Two things caught my attention, nay, shocked me last week. The first was the visit to State House, Nairobi, by the Iran President Ebrahim Raisi.
Weeks before this visit, President William Ruto had made a high-profile visit to Israel, where, in his usual religious fervour, he had shared pictures of him praying at Jerusalem’s famous Wailing Wall. Iran is Israel’s foremost global foe, and since Iran is also Russia’s friend, it is by extension an enemy of the West.
These geopolitical dynamics determine foreign policy for many, or nearly all, countries in the world. Israel is very sensitive to its security needs, so it is difficult to be its ally as well as an ally of its enemies. That Ruto was hosting a high-profile visit by the Iran president, regardless of whatever bilateral deals came with it, and just weeks after returning from “firming up our long-term friendship with Israel”, spoke to the lack of a credible foreign policy on its part.
Granted, Ruto sees himself as a new voice of Pan-Africanism, global justice and independence on the global stage, if his recent speeches at different for a are anything to go by. But attempting to disturb the delicate geopolitical equilibrium, especially in the volatile Middle East, would be biting more than he can chew.
I suspect it has all got to do with an identity crisis within government, revolving around the desire to be friends with every big global player, the need to shine too fast too soon and good old confusion in governance.
The second thing catching my attention within that week was the Kenya Kwanza parliamentary group meeting held at State House. At the meeting, the President is reported to have instructed his MPs, governors and senators to retreat to their areas and find ways of blunting anti-government protests there. None of the elected leaders has any command authority over the police, so presumably, the instructions required them to organise counter demos to those called by Azimio, a recipe for disaster.
However, something more interesting came out of the meeting. Sources indicated that Kenya Kwanza MPs protested that the new National Intelligence Service chief Noordin Haji was pushing for a handshake between Ruto and Azimio leader Raila Odinga.
I have previously lamented that most crises in the country seemed to be largely the effects of intelligence failures or failure of the intended consumers of intelligence to act on them. But the alleged discomfort of the ruling party MPs with Haji gave me new insight.
I can guess with near certainty how the discomfort over Haji began. It is the work of the intelligence chief to tell his commander in chief the real situation on the ground, however unpalatable it may sound to the ruling political class.
Brigadier Wilson Boinett, as intelligence chief in 2002, is said to have made President Moi aware that his Uhuru Kenyatta presidential project was headed for a resounding beating in the December 2002 election. No one listened to him.
Similarly, conventional wisdom has it that Maj Gen Michael Gichangi, another intelligence chief, sounded a warning to President Kibaki about difficulties with the 2007 general election if the deep ethnic divisions sown by the regime were not resolved fast. Again, as with most governments in this land, the intelligence was left to gather dust.
It is sensible that before the March 2018 handshake between President Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila, then director of intelligence, Maj Gen Phillip Kameru, would have first provided the President intelligence briefs detailing the difficulty ahead, trying to run a country where half of the population was totally disenchanted and felt like they had been robbed of electoral victory. To his credit, Uhuru realised how unsustainable the winner takes all philosophy was and sought the hand of Raila.
Haji obviously finds himself in this position. He has probably taken the country’s map, given it a critical look, and noticed a huge mass of people, including jobless and despondent youths, who do not identify the Kenya Kwanza regime as friendly to them.
For them, a trigger for their more aggressive instincts is never too far away, especially in these admittedly difficult economic times. I am sure Haji has presented the scenario that the solution to this time bomb lies in either finding jobs for and improving the living standards of these youths, or speaking to their perceived leader, Raila.
For that, Kenya Kwanza legislators, who, for all intents and purposes are sycophantic mobile voting machines, have decided to beat the messenger because they don’t like his message. President Ruto tends to surround himself with people of either low intellectual capacities or whose hardline stands basically wipe away the sense of occasion.
If there any moderates in the ruling party, their voices are drowned by the hawks, which means that the middle ground of compromise remains unoccupied within the Kenya Kwanza coalition.
As the holder of office, Ruto has a higher responsibility in uniting the nation. I remember his own words to Raila at the ODM presidential nominations in September 2007 at Kasarani’s auditorium. After emerging third in the contest behind Raila and Musalia Mudavadi, and when making his concession speech, Ruto advised his party leader that “to lead the orchestra, you must turn your back to the crowd”, asking the newly minted presidential candidate to look ahead and not be swayed by divisive whims.
As the country now faces biting crisis, Ruto must turn his back on Kenya Kwanza hawks holding him hostage, and trashing intelligence reports they don’t like.
At the time of writing this, the Kenya Conference of Catholic Bishops had just released a press statement condemning police brutality, demanded that the Finance Act, 2023 (part of the reason for the ongoing Azimio demos) be repealed and for the ruling class to listen to the grievances of the people. Problem is, it is difficult to listen when everyone in government is sending threats and promising there will be no handshake, which the opposition insists they don’t want.
Last weekend, Ruto alleged that he was privy to information that Raila and Uhuru intended to topple his government by August, and he would no longer entertain them. The last time we heard a statement about plots to overthrow government, Moi was still President, and we were mere teenagers in high school.
Our democracy has come too far to worry about overthrow plots. But the government must surely know that when they look past the former Prime Minister, they’ll see a growing and worrying population of hungry youths making demands by the day.
With or without Raila, they won’t go away without a credible solution. Ruto’s government has adopted the “management by crisis” mode, where the regime jumps from one crisis to another and manages by guesswork, as the past week has shown.
A government can be lucky with this method where the economy performs, and the population is generally at peace. But we are not there and there doesn’t seem to be a plan in place to address all the grievances presented by protestors. Instead, the campaign-season rhetoric against the Azimio chief carries on, devoid of any sound measures to mitigate the rising cost of living. This guesswork governance has probably run its course.
Political commentator