President William Ruto has now taken full charge of the final leg of former Prime Minister Raila Odinga’s African Union Commission campaigns.
After months of cross-continent diplomatic offensive by Raila, Ruto has assumed the lead role in the final push to deliver victory for the former PM.
The African heads of state converge in Addis Ababa on February 15 and to vote for the next AUC chairperson.
With exactly two weeks to go, Ruto has stepped forward as Raila’s chief campaigner traversing the continent as he pushes for the Nairobi candidate.
The approach contradicts how Nairobi handled the 2017 Amb Amina Mohamed’s candidature, which Kenya lost to Chad’s Moussa Faki.
“Unlike Amb Amina’s bid where the Secretariat carried the load, Ruto seems to have learnt from those failures and has decided to shoulder this,” foreign policy analyst Gordon K’achola told the Star.
“Ruto has not only supported Raila’s bid financially but also walked him to heads of state-only meetings where Odinga got a lone opportunity to pour his heart out for various heads of state.
Most of them are his peers he is either
connecting or reconnecting with.”
Amb Erastus Mwencha, former deputy chairperson of the
AU Commission, said Ruto’s direct involvement speaks to the seriousness the country has attached to the campaign.
