To say that Martha Karua has hit the ground running to win the August 9, 2022 elections is an understatement. Karua has changed the whole game in ways that few people saw coming so fast. In four days Karua has done more to get Azimio ready than some people have done in a long time.
The trips through towns in Meru, Embu, and many parts of the Mt. Kenya region seem like organic developments that were not even planned but just took a life of their own. Martha and her team have the energy plus motivation to get going in the highly contested parts of the country.
On Friday the team was in towns like Karatina, Othaya, Giakanja, and Nyeri addressing large crowds everywhere.
The other thing Martha Karua’s effort is achieving is giving life and a good platform for a good number of Jubilee aspirants as well as operatives to get to work and mobilize votes for themselves plus for the Azimio team. That is how you win elections.
Ruto and his crew have for a long time taken the Mt. Kenya vote as their personal property which is untouchable. Raila and his Azimio have made it clear they are going to contest those votes and win their share of the votes there. Nobody knows what that share will be but we know the Ruto noisemakers on Twitter are busy telling Kenyans that they have 90% of that vote.
The bigger issue that the Ruto paper tigers never talk about is the fact that he doesn’t just need 90% of Mt. Kenya votes cast on August 9, 2022, but he needs 90% of all the registered voters in that area.
Uhuru won the 2017 election by getting more than 4 million votes from that region and voter turnout was 80% of registered voters. Ruto needs all that and he won’t get it. To start with the voter turnout will not be that high in the region for obvious reasons.
Rigathi Gachagua in 2022 is not Uhuru Kenyatta in 2017. That should be pretty clear. Azimio’s presence in the region is unmistakable and it is getting better every day. When you see those crowds coming out you know they are getting ready to vote Azimio.
The first nightmare that William Ruto will have to deal with is the fact that he will not get the 80% voter turnout. The second problem for him is that whatever turn out is realized on August 9 2022 it will be shared between the two groups in the contest.
So let’s say to be generous that there is a 60% voter turnout in those areas. Even if William Ruto gets 100% of that turnout he would still be way behind the 4 million votes he needs from there. If 3 million voters show up for the ballot Ruto will be lucky to get 2 million of that vote while Raila and his team again to be very conservative would get 1 million.
If that happens Ruto is finished because he will need 2 million more votes from somewhere else to cover the deficit and if Raila and Azimio get 1 million votes there Ruto will need another 2 million to compensate for the Raila team getting votes which they never had before. That is a total of 4 million extra votes Ruto has to manufacture from somewhere.
Then you come to Nairobi where Uhuru got more than 900,000 votes in 2017and Raila had 700,000. A combined force of Raila and Uhuru in Nairobi with that fabulous team they have in the county could get close to 1.5 million votes or more. If that happens Ruto needs another 2 million votes to cover the deficit of Uhuru votes in 2017 in Nairobi going to Raila and his team.
So just between the Mt. Kenya region and Nairobi county Ruto could find himself short between 4-6 million votes which Uhuru had in 2017. Where does he go and get that vote? Nowhere because it does not exist.
The problem for William Ruto just in those two places is that Raila and Azimio will be taking what he assumed was already in his pocket so he doesn’t have to just replace what has been taken away from his pocket he has to double that to keep at par with his rivals.
There is nowhere to get that vote. Western which he ran to help with that problems is simply not working and Ruto knows Mudavadi will not give 70% of the vote from there. Coast is not working. But better not wake them up.
Ruto will realize pretty soon that running for the elections as Uhuru’s deputy in 2017 and running for himself with Gachagua as his deputy in 2022 are two completely different things. He is going to find that out the hard way.
Azimio settling on Martha Karua as Raila Odinga’s running mate was a work of pure genius for the team. It fell in step with everything Azimio stands for and wants to achieve for the country. It is going to work wonders for that team.
In the meantime, the main agenda for Ruto and his team is to slice up the country and its resources by the tribe. That is what the so-called Economic Forum is discussing.
Kenya Kwanza presidential candidate Rigathi Gachagua on Friday asked deputy president William Ruto to allocate a 50 percent share of his government to the Mt Kenya region in the event he wins the presidency.
Speaking in Embu on Friday during the county economic forum, Gachagua urged Mt Kenya people to invest their votes in Ruto so that they can be rewarded with a big share of the government.
“I am proposing an application for a 50 percent share of Ruto’s government,” Gachagua said.
“But applying for government shares is one thing and getting the share is another. For us to get a big share, we must vote in large numbers.”
The Mathira MP said since ANC Party leader Musalia Mudavadi and his Ford Kenya counterpart Moses Wetangula applied for a 30 percent share and are working towards achieving it, the Mt Kenya region should deliver many votes to raise their share.
So if Mudavadi gets 30% of government resources and Gachagua gets 50% and Alfred Mutua was already promised 20% what does the rest of the country get? Is this really the new Kenyan economic program Ruto wants for Kenya. What will the Kalenjins get when everything is already allocated. What will the people in the Coast counties get?
How about those dying from hunger and starvation in many parts of Northern Kenya? Do the Luos and Kisiis get anything?
Every Kenyan pays tax to the government starting from VAT which even the poorest pay whenever they buy anything. Everybody is entitled to resources unless Ruto and his team want to slice up the country into little pieces for each community to do their thing. Maybe we need 42 governments in Kenya if Ruto could have his way. It is just insane.
I would want to hear from Azimio about how they will use the 47 counties we have and the CDF money to help build development equity in the country. That is why Kenyans passed the 2010 constitution and brought in devolution so no area or community is left behind because politicians want to use public money only to reward their supporters.
Adongo Ogony is a Human Rights Activist and a Writer who lives in Toronto, Canada
