Here is what a voter somewhere in Murang’a is reported to have told some journalists who had gone “on the ground” to investigate the seeming restlessness within the Mount Kenya region: a region which has played a pivotal role in just about every presidential election since the 1990s.
Regarding the fast-rising star of the Kiharu MP Ndindi Nyoro, the voter is quoted as having said, “He has done well in terms of development. However, he is still not ripe for the DP position. Rigathi is senior to him. He should allow Rigathi to complete two terms and they can team up in 2032”.
This was not the first time such views have been expressed. Indeed, barely a week passes but there is someone – whether a leading politician or an ordinary Kenyan – making a pronouncement about the 2032 election.
The Kiharu MP recently had a large group of regional MPs from Mt Kenya openly support him as a replacement for the DP for the 2027 general election. That was part of what brought about this restlessness in “the Mountain.”
Back in the early 1990s when I was first writing opinion columns, nobody ever bothered to speculate beyond the next few years. In general, we neither knew for sure who would run for president (or defend his seat as president) until the final six months before the general election.
This was based on the awareness that what really determines the final vote tally, is the alliances and political pacts made in those last six months. And that any alliances made a few years earlier – let alone several years earlier – are not likely to carry much weight.
All that seems to have changed and it is now considered perfectly normal to speak as though the 2027 presidential election is already settled in favour of the incumbent, President William Ruto, and that the only room for valid speculation, is on who will be his running mate.
Something has clearly changed.
And I would say that this change is that we now have far more data on presidential elections – and clearer patterns of voting behaviour based on such data – than we did in the 1990s.
One such pattern is that Kenyan presidents seeking re-election, one way or another, never lose. This was true for Daniel Moi in 1997; for Mwai Kibaki in 2007; and for Uhuru Kenyatta in 2017. Even when the opposition parties got their act together and united to present the country with one strong opposition candidate for the presidency, it was the serving president who won.
So, I suppose it makes sense to assume that Ruto too will not lose in 2027.
However, there is one factor which should insert an element of doubt into that assumption:
The former head of the Civil Service, and more recently former Governor of Nyandarua, Francis Kimemia, explained in a rather famous TV interview the inner workings of Kenya’s “deep state” which is generally considered to be the key instrument that guarantees the re-election of Kenyan presidents.
He said that provided the race for president had narrowed down to just two leading contenders (as it invariably did) the one who had the support of the deep state would win. He did not specify how this victory would be achieved. Rather he presented it as simply “how things work in this country.”
But then, a surprising thing happened. The candidate whom we had been told had the support of the deep state (opposition leader Raila Odinga) lost to Ruto, whom his predecessor (and supposed controller of the deep state) Uhuru Kenyatta had openly rebuked and told not to run in 2022.
This raises the question: If indeed the two inflexible realities of Kenyan presidential elections were, first, that a president running for re-election always won; and second, that in a close election the candidate who had the support of the deep state always won; what are we to make of a situation where it is now clear that a candidate can have the support of the deep state and still lose?
Might it mean that a serving president who seeks re-election can also lose?