Once again the political leadership of the country is all but confused. The presidency is pulling in all sorts of directions and operating at cross-purpose.
The Deputy President has dropped all presence and thrown the gauntlet before his boss, President William Ruto.
The Rigathi Gachagua started his campaign to be the Mt Kenya kingpin soon after being sworn into office.
With the twin slogans of shareholder government and one man one-shilling resource allocation, he projected himself as the foremost champion of his Kikuyu community interests.
He sought to ring-fence the GEMA vote bloc. Any person who intended to access the region had to go through him, or so he thought.
There was no exception including the President. This did not go down well with many leaders, especially from within his Kenya Kwanza coalition.
In calculated steps, the President began to exclude his deputy from key government engagements. Gachagua sensed this and initiated a series of activities to protect himself from the ensuing onslaught.
He employed a combination of tact and defiance. However, things took a nasty turn when the GenZ protests broke out.
The protests became violent and almost ran the government out of town. He took advantage of the crisis to point fingers at some government officers against whom he harboured ill feelings.
He blamed them for the mess in which the government found itself.
He also insinuated that he was being crucified for openly championing his ethnic community’s interests. This was a risky gamble laden with inherent pitfalls.
The spirit of the law usually supersedes the letter. It also guides the practice of the same.
The committee of experts, led by the venerable Nzamba Kitonga created the position of deputy president out of fear.
They were seeking to cure President Moi’s whimsical game of musical chairs with the post of vice-president.
They thus established a position that was protected from the idiosyncratic interests of the President.
The holder of the position enjoys unpreceded protection from the Constitution.
The person is a joint candidate with the presidential nominee. He is designated principal assistant and direct successor to the president in case of a vacancy.
The holder also enjoys immunity just as does the President. All these provisions were hinged on the premise that there would be good behaviour in the conduct of the politicians.
Politics being the game that it is, the practice in Kenya has been starkly different from the intention of the Constitution.
The pioneers of a regime ordinarily give it its founding character and stature. Credit is historically given to George Washington for establishing the lasting legacy of the American presidency.
Until President Donald Trump came into office in 2016, it was taken for granted that the office of the US presidency was held with decorum, good conduct and common sense behaviour.
All this is attributed to the founding fathers of the US nation led by Washington. Of course, it should be noted that the same US Constitution has undergone several amendments to cure some of its internal weaknesses.
The same scenario obtains in the laws and political practice in modern Germany after Adolf Hitler’s tyrannical debacle.
The French practice emanated from the Napoleonic Republic while the British traces its roots to second industrial revolution, which brought into being the Common Charter.
Kenya’s challenges of the national leadership began with the first presidency under the 2010 Constitution.
The 2013 election was won out fear of The Hague trials. President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy, William Ruto, had been indicted for crimes against humanity by the ICC.
They deftly used their predicament to rally their respective ethnic communities to vote as a bloc.
The coalition of the Jubilee and URP parties was therefore a unity of the two populous tribes of the Kikuyu and Kalenjin. They won the election and established the first Cabinet under the 2010 Constitution.
Their subsequent conduct and demeanour showed a joint leadership of equal co-principals with shared power, authority and responsibility.
They shared the podium to announce major government decisions. The comradery was taken a notch higher to the extent of similar dress code on occasions.
While the Constitution had created a clear hierarchy of political leadership, Uhuru and Ruto practiced a dual and shared presidency.
The mobilisation of votes along ethnic lines also created a sense of tribal shareholding in the government.
The two big communities dominated key government appointments while the rest of the country received token positions. Resource allocation through the new budgeting process also marginalised opposition regions.
The balkanisation of the country on an ethnic and regional basis helped assure the duopoly of tenure.
It conversely created a sense of exclusion and near hopelessness among the non-Kikuyu and Kalenjin masses.
Their second term was once again won on the platform of the coalition presidency. Cracks began to emerge when President Uhuru sought to assert himself as the sole leader of the government.
Ruto’s supporters cried foul. Many of his allies were shunted aside with plum government positions.
Eventually he rebelled against Uhuru and started his campaigns for the presidency unusually early. In their bitter falling out, Uhuru cast his lot with the Opposition Leader Raila Odinga. Ruto beat both of them to the trophy.
The seeds of a coalition presidency were therefore firmly planted in the first regime of Uhuru and Ruto. They did it deliberately to win the elections and by default by mobilising their respective ethnic communities alone.
While Uhuru was the President, he was seen more as the representative of the Kikuyu in the government.
Ruto was by all means the de facto leader of the Kalenjins in government, even though he was deputy. Publicly, they shared and exercised equal political authority and power.
Clear as the national law was, it could not cure the malpractice. Many instances were when the two took diametrically opposed positions on key government agenda items.
The BBI is a classic case in point. Kenyans watched in disbelief as the Deputy President openly defied his boss and hitherto brother-in-arms on many occasions. More baffling was the decision of the president to support the opposition leader against his own deputy for the presidency.
The unfolding political drama appeared to be unique and out of place. However, unbecoming conduct has its genesis in the current constitution.
The new laws are inconsistent with the cultural heritage of Kenya. The founding fathers of the nation never quite dealt with the twin questions of nationalism and patriotism.
Kenya remained largely a conglomeration of separate and distinct ethnic nationalities in fierce competition for key political positions.
These positions determined how resources were accessed by leaders and shared by the ethnic communities. The political competition has been vicious and sometimes violent.
The three tribes of Luo, Kikuyu and Kalenjin have come out to be the major players in the competition. Since Independence, alliances have been formed by any two of them.
First was of the Kikuyu and Luo in 1963. Then the Kikuyu and Kalenjin in 1967. The multi-party era saw the Kikuyu and Luo come together again in 2002. Finally, it was the Kalenjin and Luo in 2007.
In all these alliances, the impression was created that the Vice President represented his community in the government. However, in the previous legal regime, the President had the leeway to appoint any person of his choice at any time as long as the cabinet was formed, reshuffled or reconstituted, as the case may be. In the current situation, the President has little room to manoeuvre after the election.
The Deputy President takes the oath of office at almost the same time as the President. For optics, this provides the public with the illusion that the duo principals are equal and that one is just but the first.
The 2010 Constitution should be reviewed to cure this inconsistency between the law and the practice. The political practice has always followed the cultural heritage.
Kenya’s heritage stems from both the colonial history and ethnic leadership organisations. The precolonial ethnic politics was organised in an egalitarian structure with decisions taken through consensus or majoritarian democracy.
This conformed with the colonial British Westminster parliamentary democracy. The American presidential system is therefore inimical to the political genetics of the African Kenya.
While pundits find the behaviour of the first two deputy presidents under the 2010 Constitution anathema, a review of the laws is inevitable.
Kenyans must bite the bullet and align the Constitution with their intrinsic interests. Last term it was William Ruto, yet today it is Rigathi Gachagua being called out to order.
The political leadership should do some introspection and fix the disjointed parts of the national laws for the smooth operation of future governments.
Revisiting the BBI might be the first step in that direction. A decision must be made between a coalition presidency with co-presidents or unity in command in the presidency with a vice president as the principal assistant.
Lest the jinx of the second in command will be Kenya’s political Achilles heel.
Political and public policy analyst