This is why Ruto will save Rigathi at the Senate

By George Obara Nyandoro

Department of Languages, Linguistics and Literature, Kisii University

Ruto is currently engaged in a complex political strategy to have a stranglehold of the Kenyan society with a view to elongate the life of his presidency as well as build a complex economic empire for himself.

Let me at this point digress. All politics world over is organised around group identities: race, ethnicity, religion, class, culturally conservative groups, culturally liberal groups among other identity formations.

Politicians may sometimes collapse the organising principle around various identities as we saw in the last elections where Ruto’s strategy sought to consolidate a coalition between the Gema and kalenjin ethnic communities while inviting a robust discussion around class challenges facing Kenyans where the gap between the rich and the poor is extremely wide. Ruto sought to present himself as some kind of Robin hood who would rob the rich and share the spoils with the poor.

Once in power he could not deliver on his promise to the poor because he had become president of an impoverished debt ridden country with a myriad of challenges demanding for real solutions rather than political drama and spectacle. He had not spent sufficient time figuring out what solutions he would proffer to Kenya’s complex challenges, but his mind was significantly rich with political drama and spectacle as partly seen in his project launch and relaunch programmes.

Having given up the idea of a Robin hood as well as finding the challenges of the Kenyan society too complex for him, Ruto shifted his attention to benefitring self by concentrating on building his personal economic empire with the help of obscure unknown people in foreign lands.

The Azimio led demonstrations of 2023 gave him the best escape route to abandon his Robin hood image. Quietly and with the help of former Nigerian president Obasanjo he reached out to Raila Odinga, the doyen of Kenya’s opposition politics who enjoys fanatical following from his support base.

This is the point at which the class politics had to die( Odinga and Uhuru had been presented as the epitome of dynastic politics in Kenya).

The rapprochement between the two nostalgically harked back to the anti Kikuyu narrative of 2007 which powered Raila to near presidency. The stage wàs then set for the replay of 2007.

In 2022, Ruto had extracted his debt from the Kikuyu for supporting Uhuru from 2013 to 2022. It was now time to extract his debt from the Luo for his support for Raila in 2007. This could only be done by retrieving the anti Kikuyu narrative of 2007. The stage had to be set to construct the narrative of the Kikuyu as selfish and entitled.

This is where Rigathi gets into this strategy. Ruto had studied the aggressive nature of Rigathi when they wrestled mount Kenya from Uhuru. He had studied the strong ethnic nationalist credentials Rigathi had exhibited and how carelessly he had voiced these ethnic sentiments in public spaces.

In Ruto’s strategy Rigathi suited very well in the cast of an abrasive Kikuyu hegemonic presidential candidate who could create loath and anger from other Kenyans who could then rally around Ruto.