By Gab Oguda
And I don’t understand why someone would consider “William Ruto was paid to support Uhuru Kenyatta, so he should eat his money in peace” an intellectual argument.
Listen here.
When you want a service, or a good, you have to pay for it. It is that plain and simple. Dr. Evans Kidero always told us that he worked for blue-chip companies before he joined politics and he wasn’t paid in bananas for work done. It is the same thing with you. I have never heard of anyone who went to Java and bought coffee using Facebook likes.
If you want anything in life, you have to pay for it. If William Ruto positioned himself as a Kalenjin vote-seller and Uhuru Kenyatta thought he could profit from that basket in the 2013 political market, it made business sense to spend top-dollar on it. I do not know whether William Ruto was paid to support Uhuru Kenyatta in 2013, and/or, 2017, but if he was paid for it, then I have to say that he did exactly what you would have done in his position; putting your money where your mouth is.
What people do not realize is that people cannot be bought, only commodities are bought. If you found your boss sleeping around with one of your colleagues and she gave you money to keep quiet about it, what your boss does not know is that she hasn’t bought you, but she has bought your silence. What that means is that the money you were given only acts to prevent the information flowing to a third-party, but it does not erase the information from your memory and neither does it prevent you from selling that information to a third-party, if the price is right. Unless your boss dips you in a tank of sulfuric acid, or re-engineers your memory, she will have no control of your trading in that commodity for money.
If Uhuru Kenyatta bought anything in 2013, it is Kalenjin votes, and not William Ruto. The Kalenjins are the ones who will decide whether they want to continue trusting William Ruto to bargain on their behalf, or they will choose a new broker; and the system can do nothing to alter that fact.
If William Ruto was given money to take Kalenjin votes to Jubilee and he duly delivered, then he has done his job, and no one should begrudge him for having done his job. The fact that he accepted pay for work done makes him a honest man – on that front. If you hate William Ruto for trading with Kalenjin votes, will you also hate John Munyes for trading with Turkana votes, Aden Duale with Somali votes, Uhuru Kenyatta with Kikuyu votes? William Ruto is evil, yes he is. But not because he accepted money for work done.
Let us not mix issues here.
