As Raila and Ruto bond, Kenyans should prepare for a rough ride ahead

In contracting Kenya’s latest political marriage with President William Ruto, Raila Odinga of ODM is travelling on a familiar path. He has been in this space three times before. He previously journeyed on this road, one time each, with Presidents Moi, Mwai Kibaki, and Uhuru Kenyatta. Now, as in all the previous three unions, “national good” has been given as the driving force.

The taste of this pie, however, will be in the unfolding of history. They say in Swahili that you are not yet made, until the day you leave this world. Will this tango make or unmake Raila Odinga?

Raila is the mercurial political acrobat who has dominated Kenya’s political landscape through four successive regimes. His meddling with Ruto will probably lift him to greater heights. But, conversely, this tango could bring him tumbling down. While it could lift him to the highest office that has eluded him and his family ever since his father Jaramogi Oginga Odinga began yearning for it in 1965, it could also destroy his legacy as a democrat. 

During the 2022 election campaigns, Ruto poured unrestrained scorn and vitriol on the cooperation between Uhuru and Raila. He derogatorily termed it a mongrel, whenever he got the opportunity. But the same Ruto, who vowed never to entertain such “mongrel drama” has now walked Kenya into a mongrel of his own. What are the drivers, and where do the two leaders want to take Kenya? Are there bigger dreams beyond political self-preservation?

Wiper leader Kalonzo Musyoka has termed the factors behind the emerged  Raila-Ruto Alliance a betrayal.

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How will Raila manage the damage of this optic? Much depends on how well he plays any secret cards he may have. If he has none, he should beware the wrath of the people. Kenyans are not happy with the Kenya Kwanza government. Even some of the most fervent supporters in the past accept that it has disappointed the nation. It is easily the most unpopular regime in the nation’s history. Raila will do well never to forget that for a moment. For he is now seen to be a part of it, possibly a traitor of sorts, as Kalonzo says.

It is, however, perhaps too early to define this alliance in definitive terms. History must be allowed to have its course, as in all such cases. Yet the fundamental questions will not change. What is this alliance about? What are the drivers, beyond those that have been professed? Are Raila and Ruto engaged in a broad-based people people-focused tango, or is it a broad-based, anti-people conspiracy? Is Raila a liberator, or is he a happy-go-lucky political opportunist? Is he a democrat, or is he a slave owner, under a thin veneer? Is he a Dr Jekyll, or a Mister Hyde?

Raila got into a post-election cooperation pact with President Daniel Arap Moi in 1998 and in March 2002 elevated the cooperation into a merger between his National Development Party (NDP) and Moi’s Kanu. And in the wake of Kenya’s most violent and bloody post-election crisis, he was persuaded to enter a grand coalition government with President Kibaki in April 2008, becoming in the process Kenya’s second Prime Minister, after Jomo Kenyatta in 1963–64. Both alliances ended up on sour notes. Will that happen again? 

On March 9, 2018, in the middle of another crisis, Raila took everyone by surprise when, together with President Kenyatta, they announced that they would work together for the good of the country. The nation was then in the middle of yet another violent post-election crisis, in which Raila had flatly refused to recognize Uhuru’s re-election to a second term. The two leaders emerged from the President’s Harambee Avenue office to declare to the nation and the world that their bad blood season was over. They remained together up to the 2022 election, where President Uhuru declared Raila his leader and presidential candidate. 

The first public signs of things to come in the latest pact began in the wake of Kenya’s  Generation Z’s protests against the health of the nation. Shocked out of their wits by a snowballing uprising that threatened to annihilate the traditional political order, the two leaders swiftly coalesced in a move that Raila was initially shy to admit being party to. But they are now in the open, with a signed pact to boot. The true tasting of the pudding that is the much-touted public good now begins in earnest. But does it seem to begin on a false note? The democratic credentials of the two leaders are in question, even as they profess the need for expanded democratic space and civil liberties as one of the pillars of their pact. 

It is instructive that Raila and Ruto mounted a harsh purge on Parliament’s leadership, ahead of the signing of their accord in Kenyatta International Convention Centre. Leaders seen to be independent minded, or leaning towards impeached former DP Rigathi Gachagua, or both, were either “demoted,” or altogether removed from committees in Parliament. The two leaders are sending out a clear message. They will not tolerate dissent. Everyone must toe the line, or quit. If they will not quit, they will be shown the road, anyway. This is a problem.

Their intended cooperation is loaded with contradictions between reality and intent. That Ruto and Raila have taken Parliament hostage is not in question. The National Assembly’s Leader of the Majority, Kimani Ichung’wah, and the Minority Leader, Junet Mohamed, speak antiphonally, like identical twins, as they tear into the Controller of Budget and the Auditor General. One begins a thought process, the other one completes it for him. The deputy speaker, Gladys Shollei, ties up whatever loose ends they leave behind. And it is all about hostility to freedom of expression. They demonize independent State officers who, in line of duty, raise issues about corruption and wastage. They demonize the Media, too. 

The Auditor General, Nancy Gathungu, and the Controller of Budget, Margaret Nyakang’o,  have this week made mind-boggling disclosures that run into hundreds of billions of shillings, either splurged, or otherwise spent in ways that point to malfeasance. The role of Parliament is to investigate further into the reports once presented to Parliament, and to Kenyans. Instead, they are parodied and berated.  They are accused of “corruption” and “ethnic bias”. The intent, it would appear, is to send a signal to the rest of the Members of Parliament on the direction that debate on the reports should take.

Only a day after Nyakang’o and Gathungu have been bashed into pulp in Parliament, Ruto and Odinga issue a memorandum in which, first, they admit that they lead the two most populous parties in Parliament. They report to the country that they recognize that “the nation will not develop without reinforcing democratic governance and the rule of law.” Discerning citizens will be asking how “democratic governance and the rule of law” will be achieved, when President Ruto and Raila Odinga cannot allow Parliament to breathe; to do its business without coercion. Indeed, how will “the rule of law” take traction when reports by independent State officers only earn them ridicule, intimidation and bashing by the topmost leaders of Parliament? 

Going forward, how much freedom MPs enjoy in performance of their legislative and oversight responsibilities will be among the foremost marks of the sincerity in the pact that Ruto and Raila have entered. The two leaders must walk the talk when they say, as they have done under paragraph (viii) of their memorandum, “Kenya needs to move from talk to action. We must move from the war against corruption to winning the war against corruption. We must enhance the capacity of the institutions that enforce accountability, and particularly the offices of the Auditor General, the Controller of Budget, and the Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission.”

That they will allow this to happen is hugely questionable. President Ruto is increasingly visibly angry whenever questions are raised about his failed pet project in healthcare. That SHA is not working is no longer in question. Everyone, including the Cabinet Secretary in charge and the Prime Cabinet Secretary, have stated clearly that it isn’t. But the CS has also told Parliament that public funds would appear to have gotten lost through SHA. The President has placed himself in the firing line when he dismisses procurement and ownership questions that have been so lucidly elaborated on the Sh104 billion healthcare system. The number of healthcare workers, and their training, has also been fingered. It is not viable that the President can talk of fighting corruption while angrily dismissing the auditor offhand. 

SHA and SHIF could be the biggest fraudulence scandal yet in Kenya’s health history. The SHA story will feature prominently on the public barometer that will be monitoring the cooperation between the ODM and UDA leaders. Gathungu states categorically that her audit report is factual and above board. She reports that the SHA system was procured illegally and that Sh10 billion is siphoned through this system that lacks clear governance structures and no risk management framework every month. There are numerous unlawful and ineffective issues. 

In a nutshell, Raila Odinga has waded his way into what was characterized as a skunk by his former national chairman in ODM, John Mbadi, now CS in charge of the National Treasury. There is a Swahili saying that rot cannot be deodorized. Pro-Raila bloggers have been saying that if the rot in the Kenyan State should rub on to Raila and ODM, they will probably cry in 2027. But they are swift to cynically add that they will not borrow anyone’s tears. They have enough of their own, and more to spare. 

And so, is Raila Odinga going to emerge from this pact as Dr Jekyll, or as Mr Hyde? Psychologists have often told us that there is Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde in every person. They borrow from R. L Stevenson’s 1886 world-famous novel, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mister Hyde. The doctor is externally a man of rectitude. He has character and high moral standing in society. Yet there is a very dark side to him, unknown to the public. 

Two contradictory characters cohabit this individual, to the extent that depending on where you meet him, you will not recognize him as the same person you saw elsewhere. Raila Odinga as Dr Jekyll characterizes himself as a democrat. The very party he leads has styled itself as a democratic movement, at least by the name its known. He is associated with what the political class calls “the second liberation,” through restoration of multiparty democracy in December 1991, and with the fight for the Constitution of Kenya (2010). But is Raila also associated with political dominance and intolerance, especially in Luo Nyanza? 

Does he rule Luoland with an iron fist? Is the political class around him in love with Dr Jekyll, or does it not habour pathological fear of Mr Hyde? Niccolò Machiavelli has told the princes of this world that it is better to be feared than loved. Fear and love can both be tools of control. Ideally, a leader ought to have a bit of either. But if you are not able to achieve this, Machiavelli says to the prince, then let people fear you. They will throng around you, praise you and obey you, not so much because they love you, but because they are afraid of you.  

Even as he went to various parts of the country “to consult widely” before signing the pact with Ruto, Raila could not spare those who think differently. One of the clips doing the rounds in social media has him speaking through the teeth, in Dholuo, in repressed anger.

Together with William Ruto, the pair has an insurmountable capacity to put together a political system that can bulldoze its way to whatever destination it desires.

As President Ruto and Raila Odinga talk about unity in the unfolding environment in Kenya, we are reminded of another effort at unity in Europe in the 19th Century. Otto Von Bismarck was the Prussian (later German) Minister President (later Chancellor). King Wilhelm I of Prussia charged him with the responsibility of unification of Germanic territories into one German nation. But Bismarck had a challenge in getting his way through Parliament.

In September 1862, Parliament refused his request for an increase in military spending. Bismarck told Parliament, on September 30, “The great questions of the day shall be resolved not by speeches and decisions of the majority, but by iron and blood.”

Again, what is the alliance between Raila and Ruto about? What is driving it?  Are the two gentlemen seeking a beneficent people-focused tango, or is it a broad-based anti-people conspiracy? Is Raila a liberator, or is he a happy-go-lucky political opportunist? Is he a democrat, or is he a slave owner under a thin veneer? Is he a Dr Jekyll, or a Mister Hyde? If we are looking for a single barometer that will give us answers, that barometer is Parliament.

For the present, Ruto and Raila have had a false start. They say that when two elephants are at war, the grass will suffer. But the grass suffers just as much when elephants are in love. Kimani Ichungw’ah, Junet Mohamed, and Gladys Shollei have pointed out the way to things to come. Their invective against the Auditor General, the Controller of Budget, and the Media, on Thursday last week, was an inoculation against what Kenyans should expect.

The National Dialogue Committee (NADCO) Report is coming up for enactment in Parliament. The legislators are not expected to change even a comma. It should not surprise us that the owners will attempt to change the architecture and design of the government without taking it to Kenyans for a referendum. But if they do, they are likely to want to bulldoze it through the process. This is the meaning of this new pact. It is about ruthless acquisition and exercise of power, and enjoyment of the benefits thereof. Those who stand in the way are likely to do so at their own peril and risk. Opposition in Parliament and outside, civil society, the Media, the Judiciary, the religious fraternity, the academy, bloggers, Gen-Z and millennials, and all ye lovers of free space, beware. The new gospel train is coming, we can hear it just at hand, rumbling on the rail, rolling through the land. 

Dr Muluka is an expert on politics and international relations