Ruto and Raila ignoring Gen Z demands, but it won't be easy

Kenya’s political top brass is living in simulated reality. Both President William Ruto and ODM leader, Raila Odinga, seem out of touch with the redefining reality the country is experiencing.

Are they stuck in the illusive relic of ethnic political brinkmanship and tribe-based election campaign machines? Do they only see their country in the imagery of a carcase for eager tribal hounds?  

The wily self-serving drama around the Cabinet is telling. It is naïve to expect sensible people to believe that Ruto and Odinga have not discussed power sharing in “a broad-based government.” Four top ODM honchos cannot accept Cabinet positions without the party’s blessings.

The party, we have often heard, is Baba (Odinga), and Baba is the party. The factors behind this façade are multiple and simple.

First, ODM wants to be in Cabinet without bearing responsibility for any potential failures in the new government. Secretary General, Edwin Sifuna, has disowned the nominees; Hassan Joho, Wycliffe Oparanya, John Mbadi and Opiyo Wandayi. But this is as hollow as it gets.

Sifuna is a commissioned sounding board. He has been sent. There have been similar dramas by Embakasi East MP, Babu Owino, and Saboti’s Caleb Amisi, among others. It is shocking that a politician could sit so well with his conscience, while gabbling things he knows to be untrue. However, the objective is simple. If things fail, as they may well do, “ODM was never a party to them.” But it’s also intended to evade a Gen-Z backlash. 

ODM leaders also want to style themselves as the Parliamentary Minority, now that Azimio is dying. This way, they will grab all Minority party parliamentary leadership positions. They will have their cake and eat it, too. Through the Cabinet, they will know what is happening, without sharing in collective responsibility. Outside Cabinet, they will robustly demonise the Ruto government. 

It is a wicked kind of cleverness that seeks to outwit Ruto, Kenya Kwanza, ODM’s former colleagues in Azimio, Gen-Z, and Kenyans at large. But President Ruto asked for it. If these machinations only outwitted him alone, they would not be so wicked. For, the president has, on his part, also embraced ODM with the intent to outwit them.

He equally targets Gen-Zs, some of his former friends in Kenya Kwanza, and Kenyans at large. Hence, he has allocated to ODM the problematic portfolios that poured Gen-Z protests into the streets. If, especially, the triad of finance, cost of fuel, and Hustler Fund does not work, he will balme ODM. 

Ruto comes across as a clever non-reformist reformer. He gives with one hand and takes away with the other. What he gives to ODM in Cabinet, he takes away by waiting for them to fail and face angry Kenyans. And what he gives to Kenyans and Gen-Zs by dismissing all his ministers, he takes away by giving the country a reconditioned Cabinet.

It is a Cabinet full of second hand spare parts, a government of modified old items. This nifty political sleight of hand is driven by a self-serving intent. It gives an illusory optic of reform. The message to Gen-Z and Kenya is this, “You asked for a new Cabinet. I have given it to you. What else do you want?” But it’s only an optic, some would even say an intentionally false one.

But what are the other goals embedded in this artifice? First is retention and protection of the established social and economic order. It is a patrimonial order. It allows the political top brass to gluttonise the nation with zero accountability.

Meanwhile, everything Gen-Zs have protested against will continue as before, provided that they believe reforms are happening. Next is the need to minimise war fronts. Gen-Zs have rocked the establishment. You don’t want many fights in your hands in face of such mercurial youth. If you could get the ODM fraternity to believe that they are now part of a reformed government, you could focus on crushing the Gen-Z menace. 

Finally, is focus on 2027 elections, through a rebirth of the 2007 ODM ethnic blocs, and better still the original ODM-K. This is if Kalonzo Musyoka will agree to be AG. If the 2007 ODM is rebuilt, the slippery Mt Kenya vote and its difficult shareholder demands can take a walk.

In all these things, however, UDA and ODM fail to address Gen-Z concerns about a better Kenya. Accordingly, getting these youth out of the streets may be trickier than the political optical illusions promise. As President Ruto himself used to say, there are no more fools in Kenya.

 -Dr Muluka is a strategic communications adviser.