The on and off battle between Ruto and his team claiming that something called deep state is out to beat Ruto at the polls next year is getting louder by the day and is actually not very healthy for our politics.
Simply put Ruto and his squad are claiming that the election is going to be rigged by the state to favour his opponent, in this case, Raila Amolo Odinga.
That is a recipe for chaos that Kenyans just don’t want and will avoid by all means, but the fact that this kind of fear is being planted and fertilized rather vigorously by some politicians on the Ruto side is troubling and should be addressed.
This must be quite shocking to Raila. That the Kenya state apparatus is now going to make him our president to beat up on Ruto. What the heck did Ruto do to that state in which he serves as the Deputy President?
If someone wants to throw you out of your house, where you have both lived for a long time that is when all hell breaks loose, and you don’t want to know what is coming or going.
Did you poo in the house to deserve to be thrown out? If you did, can you take it back?
When a house is on fire, even the rats which usually dwell in the dark corners have to fight for dear life. So Ruto needs to comprehend this strange phenomenon.
The Kenyan state has spent more than four decades trying to make Raila just go away. He stubbornly has refused to do so but every time we have held elections in the last four rounds of elections where Raila was a candidate for the presidency, the determination to throw him out has been palpable.
For God’s sake, we even had one presidential election thrown out by the Supreme Court in December 2017 as being a fraud on Kenyans.
Raila has never been a friend of the so-called deep state.
Just yesterday when meeting Kenyan women in Nairobi, Raila narrated his story of being near death in Manyani Detention Prison and being saved by his wife Ida Odinga who smuggled medicine to him while in detention.
The hype on deep state went up a notch from Ruto and his busybodies after the recent jailbreak by convicted terrorists from Kamiti.
Ruto and his team upped the heat to get Matiang’i the Security CS and Karanja Kibicho the PS for internal affairs demanding that President Uhuru should fire those two senior officers and not just fire junior staff.
Ruto’s main sidekick Mr. Gachagua the Mathira MP had this to say in a rally with Ruto
Supporting the deputy president’s remarks, Mathira MP Rigathi Gachagua accused Matiang’i and Kibicho of engaging in politics instead of ensuring Kenyans were secure.
”Dr. Matiang’i and his PS are the ones who have let the President down on matters security and they should be relieved of their duties. There is no need to sack junior officers as this will not resolve problems facing Interior Ministry.”
Read: How do we end Grand Theft by politicians in Kenya?
A few days ago Ruto and his team wanted Matiang’i and Kibicho removed from office because Matiang’i was in a rally with Raila in Kisii and both Karanja Kibicho and Matiangi are in some form of a task force to oversee security in elections.
So this chicken game is going to go up as the election date draws nearer.
In Kenya, every time there is a transition from one government to the next we have always had these problems.
We had the problem in 1978 as we transitioned from the Jomo Kenyatta era to Moi’s. It was very tense and in those days it was a one-man state and since that man was lying down having passed away.
So the busy bodies went crazy but the man with the biggest gun, in fact, a nuke weapon, in that transition was the then Attorney General Charles Njonjo.
He had lined up all the big boys in the army, in the police force, in the Intelligence system, and of course, the provincial commissioners to go with his plan. Njonjo had the first and the final word on the matter and it was done according to his wishes.
Moi had to sit back, relax, and then fuata Nyayo as told. Case closed. Those were the good simple old days. They are gone.
In the Moi transition to Kibaki, the same Raila turned tables on everybody when he declared “Kibaki Tosha”
The terrible accident on Kibaki in the middle of the campaign could have ruined all the plans of the opposition to dismantle the Moi apparatus but Raila had different plans and went to every corner of the country to ensure that Moi was gone and Mwai Kibaki would be our next president even if he had to be sworn in a wheelchair.
Every transition we have had in our country since 1978 has been with a very specific agenda and that is what determines how the transition process will go and who has a better chance of winning.
1978 transition was about dealing with tribalism. The Gikuyu communities were concerned about any hostility towards them because of Mzee Kenyatta’s mistakes or even what was perceived to have been issues with him.
The Moi transition in 2002 was about freeing our nation from the tyranny of a one-party dictatorship that had caused so much damage.
As student activists and leaders, we were being shot in the streets. We were constantly in jail at Nairobi Industrial Area Remand Prison (INDA), Kamiti, Kibos prison (one of the nastiest).
The country lost a lot of people, mainly young people in the war to get rid of Moi and his one-party dictatorship which lasted 24 years.
So the Moi transition was to end a one-party dictatorship and the country achieved that against all odds.
The transition from Kibaki to Uhuru and Ruto was about the Post Election Violence 2007/8 and the ICC cases.
Nothing else really mattered in that transition and it worked until 2018 when Uhuru wanted to put the bitterness and confrontations after 2017/18 elections behind the country.
The transition from Uhuru in 2022 is a completely different ball game.
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This is going to be the big transition to put an end to our politicians robbing the country every day and behaving like that is part of the work they were elected to do.
The transition we are already going through and which will culminate in the 2022 General Elections is to end the theft of our public money by political leaders who promise Kenyans the moon while robbing them without blinking an eye.
Ruto says he will put Kshs 100 billion to provide jobs for youth. Great, but how are you going to do that when more of that Kshs 100 billion allocated to provide dams for Kenyans is stolen in cold blood, and nobody including the Deputy President even cares about it, in fact, they defend the theft saying only some Kshs. 7 billion was stolen.
Raila and Ruto have to inhale one fact very seriously. The General Election next year will be about killing corruption in Kenya completely.
You can come with all your million shilling plans but if we can’t end corruption and if you have no such plan, then everything else you are telling us is pure nonsense.
First, we must have the money before we can spend it to develop the country.
We want to recover all the big money being held in corruption cases that never end because everybody including the judiciary is in the thieving bag with the politicians. We have grand theft cases like the NYS money which were started in 2014 and are still in court.
The close to Kshs. 120 billion stolen from the dams construction money is still missing and the suspects are resting peacefully, safe in the knowledge that their cases will never be resolved in the Kenya courts.
In fact, now those suspects are praying that their godfathers win the next election so that the cases against them can be withdrawn and they can get back into their jobs of robbing the country.
Both Raila Amolo Odinga and William Ruto must put clearly before Kenyans their executable plans to end the theft of our money by politicians and their appointees. None of that other stuff matters before we do that.
The only deep state we should worry about in Kenya is the deep state that is going to do everything to protect corruption and the thieves who thrive in it.
Those thieves are not going to give up easily and right now they are navigating the landscape to see where to put their money.
Kenyans must meet them under every tree they try to hide to keep milking and destroying our country.
Kenyans must go after these people and we have the best opportunity to do that this election.
Adongo Ogony is a Human Rights Activist and a Writer who lives in Toronto, Canada
