It's Ruto who loses every time he trades insults with his former deputy

There is a special kind of genius in what Rigathi Gachagua has been doing these past months. It requires no budget, no manifesto, no serious policy proposal, and no office. All it requires is a mouth, a microphone, and opponents unguarded enough to keep responding. Gachagua has all three, and he has been exploiting that equation with the unsuppressed glee of a man who has discovered he can run the country from the outside, without any of the accompanying responsibilities.

The basic formula, as I noted in this column recently, is simple. Poke, prod, needle, and make a general nuisance of yourself until the other fellow forgets he is supposed to be governing and descends into the alley to trade blows with you. It worked on Deputy President Kithure Kindiki, a man of considerable academic distinction who keeps appearing at the mud-wrestling arena. Now, astonishingly, it is working on President William Ruto himself.

During what was billed as a development tour of western last week, Ruto was pushed to deride what he called a brainless opposition. He mocked one politician for eating too much, saying his head was growing fat, and accused another of disinheriting his brother’s widow.

This is the achievement of a man who no longer holds any office whatsoever. Without a motorcade, a budget line, or so much as a government letterhead, Gachagua has successfully pulled a sitting President and his deputy into a public altercation about body weight and family inheritance. If this is not an extraordinary political feat, I do not know what is. Someone should give the man a certificate.

The tragedy, however, is that it is the presidency that pays the price. Every time Dr Ruto deploys profanity at a market function, Gachagua wins. Every time Prof Kindiki issues a press statement rebutting claims from a man who officially ceased to matter in October 2023, Gachagua wins. The former deputy president has, with zero institutional resources, constructed a media presence so dominant that the two most powerful men in Kenya cannot stop talking about him. He is essentially living rent-free in State House and Harambee House simultaneously.

When Winston Churchill was goaded into petty exchanges during the war years, his advisers reminded him that fire in rhetoric must be controlled fire. Closer to our time, Nelson Mandela walked out of 27 years of imprisonment and, facing men who had wronged him enormously, chose magnanimity over mud. That choice made him presidential. The alternative would have made him unremarkable.

Across the waters, Donald Trump’s well-documented habit of engaging every critic on social media, from journalists to former advisers to random private citizens, undermines the dignity of his office even among his own supporters. There is a reason presidential communications teams exist; to prevent leaders from becoming their own worst enemies. Ruto, it appears, has temporarily suspended his. 

Former Interior CS Fred Matiang’i  has joined the chorus of voices needling the current government. That Ruto’s administration is now expending oxygen addressing a minister from a previous dispensation tells you everything about how successfully Gachagua has widened the battlefield. The man has recruited allies across political generations and is running what amounts to a government-in-waiting press office, without the government.

Gachagua has no office to lose, which is his greatest strength. He can say anything, and the cost is zero. Ruto has everything to lose, and the cost is measured in governance hours squandered, in presidential stature eroded, and in the growing suspicion among ordinary Kenyans that their government is more interested in defeating the past than building the future.

Ruto should rise above this, not because Gachagua does not deserve a response, but because the presidency is too valuable to be deployed as a comeback vehicle. Mr President, govern. Build the roads, and fix hospitals. The rest is noise; entertaining, admittedly, but noise all the same. After all, when the history of this era is written, nobody will remember who won the insult exchange at Chwele market.