Kenya Kwanza on thin Ice: Ruto's tours and Raila's gamble to save the nation

Panic, uncertainty and desperation.  These have been the three drivers behind President William Ruto’s hurried  outings in Nairobi and in other counties in recent times.

There is pulsating need to scoot up waned popularity for the Ruto government, now halfway through its first term in office.

There is a sudden waking up to the harsh reality that 30 months have been given away to toxic political bruhaha, overseas junket trips, conspicuous consumption and splurging at the top.

And all this amidst unprecedented hardship in the ordinary citizenry. The need for damage control has been discussed in high places in government.

The resolve is that the President will tour the country. He will inspect and launch projects, as an indication that the Kenya Kwanza government is working for Kenyans. 

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Going together with the forays is the unprecedented appeasement of the ODM leader, Raila Odinga, who is set for big things in the Ruto government.

Following the impeachment of Ruto’s first Deputy President, Rigathi Gachagua, the Ruto regime now hangs on a shoestring.

Big surprise

Its strongest pillar is Raila Odinga’s Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) Party. Disaffection against the Ruto regime in Mt Kenya in the post-Gachagua impeachment came as a big surprise to State House. 

President Ruto was always led to believe that replacing Gachagua with Prof Kithure Kindiki would put the impeachment matter behind him and that he would continue to enjoy the massive support he had in the region in 2022.

Put together with grossly failed election promises in the Mt Kenya region, and in Kenya generally, Kenya Kwanza has become unpopular.

MPs who support the regime outside the President’s Rift Valley base appear to be cuddling electoral defeat.  

Popular lore in the street speaks of a Kenyan nation counting down to August 2027 to teach President Ruto and politicos aligned to him a good lesson in politics.

The solution has been to turn to Raila and ODM. Maybe he could save the sinking ship? For his part, Raila is taking an arm and a leg for everything President Ruto wants done. 

Following his August 15 debacle in Addis Ababa, where he failed to be elected the Africa Union (AUC) chairperson, Raila returned home to ask for enactment of the National Dialogue Committee (NADCO) Report into law. State House sources indicate that he has also asked for half of the slots in the Ruto government.

With limping support in Parliament, following the implosion of his United Democratic Alliance (UDA), as a factor of the impeachment, Ruto does not seem to have much choice.  

With, or without NADCO, Raila appears set to have his pound of flesh from Ruto. In what has the character of handing over of the government and governance to Raila and ODM, the only challenge that remains is how to situate Raila squarely in the driver’s seat. 

This is where the NADCO report comes in. The memorandum of agreement that was signed last week between Raila and Ruto was largely a red herring and a Trojan horse. While it talks of many other things, the real objective is to deliver the position of Prime Minister to Raila.

Indeed, Ruto and his retinue in UDA already sacredly refer to Raila as “the Prime Minister.” They have stopped referring to him as “former Prime Minister,” as they previously did.

Fondling and appeasement of Raila is a categorical imperative for Ruto. The President is acutely aware that Raila is the column and beam on which his presidency rests, after the Gen-Z uprising and the loss of Mt. Kenya.

In the style of Neville Chamberlin of Great Britain treatment of Germany on the eve of World War II Ruto must increasingly give in to Raila. 

Kenya Kwanza is in a deep hole. No Kenyan regime has been this unpopular before. Even as he goes out there to pile fresh promises upon old ones, the President can see for himself that he is in a bad place. All the dignity and decorum of office is lost.

Irate youthful crowds in slummy environments shout back at him as he anxiously struggles to raise his voice above the din. Every cluster of his messaging is sandwiched between just one word from the crowd, “Uongo!”, which is to say, “Lies!”

Where did President Ruto lose it with this hustler community, to which he was once so beloved?

And where does Raila Odinga fit in?

A happy-go-lucky president got into office with little focus on the people. He forgot that electioneering had ended and that it was time to sit down and begin working.

He had signed 47 county charters that spoke to what he would deliver to each county. And there were extra charters with special interest groups – like the youth, women and people living with disabilities.

Development plan

The meeting point between these charters and the Kenya Kwanza PLAN was not always clear. However, it was expected that sooner or later, the two would be harmonized in a crystalline development plan. 

 It was not to be. Instead, erratic programmes were embarked upon, without clear understanding on how they related to, and balanced with, broader fiscal plans and budgets.

Development sank to the level of whimsical verbal promissory notes and favours during presidential excursions.

Hence, on such occasions, President Ruto will arrive at marketplaces and get in the presidential limousine to straightaway plunge into polemics and fresh promises. Some of the promises have been outrightly absurd. They invite the seriousness of the institution of government into doubt. For instance, there was the promise to convert the Gorokocho slum into a city of the standards of London. 

The President stated that this transformation of Gorokocho had already begun, and the city was looking glamorous.

In last week’s forays through Nairobi, similar remarks were made. This time around it was the sprawling Mathare Valley, which would be transformed into a city with skyscrapers, clean drinking water, and al

Earlier, there were promises to host the iconic Grammy Awards in Kenya. Kenyans heard that the funds had already been paid. So too, were ridiculous claims about whales migrating in Tana River, and lions swimming in Lamu.

Such hyperbole has the impact of devaluing the status of State House in the eyes of the people. Hence, it should not surprise that youth punctuate presidential public messaging with “Uongo!” after every cluster uttered. 

But perhaps more bizarre is when the President, atop the presidential limousine and in other unseemly spaces, leads in conducting songs that have been coined to ridicule him.

Among such songs is the Kasongo song that depicts him as a profligate household head who has abdicated his responsibilities to his family.

It is possibly his way of telling Kenyans that the monikers don’t bother him. But they do. Youth have been incarcerated, others disappeared for good, for casting Ruto-like images of the Kasongo persona in caskets and in other unflattering environments. And Ruto himself advised parents, sometime after the disappearances had just begun, to discipline their children, to get them to stop producing these caricatures. 

How do we account for the sorry state of affairs for Ruto, to the extent that the President has begun the 2027 election campaigns this early?

What gives him the scare, and how did it begin? It boils down to two things, avarice in the State and culpable naivety.

The most obvious flaw has been naivety and a rather puerile approach to governance. Naivety began filtering through very early in the Ruto presidency, with rushed decisions and edicts. Punitive taxes were introduced at the very start of the life of this government, with promises that Kenya would become a paradise after two years of the Ruto regime.

Anyone’s money

The country was told to pay off all outstanding taxes within 24 months. “After that we will not need anyone’s money,” Ruto told a Kenyan nation groaning under the weight of unbearable cost of living. “We will have a lot of our own money to spend, and life will be extremely good after that.” 

The two years have come and gone, and things only get tougher, from testimonies Kenyans give online and in other media footage.

Debt has risen from about Sh8 trillion shillings to close to Sh10.6 trillion.

What happened? The tragedy is that it is difficult to see where the borrowed money has gone?

Has it possibly been used to pay earlier debts? Has Ruto been digging new pits to fill up old pits? If he has been paying debts with new borrowings, then where are the taxes going? 

Things just don’t add up. The Social Health Insurance (SHA) program that hurriedly replaced the National Health Insurance Fund (NHIF) is a flop. Kenyans die daily for lack of medical attention because of this naively introduced programme

The health workers themselves are nearly permanently on strike, on account of failed promises by the government to honour collective bargaining agreements. Education is in a shambles. The competence-based curriculum (CBC)  is directionless. Public university education is collapsing as the entities have run into crippling debt. Staff are not paid, research is dead. 

Power struggles for useless positions in universities is the order of the day.

Elsewhere, youth unemployment is soaring at 67 per cent. The massive youthful crowds that throng the Ruto rallies on what should be normal working days tell the story of joblessness and idleness. The frenzied Hustler Fund is dead meat. It should be no wonder that in the wake of these rallies, vandalism and assorted gangster activities have been taking place, especially in Nairobi.  But as unemployment and gangsterism soar, businesses are shutting down, other relocating – because of the heavy cost of investment in the country.

Energy and taxation are the foremost culprits. Among those who have either folded up, or plan to leave or have cut down drastically on staff are Proctor and Gamble, Abacus Hardware, Africa Payments and Settlement, Amani Pioneer Group, Tile and Carpet, Base Titanium, and G4S. 

When it should be soberly addressing the concerns that have led to the sorry state of affairs in the country, the government is permanently on the move, in early 2027 election campaigns.

The foremost role of the government is to provide a secure investment environment, in which jobs can be created and wealth generated.

The President and his high council are expected to sit down, read, listen, think and solve the country’s challenges through enabling policies and programmes.

A working government can never be one whose top brass is permanently cutting across the country and pouring vitriol and invective at its opponents – both real and perceived – atop motor vehicles. 

But avarice and lavish living at the top is the other weakness in the Ruto State, as it crosses the half mark of the second term.

Both the Controller of Budget and the Auditor General have recently released reports that speak to hundreds of billions of shillings that have either been embezzled, or splurged in lavish living.

The Controller of budget reported last week that seven government offices lavishly spent Sh7.8 billion in the period July to December 2024. Most of this was on travel, by the President and Members of Parliament. 

A government that set off the blocks with pomp and circumstance is two and half hears later a pale shadow of the confidence it exuded.

To address its faded glory and dimmed stars, it resorts to new promises and courting the opposition, all in the professed name of uniting the country. The memorandum of understanding that Ruto has signed with Raila, however, says nothing new, except the quest to expand the Executive, to accommodate Raila, as Prime Minister.

Most critical

But Raila is not just being accommodated in government. He is now running the show. Is he just too smart, or has Ruto abdicated his responsibility?

ODM has taken over the leadership of Parliament’s most critical organs. It ran away, in the ended week, with the leadership of both the Public Accounts Committee , and the Budget and Appropriations Committee (BAC). Now, this is a perfect conundrum. 

The BAC is essentially charged with the responsibility of helping the government to make the national budget. It should ideally be chaired by the Majority side, which, in a properly managed environment, would be the government side in Parliament.

PAC, on the other hand, interrogates use of public funds. It belongs to the opposition, once again if the environment is correct. ODM’s taking over of the chair in both committees must leave us wondering about who is going to help the government to prepare the budget and who will be oversighting whom? 

It is instructive that ODM is now running the National Treasury, with John Madi as the CS, being among four ODM stalwarts who were “donated to President Ruto,” as Raila told Kenyans, “to help him to get things straight.”

While PAC is appropriately chaired by ODM, we cannot say the same of BAC. Fancy ODM oversighting ODM in President Ruto’s government. Such is how failure works. 

Yet, does this conundrum speak to the reality of the changed character of both Parliament and the Executive?

Are President Ruto and Raila Odinga pushing Kenya towards a return to the one-party State? Both the memorandum of understand that they have signed, and their overt political manoeuvres speak to a strong desire to circumvent the significance of a government that is elected by the people, for the people. If they respected the public plebiscite on government, they would each remain in their lanes. Ruto would run the government and Raila would maintain oversight. Personal expediency, however, is pushing the two leaders outside the provisions of the instruments of government, to constitute and run government unlawfully. 

Article 2(2) of the Constitution of Kenya (2010) states, “No person may claim to exercise State authority except as authorized under this Constitution.” And for avoidance of any further doubt, Article 3(2) reads, “Any attempt to establish a government otherwise than in compliance with this Constitution is unlawful.” Regardless, President Ruto and Mr. Odinga have established a Cabinet and other arms of government outside the provisions of the Constitution. They are set to transform their NADCO Report into law that will allow Mr. Odinga to take over at Harambee House Annex as some sort of Prime Minister. Then he should take over even more powers from the Presidency.  

Now, all this happens on account of a failed William Ruto Presidency. Even as Ruto roves all over the place saying things that sound like Alice in Wonderland, he is acutely aware that he has failed, halfway through the first term of his presidency. Raila comes in to hold up a sagging and collapsing roof, possibly with the hope that he could run away with the entire edifice altogether. Could Kenya be undergoing a gradual civilian coup de tat? 

The indications from their political sounding boards are that Ruto expects ODM to work with UDA in the 2027 elections. He expects the two entities to mobilize tribal numbers to give him a second term. You hear ODM sirens saying at public gatherings, attended by the President, that they will support him at the next election. But could Mr. Odinga be the proverbial camel that exceeds the welcome by an enfeebled owner of the shack, to trample him underfoot and throw him out, as he takes over? Yet, Odinga has himself had a taste of the wrath of Kenyans, unhappy with his political flirting with Ruto and UDA. As the two leaders watch each other’s backs, possibly calculating the best spot to push in the knife, and the right moment to strike, could Kenyans also be watching both? Raila has been judged guilty by association, and although he is struggling to claim sanctity, Kenyans are not convinced. He could easily find himself in the common trash basket of offensives against Kenyans, consigned to the Indian Ocean in 2027.

Dr Muluka is an analyst of politics and international relations