Raila's Addis setback, a political turning point for both opposition and government

What’s more, Ruto has in this season made strong forays into the Opposition. He now conducts a political praise and worship choir from what were in 2022 and 2023 some of his most eager critics. Among such voices are counted the Minority leaders in the National Assembly, as well as individuals he has appointed to what he has christened “a broad-based government.” 

There are no legal instruments in Kenya, however, for an entity called “a broad-based government.” Coalitions are, for their part, contemplated by the law. The mechanisms for creating them are clearly laid out in the Constitution of Kenya (2010) and in statutory law. President Ruto’s “broad-based government” has no foundation in law and its existence is one more example of defiance of Kenya’s constitutional order.

Its very existence epitomises, in part, what disappoints Raila’s traditional strong support base. It speaks to the impunity that has ruled the Kenyan nation during the unofficial marriage between Ruto’s UDA and Raila’s ODM. His followers have evidently indicated that they would like him to quit this informal marriage and begin righting things from where they began going wrong. The national Executive is wary of such a possibility. 

It is all about Raila mania and Raila phobia, as Michael Kijana Wamalwa famously put it. The late Vice President and MP for Saboti Constituency summed up Raila as a man who was at once loved and feared. Those who loved him cherished him to a fault, while those who feared him detested him without reservation. It is in this context that his Addis odyssey and the aftermath is best appreciated – Raila mania and Raila phobia. 

Raila mania and phobia

Raila mania speaks to love for a fearless self-sacrificing individual who has dodged live police bullets fired at his car during public demos. He has returned time and again, to face similar bullets in subsequent demos. This man walks towards bullets, leading his battalions literally from the frontline, where others would not even contemplate walking towards police teargas.

But Raila mania also speaks to a people’s love for the one individual who has kept four successive regimes on their toes. From President Moi to Ruto, through Mwai Kibaki and Uhuru Kenyatta, Raila has given Kenyan presidents sleepless nights that have forced them to seek truces with him. 

He can never be wrong, they say. When he says “Let us march,” they surge forward at once. They don’t ask where to, or why. When he orders them to fire, they will shoot from slings and throw stones at everyone and everything in sight. They call him Baba, and believe he is the true father of the nation. Although he has run for the office of president and lost five times, to this club he has never lost. His victory has only been stolen. He tells them whom to vote for, even in their own villages, and when to boycott elections. If he tells them to turn up in Uhuru Park to witness him swearing himself in as the people’s president, they will show up in dozens of thousands, no matter what hazards lie ahead. Such is Raila mania.  

It is this mania that welcomes back to Kenya a wounded but unbowed political operative who has been called an enigma. His fan club wants to get over the Addis debacle in the shortest time possible, to return to the business of calling the Ruto government back to order. There was, however, evident fear in their messaging on TV the day the election in Addis was lost. This was the fear that Raila might elect to continue cooperating with President Ruto in the confusing broad-based deal. They don’t want Ruto to manage their man. 

For the same reasons that Raila’s support base wants him back in the fray, his detractors have wanted him to be as far away from home as possible. Ruto will be cracking his head, exploring the possibility of how best to keep Raila busy outside the country. It was behind such a goal that the very idea of sponsoring him for the AUC chair arose in the first place. During a lull in the 2023 Azimio mass protests against the cost of living, bad governance and perceived stolen 2022 elections, Raila suddenly materialised from his house, with retired Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo in tow, to announce that he was going to seek election to the office of AUC chair.  

To do this, he needed to be proposed and sponsored by the Ruto government. How was this going to be possible, in the face of the mutual hostility that existed between the two leaders? This was where President Obasanjo came in. He was the arbiter who persuaded Raila to drop mass action and grope, instead, for working space with President Ruto. Ruto would get him into the African Union in a senior role. 

The deal

The AUC chair was falling vacant in about two years’ time. The Kenya Government would set up a campaign secretariat for Raila and foot the bill all the way. Raila would nominate his own people to work with Ruto’s team in the foreign affairs and diaspora office. They would traverse the continent on missions to persuade African Heads of State and government to give the AUC chair to Raila. Ruto, too, would directly canvas for him with his peers on the continent. But leading the whole effort would be the prime cabinet secretary and foreign and diaspora affairs CS, Musalia Mudavadi. 

Raila accepted the deal. He dropped active street protests. He thawed into Ruto’s comrade-at-arms. He became Ruto’s apologist in some very unlikely scenarios, such as in the disgraced Adani deal, in which Kenya has probably already lost billions of shillings. He would from now on hear no evil, see no evil and say no evil against the Ruto regime. At the height of the Gen-Z uprising against excesses in the Ruto government, Raila found the opportunity to join the same government. He sent in his people to take up key places in the Ruto Cabinet, and elsewhere in the public service. 

It was this mollified Raila that President Ruto presented to Africa for election to office. He sent him not so much out of love, nor even out of abiding conviction that he was the right man for the job. Not even that Kenya wanted the job. Ruto was driven by Raila phobia, and the desire to keep the man away from the country; his hands and tongue tied on matters Kenya. When Ruto made an unexpected visit to present goats to retired President Uhuru Kenyatta late last year, it was basically to plead with Uhuru to support the Raila AUC bid. President Ruto, especially, pleaded with Uhuru to reach out to President Felix Tshisekedi of DRC, with a plea to support the Kenyan quest in Addis. 

Sources close to Uhuru state that Ruto told Uhuru that Raila was a thorn in his flesh. He would be difficult to manage, if he did not get the AUC position. The Kenyan effort was falling short of the magical 33 AUC votes by about eight votes. Could President Uhuru help in DRC and elsewhere? Uhuru was non-committal, not having been well treated by the Ruto regime since retirement. It is difficult to tell how things would have turned out, had Uhuru intervened. But the one thing that is not in doubt is that Ruto’s living nightmare of managing Raila as a loose political cannon ball is on the fringes of becoming real. The return of the fiery Raila could be on the cards. 

A lot of work to do

Moments after his defeat in Addis, Raila faced the cameras and announced to the world that he would return home, to Kenya, where he had a lot of work to do. He did not specify what work. But is it likely to be the kind of work that gives Ruto sleepless nights? Is it the kind of work that will give President Ruto ultimatums on how to run the country, or face mass action in the event that he does not? What does the crystal ball show? 

Raila returns a few days after the courts have declared his Azimio Alliance the Majority Party in Parliament, and after the National Assembly Speaker, Moses Wetang’ula, has scoffed at the decision of the courts. In return, Azimio MPs have promised Wetang’ula the sack. This is as good a place as any for Raila to start. Wetang’ula’s fate is the perfect test case for Raila, a man who desperately needs to demonstrate that even after the Addis debacle, he has what it takes to call the shots in his home land. Late last year, talk was rife about Rarieda MP, Otiende Amolo, taking over from Wetang’ula. If Raila asks Ruto to give him Wetang’ula as a sacrificial political animal to heal his Addis wounds, will Ruto cave in?  But if Ruto does not cave in, what stops the dreaded and mercurial Raila from closing ranks with Mt Kenya MPs and Wiper to remove the Speaker and replace him with their own choice? The Addis debacle is proving to Ruto that he has not managed his politics well at all. Could impeaching his former deputy, Rigathi Gachagua, be about to return to eat up President Ruto?

The impeachment has left behind Mt Kenya MPs who desperately need to redeem themselves at home, after being made to send home the former DP. Their base is evidently hostile to them. If they do not find a formula to redeem themselves, they could be looking in the eye of defeat in 2027. Does the possibility of sending the Speaker home begin opening up the path of hope for them? Is it possible for them to team up with Azimio, even without sanction from Ruto, to give Speaker Wetang’ula the political sucker punch?

But if Parliament should successfully land the punch, where would it stop? Kenya’s national Executive has cause to be afraid, indeed very afraid. After its losing Mt Kenya, its survival now sits precariously in Raila’s hands. If he sneezes, Parliament will catch the flu. In the season when Gachagua was impeached, this writer told KTN television that Kenya was testing the pillars of the Constitution of Kenya (2010). So far, they were proving quite stable. We had impeached several governors, and overturned a presidential election. We impeached the deputy president. What remained was to impeach the president. This remains on the cards. 

If the Kenyan Executive has previously been in the grip of Raila phobia, the season for it to be truly afraid is now. Kenya could be entering the season of unprecedented impeachments. For the first time in the country’s history, the Speaker of the National Assembly could act for President for 90 days. That Speaker will not be Wetang’ula, however. It is likely to be a Speaker agreed upon by Raila and the disaffected Mt Kenya leadership. 

But, again, President Ruto could forestall all this. To do so, he will need to turn a completely new leaf. He must move away from his one-man rule. He may have to consider dropping some of his draconian decisions on healthcare, irrational tax for his housing project and the tax burden generally, and above all, he may eventually end corruption and wastefulness in government. President Ruto will also do well to remember that Raila returns in the season when the build-up to the 4.2 trillion Finance Bill 2025 is just beginning and the Gen-Zs are watching him. They are also angry that they are being abducted, disappeared, tortured and even killed. 

He will want to consider that another youth-led protest against the Finance Bill and allied offensives against young people is waiting for him. And this time around, MPs are unlikely to want to fall on his sword for him. Raila returns when everything that could go wrong for President Ruto is wrong- a healthcare system that hospitals have rejected and the public are unhappy with, a basic education system on its knees, a university funding model that has failed, industrial unrest among teachers, university lecturers, and health workers, cost of living that won’t go down. Youth unemployment is at an all-time high.

And this debacle in Addis is just another pointer to a hapless and wasteful State. It requires very little to set the dragons against it. Could the intersection between President Ruto’s kakistocracy and the Addis debacle be the trigger point? Whatever the answers, someone is fondling the tinderbox.

Dr Muluka is a strategic communications adviser