By Mwai Wachira
This may sound farfetched and I thought so too a few months ago when I had a similar conversation with White Webuye , Rose Kahendi and John Cavoy. The trio thought Uhuru might extend his term and I thought otherwise.
Starting from the known to unknown, a president in his final term is usually magnanimous, tries to unite the country by reaching out to his political foes. We saw this in the late 90’s when president Moi after clinching the presidency for the final term reached out to Raila Odinga, Kijana Wamalwa and to some extent Kibaki. Moi made kanu the party most politicians wanted to be in so as to have a chance of succeeding him.
Uhuru Kenyatta is in his last term but instead of being magnanimous as would be expected, he is ruling by decree. He has overthrown the constitution and his word has become the law, he has shut down the media, made his officers disobey the court orders and has exiled a Kenyan lawyer to Canada. Uhuru has become the law and the police officers have resorted to citing orders from above, the way they used to during Moi’s days, incidentally Uhuru’s mentor.
Uhuru Kenyatta has put his reputation as a democrat on line, but doesn’t seem to care. His sole objective from what we can see is to cripple the opposition, and he is determined to go the whole hog. To destroy the opposition, he will require at least 3 years of crackdown and clampdown. That leaves him with 2 years of unfettered power which will not be enough after such hard work.
Will Uhuru be ready to hand over the unfettered power to his deputy William? Very unlikely as the 2 or so years of unfettered power will have made him feel invincible and he wouldn’t dream of a handover.
It is worth noting that William Ruto, a known Jubilee hawk has been unusually restrained, he has actually been like a dove, refusing to comment about Rao’s swearing in and going about his duties as though nothing happened on 30th. Ruto is a clever politician and he knows quite well that a powerful Uhuru, the one now ruling using decree is a threat to his political ambitions. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts completely.
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