom many see as failure something Ruto fears could rub on him and harm his 2022 ambitions. As a matter of fact, it is said, Ruto now laughs loudly how Raila has now become the twin face of failed government even when he is in opposition.

Interior CS Dr Fred Matiangi

Uhuru executive order has seen Matiangi and his PS openly undermine Ruto just as CSs, CEOs and now provincial administrations are doing. With latest government appointments, Ruto Kalenjin side in Jubilee is being frustrated as Kenyatta Kikuyu side land plum slots putting the DP at crosss roads with Kalenjin voters who voted for Jubilee. The idea is to force Ruto be seen as a toothless dog in state appointment and quit. With a coalition between Uhuru and Raila being mooted, it is bound to be another heachache to Ruto and how he willnavigate if it materialises is eagerly awaited. Ruto’s presidency according to his startegists creates fear among the dynasties. His financial muscle is being cut left, right including the introduction of new Sh1000 note that caught the DP unawares. By then talk was rife, Ruto and his allies were hiding billions to finance 2022 in old notes. Ruto has resorted to Biblical quotes as he warns of UhuruRaila-Gideon alliance even as splits in Jubilee continue.

KANU boss Gideon Moi

“The Jubilee fraternity should ignore propaganda peddled by desperados seeking ragtag ethnic coalitions,” Ruto tweeted, adding, “Our progressive constitution vests power in party organs, not personalities.” Jubilee wars stated when Uhuru men attempted a coup and changed the membership of Jubilee’s national management committee leading to Ruto protest the move to the Registrar of Political Parties. The main idea was to have Ruto defect from Jubilee and quit DP slot on grounds, he was not a ruling party member. Of late, Raila office is busy than that of Ruto as he is coordinating government functions on behalf of Uhuru. Reports indicate,Uhuru has told his family members and that of late president Daniel Arap Moi to deal with Raila and avoid Ruto. Surprisingly, other Nasa leaders ANC’s Musalia Mudavadi, Wiper’s Kalonzo Musyoka and Ford Kenya’s Moses Wetangula have been sidelined in coalition talks between Uhuru and Raila. Kanu led by late Gideon is key in the formation of a government of national unity as Uhuru part of his succession plan as much Kanu is ancient history if you ask the millennials.

WIPER boss Kalonzo Musyoka

In the recent past, Kenyans have noted that Uhuru and his deputy are no longer singing from the same book as far as Kenya’s succession is concerned given the public display of their antagonistic relations. Since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic the president and his deputy have not been seen in public together although the head of state has been holding periodic state-of-the-nation addresses on the issue. Indications that relations between the president and his deputy had collapsed came when the DP called a state-ofthe-nation-address of his own sparking condemnation from Kenyans on social media who said Ruto was undermining his boss. Uhuru’s plot to force Ruto out of the Jubilee government they formed together after collapsing their TNA and URP parties alongside other smaller parties come at a time the president has wrestled the leadership of Jubilee party from his deputy through planned change of national officials. Political observers aver that history is repeating itself on how Kenya’s founding resident Jomo Kenyatta who is Uhuru’s father applied a near similar strategy to force his then vice president Jaramogi Oginga Odinga who is Raila’s father out of the independence government.

ANC party leader Musalia Mudavadi

It is increasingly becoming clear to Ruto’s supporters that the onslaught against the DP and his allies is heavily borrowed from a script Jomo applied during his rivalry with his then vicepresident Jaramogi. According to a book written by the then US ambassador to Kenya William Attwood, The Reds and the Blacks (1967), rivalry emerged between Kenyatta and Jaramogi immediately after independence setting the stage for the latter’s political downfall. Jomo and Jaramogi had met in the early 1950s before developing a great political rapport that would see them deliver Kenya’s independence. This resulted in Kenyatta being elected president with Jaramogi becoming his vice president. However, immediately after the 1963 independence elections relations between the two leaders became strained. Jaramogi emerged as a highly ambitious, shrewd and conniving vice president who was focused on succeeding Kenyatta at all costs. This was to later lead to a fallout between the two powerful politicians. Kenya is currently at this stage now where relations between Uhuru and DP Ruto are at their lowest ebb. Political observers believe that Ruto is too obsessed with succeeding Uhuru at the cost of the president’s legacy.

The late Jaramogi Odinga

Since Uhuru and Raila announced a unity deal in March 2018, Ruto started behaving like campaigns for the 2022 presidential polls had started prompting the president and Raila to come up with the socalled Building Bridges Intitiative. These BBI rallies came to an end following the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak. Before that Ruto and his allies had also been shuttling from one corner of the country to another and also receiving MPs and delegations from different parts of the country either at his Harambee House Annex office or at his official residence in Karen. This developments chilled relations between the president and his deputy setting the stage for a political scenario that resembles the Kenyatta presidency and his then vice president Jaramogi. This is the political scenario currently evolving in Kenya. There is no doubt about the role Ruto played in Uhuru’s election in 2013 and the two subsequent elections in 2017. However, it has to be noted that the 2022 succession will be Kenya’s fourth since independence. We have change of power from Jomo to Moi, then from Moi to retired Mwai Kibaki and then from Kibaki to Uhuru. So who will be Kenya’s president after Uhuru?

Third President Mwai Kibaki

This is the big question that is bothering politicians and Kenyans at large. But to understand succession politics in Kenya one needs to look at how the previous successions were executed. Ruto has to remember that the situation he is facing now resembles the 1970s scenario, when there was the ‘change the constitution’ movement spearheaded by a group of Kikuyu chauvinists going by the name Kiambu Mafia who wanted to block the then vice president Daniel Moi from automatically succeeding Kenyatta. Moi faced opposition from the Kiambu Mafia who would have preferred one of their own to be president. This resulted in an attempt by this change-theconstitution group to prevent the vice-president automatically assuming power in the event of the president’s death. However, their schemes were scuttled by then Attorney General Charles Njonjo who instead backed Moi and the shy and reserved former primary school teacher, took the oath of office to become Kenya’s second president in 1978 following Jomo’s death. To succeed Kenyatta, Moi endured humiliation, some of it physical, from opponents that included powerful men who had access to Kenyatta. But Moi used, among other things, his open and unquestionable loyalty to Kenyatta as a stepping stone to power.

Former AG Charles Njonjo

If Ruto is a good political student he should learn from Moi on how he maneuvered through highly treacherous political terrain to become Kenya’s second president. The perception that Kenyatta owes the DP any debt because of supporting him in 2013 and 2017 is misplaced because the political marriage between the two was based on interests. Maybe the only political debt Uhuru has is to Moi who inducted him in politics. Ruto needs to remember that Kenya is a dynamic society and that is why it has produced nine vice-presidents and only two managed to become presidents. Kenya is full of vice presidents as they used to be called then who never made it to the presidency. They include independence VP Jaramogi, Joseph Murumbi, Joseph Karanja, George Saitoti, Mudavadi, Kijana Wamalwa, Moody Awori and Kalonzo. Ruto knows that politics in Kenya is controlled by powerful individuals who work behind the scenes to determine who rules the country or becomes the president and he said it himself that there is a ‘system’ out to stop him from becoming president.

Ford Kenya boss Moses Wetangula

During Kenyatta’s tenure the powerful people that Ruto refers to as the ‘system’ were called the Kiambu Mafia, during Moi’s rule they became the Kalenjin Mafia, at the time of Kibaki they became Mt Kenya Mafia and word has it that the Kiambu Mafia have come back to handle the Uhuru succession. But one group that is not mentioned is the British mafia who have a lot of interests in Kenya having been our colonisers. In Kenya, the term mafia refers to a secretive powerful group of people with the ability to control key instruments of power that include security, media, the intelligence service and the business class for political convenience. Ruto should remember that Raila has lost three presidential elections under controversial circumstances due to the alleged plot by these so-called ruling elite but he is willing to work with Uhuru. The DP should also know politics in Kenya is about ethnicity and party politics. As he head towards 2022, Ruto might be partyless after disbanding URP and being thrown out of the Jubilee Party ownership matrix. He will need to put together a new political think tank probably including some of the Rift Valley mafia during the Moi era who are well versed in statecraft to help him put together a winning 2022 succession strategy.