AJUOK: Why Ruto should now dump Mt Kenya and focus elsewhere

President William Ruto acknowledges greetings from members of the public after launching the 30-kilometre Kwa JomvuMariakani dual road in Kilifi county / HIRAM OMONDI/PCS

When former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua was reported last weekend to have told President Ruto not to set foot in Meru county if Chief Justice Martha Koome was removed from office, it brought back memories of the late MP Paul Chepkok.

In the heat of the agitation for multiparty democracy in the early ’90s, he had threatened to chop off the fingers of FORD Party followers and banned them from visiting the Rift Valley.

As far as tribal and regional politics go, the ‘don’t step in our land’ philosophy remains the most base and crass. However, in all the years this kind of politics has dominated the land, no one has ever told the President to keep off any part of the country.

This audacity speaks to how much the Kenyan security apparatus has decided to indulge Gachagua, perhaps believing that holding him responsible for utterances bordering on national security threats may shake the delicate political instability in the country.

The problem is that the impeached DP isn’t someone who carries a whole load of emotional intelligence or sense of presence, and he won’t know when to stop.

The gravity of the impeachment charges against the former DP is yet to hit him. Of all those charges, the one that seemed to find unanimity within the public and the legislative platform was the divisive'shareholder’ narrative.

In his utterances over the years, he had sought to show that only regions that had voted for the government or supported it deserved development from the state.

As if totally unable to find better political doctrines, Gachagua has, following his impeachment, camped in his tribal base, indoctrinating it against the government he had so passionately served until his impeachment.

Herein lies my problem with the former DP. When he served the current regime, he was the purveyor of the philosophy of exclusion, pushing President Ruto to not only place his Mt Kenya region ahead of all others in state allocations, but also pushing for the total exclusion of regions perceived to be against the Ruto regime.

Yet, Gachagua now incites his mountain people against Ruto while also demanding the region retain its skewed presence in government.

When President Ruto first named his cabinet following his election in 2022, Eliud Owalo became the only CS from Luoland with a seat.

It was difficult to remember when a community as big as the Luo had only one member of the Cabinet. Gachagua was quite okay with this, as long as the perception was that the lakeside region hadn’t supported the Ruto government.

It beats sense why the same principle isn’t applied to the Central Kenya region now, when it has practically turned its back on Ruto, and declared it would never give him a second term.

Over the decades, the Central Kenya political elite has run hate-fuel campaigns geared towards ‘voting against’ certain candidates on the ballot, as opposed to picking the best on offer.

Coupled with this is the inherent sense of entitlement, which breeds the desire to take back the presidency as soon as another community (in this case, the Kalenjin) has it.

The overall perception is that the region would never be satisfied with any government not led by one of its own. Speaking of hate campaigns, there is almost a level of mental illness in the central Kenya region’s hatred of former Prime Minster Raila Odinga.

It got quite comical recently, when the ODM boss ran for the African Union Commission chairman’s post.

Many social media users from the region trolled Raila on the international platform and cheered on his opponent from Djibouti. The lie that they wanted Raila ‘to return home and help us remove Ruto from power’ didn’t convince anyone. It was simply the old indoctrinated hate.

Quite befittingly, the next time Raila appeared on the local scene after the AUC election loss, it was from State House Mombasa, with President Ruto, in a show of unity that was further removed from the stated desire to remove Ruto that Gachagua’s supporters forgot the celebrations in their land that had greeted Raila’s loss.

Truth be said, not many Raila and Ruto supporters now feel any sympathy towards the Central region’s lamentations over the state of the economy.

If you speak to Raila supporters at random, the emerging consensus is that those who have spent their entire lives hating the former PM do not matter anymore in the impending convolutions in national politics.

This is the mentality that President Ruto must adopt. To keep bending over backwards for a community that swears each passing day that they are done with you isn’t an ideal situation for any president.

Ruto appointed a whole nine members of his Cabinet from the Mt Kenya region; including the Attorney General, who makes up nearly half of the Cabinet.

In subsequent Cabinet changes in 2024, Ruto sacrificed slots from ‘his half’ of the Cabinet to create a broad-based government, while leaving the ‘mountain half’ intact.

Despite this, the region and its leaders remind all and sundry daily that Ruto must fall.

On political podiums, politicians from Central Kenya love to flaunt what they consider superior electoral numbers, usually ranging from a conservative five million to plainly exaggerated 10 million.

Maybe soon, with a credible national census, the truth of numbers and manipulated figures may come out. But based on merely this alleged superiority of numbers, the region consistently made demands on both the Moi and Ruto governments (obviously keeping conveniently quiet under the three other presidents), seeking preferential treatment in national development. But the presidency has a way of delivering a reality check.

Before assuming office, Ruto may have made all possible promises and approved the self-entitled desires of the mountain region to use these perceived numbers to win the election. But in office, with a bird's-eye view of the nation, the first reality is that a nation cannot be sustained on regional or sectarian whims.

The national cake can’t just be shared based on tribal numbers. Most of those who seek or win the presidency actually go out of their way to gain support beyond their ethnic bases.

Mwai Kibaki did so on his third attempt in 2002, and only after garnering national support. Uhuru Kenyatta had to craft a multi-tribal coalition with Ruto in 2013 and 2017 to capture power.

Ruto himself spent nearly all his years as DP, wooing the Kikuyu community. And of course, the country’s political enigma, Raila Odinga, is the quintessential bridge-builder across communities.

I believe President Ruto should call his bluff, keep Gachagua and his allies out of his way, and run the country in conjunction with other willing partners. A long stay in opposition should be the medicine the doctor ordered for the Mt Kenya region!