Smoke, daggers, and secrets: What Ruto's graft war on MPs reveals

President William Ruto has opened a Pandora’s box. The driving energy remains a big puzzle. Only time will tell if Kenya’s Number One has experienced an anti-corruption brainwave, or if his successive tirades against the legislature have a hidden agenda. Is he talking about genuine reform, or has he hatched a sinister plot against some undisclosed individual, or individuals, who must fall? 

The 32nd American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) famously said that there are no accidents in politics. The towering global statesman who saved Europe from Hitler in the Second World War believed firmly that political happenings are planned to unfold as they do. Barring the occasional diversionary hand of fate, this truism is valid in politics everywhere.

Hence, Ruto, a career politician of 34 years standing, knows what he is up to as he draws out his dagger and charges towards Parliament. 

He knows that Parliament can send him home in a day, should the members want to. Is he unhappy with the leadership of Parliament? Is he about to throw Kimani Ichung’wah, and the lot, under the bus? During the Uhuru Kenyatta regime, Parliamentary leadership learned that it reigns at the will of the big boss.

Ruto’s Health Cabinet Secretary, Aden Duale, remembers the advice that he received from the then Minority Leader in the National Assembly, Junet Mohamed. You must always behave as if you are someone’s cow, or face the high road to oblivion. 

Is Ruto after Ichung’wah? Eight weeks ago, on primetime national television, this writer cautioned Ichung’wah that the Hustler Revolution was about to eat him. It had just eaten nominated Senator, Gloria Orwoba.

It was trying to swallow Embu Governor Cecily Mbarire. “Tell Kimani Ichung’wah that the revolution will eat him,” he was told. It would seem that the time is not far. But even if it is not Ichung’wah, the purge appears to be on.

Speculation is rife that National Assembly Speaker, Moses Wetang’ula, could also be on the chopping board for refusing to fold his Ford Kenya Party, when President Ruto demanded that he should do so. His Western Kenyan compatriot Musalia Mudavadi, heeded the call. He folded ANC and is understood to be Ruto’s blue-eyed boy in the region.

Senate Speaker Amason Kingi could also be hit, basically because the jumping of Raila Odinga and the ODM coterie onto the Ruto bandwagon has quashed his political capital. The two Speakers’ seats are lucrative for horse trading in the unfolding arena.

Thorough shakeup

A thorough shakeup in Parliament’s leadership appears to be Ruto’s most promising, but equally precarious route to putting together his new team for 2027. The thinking is that Wetang’ula, Kingi, Ichung’wah and a handful of others must go. War against corruption is the most potent weapon to use against them, even if it only serves the purpose of removing them. 

Ruto has begun with a vague war cry. President Moi did the same with Charles Njonjo. He began with the famous roadside pronouncement that foreigners were grooming a traitor to take over from him. Njonjo was then the Minister for Constitutional Affairs in the first. In a matter of weeks, Njonjo was named as the traitor. Shortly afterwards, he had fallen from grace to grass. 

A few years later, the same fate befell the fifth vice president, Dr Josephat Karanja. Moi’s acolytes suddenly levelled accusations against him that he was forcing them to kneel before him. In recent times, Kenyans have witnessed the fall of Rigathi Gachagua from the regal perch of deputy president, to an itinerant oppositionist. It would appear that someone else is about to roll.  

For two weeks running, Ruto has waged a caustic verbal attack against Parliament on what he says is war against corruption. He accuses MPs of abuse of the National Government Constituency Development Fund (NGCDF), and extorting cash for parliamentary work.

He says that MPs have made Parliament a milch cow and an auction market. The honourable men and women that civil society has styled as pigs, under the sobriquet of m-pigs, the President says, now make decisions purely based on the highest bidder. They are the proverbial pipers who play the tune that the highest bidder pays. 

Ruto has vowed not only to end this, but also to jail the culprits. The two houses of Parliament are not amused. They are giving just as much vitriol as they receive in the high-level mudsling. Accordingly, for the first time since Ruto came to power, Kenyans are witnessing something close to the separation that should divide the Legislature from the Executive. Yet it also comes with embarrassing confessions. Parliament looks like a thirty-pieces-of-silver entity that serves not the citizens, but the Presidency. 

Pronouncements from the floor confirm what Kenyans have known all along. Ruto’s State House has taken Parliament hostage, Kenyans are on their own.  But can Parliament now be counted upon to hold its own? Can Members, going forward, honour their oath of office in exercise of the triple mandate of oversight, representation and legislation?

Or, will they be satisfied to raise the stakes, brandish the iron fist at the Presidency, and return to their comforts as pampered State mascots?

Speakers Wetang’ula and Kingi this week led the chorus rebukes and reprovals against the Executive. They gave the cue to an agitated fraternity to go for the presidential jugular. MPs have not just criticised the President. They have threatened to summon him to Parliament. They want him to substantiate his claims against Parliament. Not one to be put down easily, however, Ruto swiftly called their bluff. Against the angry tide, he hurriedly put together a multi-sectoral “whole-government” task force to investigate corruption in the August House. It was mandated to help bring to book corrupt legislators. Yet, the Judiciary, another entity that Ruto repeatedly accuses of corruption, scuttled the effort within hours of the announcement.

What is happening here? Is President Ruto genuinely striking a blow for Kenyans against ethical depravity in the Legislature? The school of thought that Ruto is strategically targeting specific individuals believes that such individuals may not be the kind of people to be taken on frontally. They may even be persons who have so far been very close to the President. However, political expediency dictates that they must now be mauled. Hence, Ruto has adopted the proverbial hyena style, where Mother hyena accuses the target offspring of smelling like a goat. The goat-smell kid must be eaten alive. The king’s faithful attack dog must be given a bad name before being buried. 

Dry bones and glass house 

But why now? Even more significantly, why throw open the Pandora box when all pointers are that State House should trade cautiously on matters of corruption? They say in Africa that the old woman gets jittery whenever dry bones are mentioned in a proverb. In other cultures, they caution against throwing stones in a glass house. Why is the dry-boned resident of the glass house on the hill throwing stones? Has President Ruto forgotten that Raila Odinga, now a bosom political crony, long christened him “the high priest of corruption?” 

Addressing the Law Society of Kenya Annual Conference in Kwale in August 2016, Odinga stated, “This new gospel (of corruption) has powerful, energetic and monied priests... they preach to the youth in schools and churches, and markets, that it is what you have, and not how you got it, that matters. They preach that success is measured in riches and it comes not from hard work, but from cutting corners, deals, cheating, and stealing from fellow citizens, and from the government; the hustler culture! ...and when I talk of the high priest of corruption, you know whom I am talking about.”  

Odinga’s inference of “the hustler culture” left no doubt about whom he was talking. And throughout the 2022 presidential election campaign, he took on Ruto frontally in the anti-corruption thematic thrust. He returned repeatedly to the refrain of “the hustler and corruption.” Eventually, he dropped the “corruption” tag. He threw away the gloves and began talking about people whom he called “thieves,” in a bare-knuckle engagement against Ruto.

The entire Azimio La Umoja One Kenya Alliance brigade came in tow. Charity Ngilu reported that she could not stand watching Ruto on television. “I switch off my TV any time this (adjective-deleted) character comes on,” Ngilu told a charged rally, whose theme was “the war against corruption”.

Whatever their present amity may mean, Odinga and his troops have previously solidly planted Ruto in the Kenyan psyche as the one individual who cannot be counted upon to fight corruption. And as if he wanted to tell them to jump into the sea, Ruto’s new government began dismantling anti-corruption cases that were before the courts, as soon as he took over in State House. It was freedom time for his cronies who were facing various corruption matters before the courts. 

Reprieve for culprits

Against former Malindi MP and 2022 Kilifi County governor UDA candidate, Aisha Jumwa, reprieve came against a Sh19 million case, over funds ostensibly stolen from the Malindi Constituency CDF. Separately, an economic crime case of Sh84.6 million against Moses Lenolkulal, also a Ruto acolyte from Samburu County, was withdrawn. Lenolkulal had just been nominated for a Principal Secretary position in the brand new Ruto government. He did not seem to care what optics these reprieves were generating. 

So, too, was the optic given when an alleged rape case against Mithika Linturi, who went on to become the Cabinet Secretary for Agriculture, was withdrawn without any convincing reason. Even as the Opposition cried foul, Ruto looked on with a jaundiced eye. More withdrawals followed. Ben Chumo and Ken Tarus escaped the snare in a procurement case before the courts. 

When the President waves the iron fist, he evokes memories of matters people have had serious doubts about. Regardless of their validity, or lack thereof, he makes Kenyans wish that he would arrive in this anti-corruption arena with clean hands. This is what MPs have been saying this past week. Ugenya MP and Party Leader of the Movement for Democracy and Growth (MDG), David Ochieng, regretted that, under President Ruto, Parliament has been arm-twisted into doing “dirty work” for the Executive. Other MPs chimed in to lament that, last year, when Ruto wanted them to pass an impugned Finance Bill, they delivered. They also delivered the Gachagua impeachment. 

It turns out that the impeachment was not necessarily because MPs believed in the accusations against the man. Ruto wanted him to go. He needed the two houses of Parliament to do this for him. Willy-nilly, they obliged. The MPs have come short of admitting that they received funds from the Executive, for these jobs. In quiet, however, some speak of night phone calls that President Ruto personally makes to them whenever a matter must sail through Parliament. It is not enough that he has the Leader of the Majority, or the Whip. When something must be done, he will take charge. His props are many. According to MPs who spoke to this writer, the artillery includes persuasion, blackmail and intimidation and, of course, inducement. The question is being asked, therefore, why is an Executive that is complicit in impropriety in Parliament, now standing on holy ground, claiming to fight corruption.

Fair game

Has President Ruto found a eureka moment? Or, is he the beneficiary of  a spiritual reawakening? If it is not either, could something sinister be afoot in Kenya’s ever murky political waters? The axe could be about to descend. Wetang’ula, Kingi, and ichung’wa are all fair game

What is Ruto’s endgame? It is instructive that he has tagged along his buddy, Odinga, to all the arenas where he has bedraggled Parliament through muddy invective. Odinga has footnoted his uncomplimentary remarks with accusations of his own. Curiously, he has questioned the wider relevance of the Senate, and publicly doubted its legitimacy in oversight over governors, a matter that is clearly etched in the Constitution. Also on the cards for doubt is the continued relevance of NGCDF. 

Ruto and Odinga are certainly up to something big. They appear to be giving up on the Mt Kenya vote. They look set to try to rebuild their 2007 West Kenya formation. Under the broad brush of corruption in Parliament, they could purge Parliament of leaders from the Mountain and other empty bags.

They will trade local West Kenya political horses and let the marbles roll, to settle wherever they may. In the process, they would change the Constitution through NADCO and their Ten-Point Agenda, in a precarious rollercoaster to 2027.