Political events take months, sometimes years, to successfully pull through.
It is now clear to all that Uhuru will not oppose Ruto’s re-election.
He may still not support him, which is increasingly doubtful, but the fact is, he is in Ruto’s corner.
The changes President Ruto has made post-Gen Z has jolted everyone and every politician has been forced to redraw the boundaries of their political associations.
Strange bedfellows are fast transforming into bonded allies.
President Ruto has reached out to almost every community in Kenya with stretched hands of national unity and equitable development.
In every region, some major transformation is happening.
The noises directed at him have to do with the fact that he’s reduced certain “shares” so that everyone gets something. Equality, as you all know, is oppression to those used to privilege.
These are the usual noises from those who think for them to be well fed and happy, their neighbour must have nothing.
To such people, the starvation of their neighbours is more satisfying than the food rotting in their own homes.
President Uhuru’s dilemma has to do with the uphill task he’ll have to climb to convince rational thinking Kenyans that President Ruto has failed, which will bring his own record to question.
To cut the story short, the person everyone expects will jump out and lead a serious, organized opposition to Ruto is Raila Odinga, putting his Luo group on the frontline, dragging everyone else to join in.
On Friday most of you must have observed with shock the silence of the Raila ‘guilt-trippers’. Toxic tribalists who’ve been calling on Raila to leave government (which is code word for the ODM Party group to leave government considering Raila holds no position to vacate) were dead silent the entire day, not calling Uhuru a sellout, not asking him if his conscience isn’t pricking him.
Raila still operates from the offices he’s operated from, with the same staff, paid per his pension entitlements, just like all the other former senior government officials alive — from Uhuru, Moody Awori and Kalonzo Musyoka to David Maraga, Willy Mutunga, Kenneth Marende, Amos Wako, those ex-KDF generals, etc.
Anytime you hear someone say Raila should leave government, they either mean the ODM Party group should leave cabinet or Raila should be holding press conferences castigating govt, leading protests on the streets and getting clobbered by police and regime allied thugs — who used to be them.
These are people bitter that the people they used to watch on TV being clobbered from morning to evening, the people they used to laugh at and jeer at; as they stood by and celebrated the violence and brutality meted on Raila and his people; while they masquaraded as busy entreprenuers and businesspeople — they are bitter that these people are now them.
It is them now being clobbered. And they don’t like it. Tried it for two weeks and called off all further protests. They realized how difficult it is to run in courts trying to bail people out, dash to hospitals to pay bills and then to the morgue to clear with the pathologist’s fees. They don’t like it happening to them but they are also adamant it must happen and they have the people it should happen on.
They want the status quo to be re-established.
They want to be happy again. To laugh at others again.
Since 2018, their sadness has only been interrupted briefly by fleeting happiness of Ruto’s victory over Raila, and again by the victory of the Djibouti fellow at AUC, over Raila.
Raila Odinga should know that Uhuru is not with him and will not back him, just as he was not with him and did not back him for the AUC. And just as he could not build a communal concensus among his people to vote him in 2022.
The GEMA group questioning Raila’s conscience are playing mind games.
What is relevant here is that when these very people, through their surrogates with unlimited access to Odinga tell him to contest, they are merely setting him up for slaughter. Go dust Raila’s votes from their polling stations. Raila lost decisively in those polling stations and they can’t say he was rigged out. No, they just didn’t vote for him.
The pro-reforms demographic that has traditionally voted for Odinga has shifted, with majority embracing Ruto, because of Ruto’s own outreach to them, but also fearing another electoral thrashing, one with far worse consequences than in the past; considering the grave danger of putting to power an avowed shameless tribalist like Gachagua or the puppet he’ll settle on.
So, as she comes up with yet another presidential secretariat where she’ll be vapping 24/7 and barking orders to her page boys and flower girls; the ground beneath has shifted.
