Return of the Dragon: Uhuru can put an end to cartel politics but will he?

Kenya’s is morphing into an expansively confounding political mosaic. Nothing seems to make sense anymore, yet there is so much sense in the unfolding quagmire. These happenings are not random noises and political dramas. Power is reengineering itself in what is essentially a post-ideological political environment. Ideology is dead, or at the very best in the sickbay. Elite realignment is at work, as are cartel power politics.  

But there is also the return of President Uhuru Kenyatta, and efforts to resurrect Azimio, an entity Kenyans thought was dead. Can the return of Uhuru stem the and derail the tide of President Ruto’s rising cartel democracy? Can Uhuru steady the Opposition as a probable government in waiting, or will Kenya go the whole cartel democratic hog, into negotiated stagnation? 

Look at the first thirty-five days of the new year. The verbal warfare in ODM is at a new high, even as a faction of the party is joined by voices from President William Ruto’s UDA to disown the selection of Wiper’s Kalonzo Musyoka to replace the late Raila Odinga in Azimio’s leadership. Kalonzo has recently returned from Nigeria, where he met retired President Obasanjo, in the company of Uhuru. He appears keen to reconcile Uhuru with Rigathi Gachagua, Ruto’s impeached deputy president, who in his glorious days rained heavily on the Kenyatta family. 

Separately, Musalia Mudavadi’s ANC Party, thought to be dead, returns through the court corridors. Mudavadi disowns the resurrection. Instead he proudly dons UDA colours in State House. He exudes chuckled confidence about UDA’s future fortunes. National Assembly Speaker, Moses Wetang’ula continues to fade away, despite a flashy outing with MPs in Naivasha. Gachagua intensifies his relentless barrage against Ruto, and Ruto gives back as well as he receives.  

Then there are defections from the Opposition to UDA and counter-defections to the Opposition. President Ruto steadily moves to swallow people and parties into UDA. ODM is his flagship target. A faction of ODM, led by the hilarious Oburu Oginga, declares its readiness to be work with Ruto. There are no conditions, except that the “cow of government” should be cut into two equal parts. One part should go to ODM and the other left with Ruto, to do with as he would wish. 

That is how politics roll in post-ideological dispensations. Countries experience elite-driven reconfiguration of power. In the Kenyan case, power reconstruction has been triggered by at least three shocks. First, is the collapse of a credible Opposition, second Raila Odinga’s exit, and third the suffocation of political competition under the Ruto presidency. 

There is a scramble for political leverage ahead of 2027. The Ruto state is in panic, having been long on rhetoric and short on delivery during the first three years. It must, accordingly, concurrently create optical illusions of a delivering government, while also absorbing the Opposition. UDA’s appetite and energy for transactional coalitions is, therefore, in high gear. Uhuru has stepped into this theatre to attempt to restore both a sense of logic, and symbolism of hope. 

To break it down, a post-ideological order, such as Kenya is trapped in today, is one in which political parties no longer compete over ideas. There are no policy conversations, or serious discourses on social policy. The political conflict that defined competition between ODM and UDA in the pre-Azimio and Kenya-Kwanza days is gone. 

The bottom-up conversation has been replaced by “Singaporic” mumbo-jumbo, that ODM under Oburu has bought into, with its own attendant Canaanite claptrap. The ideological conversations of the past have been replaced by elite accommodation into power. Hence, Gladys Wanga, the ODM National Chairperson and Homa Bay Governor, will tell Kenyans that the only condition for ODM to go to next year’s polls as Ruto’s partner is “half of the cow.” 

Ruto and ODM–Oburu are redefining elections as rituals of ratifying elite pre-election power deals. The coalition that Ruto and Oburu are groping for is, accordingly, a transactional package. It is the perfect case of elite cartel political deals, with no bearing on the citizenry, beyond the need for public endorsement of the cartel. 

How did Kenya get here, we may ask? Kenya crossed into this space when, having lost the 2022 presidential election, Raila Odinga joined Ruto. There was no convergence of policy, beyond what the two leaders called a “ten-point agenda.” The most significant element of the agenda is the NADCO Report, whose implementation timeline ends on March 7, with little to show of the Senator Agnes Zani led monitoring initiative. 

Whatever the case, ODM under Raila entered into a coalition with Ruto without following the law. Ruto announced a new-look Cabinet with five ODM party honchos. Raila initially denied being party to this dealmaking. However, he later turned around to say that they had given Ruto experts to help him rejig the government and restore the country to the railroad, following the Gen-Z uprising of June 2024. He now claimed that Uhuru was the one who had requested him to talk to Ruto, and to work with him, “to pull back the country from the brink.”

The said Uhuru is now back, to save the country from another brink; the ODM-UDA-driven brink.  Such is how history turns around. Uhuru’s concern would be that the Opposition is no longer a location of alternative policy. Power is itself fungible; it can be exchanged like goods at an auction market, through elite deals. And loyalty, for its part, has replaced conviction. Cabinet Secretaries Opiyo Wandayi, Hassan Joho and John Mbadi (all from ODM) outdo each other to demonstrate loyalty to Ruto. 

Put together with the energetic passions of Wanga, Oburu, and the political-caddy-class that is emblematised by legislators like Peter Kaluma, Samuel Atandi, and Prof. Tom Ojienda, ODM and UDA can jointly go into next year’s elections without a whiff of embarrassment. Such is the signature of post-ideological politics. Can Uhuru Kenyatta help Kenya to counter the drift?

In any event that would appear to be what he has come back to try to do. This is much the same way Botswana’s retired President, Ian Khama, returned from exile in South Africa in 2024, to lead the campaign against his successor Mokgweetsi Masisi, ahead of October elections that year. Masisi had come under heavy criticism over such things as authoritarianism, “being drunk with power,” and corruption. He lost the election and became a one-term president. Can Uhuru do a Masisi thing to Ruto? 

Timing is of the essence. Ruto is himself a wily craftsman. He has already stormed off in early campaigns. He is riding on the raft of NYOTA donations across the country. It is a master stroke that works in the short-term. While cartel election horse-trading is an elite political insurance policy for Ruto, NYOTA is the alternative policy with the ordinary citizen. Whatever the World Bank may have understood when it signed the NYOTA deal with Ruto, it has availed him an easy campaign opportunity across the country. 

In the process, Ruto is personalizing political space. Insiders in such setups are compelled to stifle their ambition. Those who helped him to tower high in 2022, like Mudavadi, Wetang’ula, Senate Speaker Amason Kingi, and Labour Minister Dr Alfred Mutua, must learn to be self-effacing. They must all the time seek to assure the President that their appetite for greater things is as dead as the dodo. They engage in performative displays of loyalty. They kowtow before the boss and lambast detractors with angry words, at every opportunity. 

The single actor who can stem the Ruto tide of cartel politics and suffocation of dissent and the Opposition is Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta, and nobody else, it would appear. Raila is gone. Kalonzo is probable, but with inadequate leverage. Gachagua is too polarizing, both within the Mt. Kenya region and outside. Matiang’i is a technocratically credible and authoritative pair of safe hands, but politically thin. Like Kalonzo, Matiang’i is acceptable, but has a lot of homework to do. Both have to pull around them political elites, and the entire nation. 

Whatever their deficiencies may be, real or imagined, Matiang’i and Kalonzo are frontrunners. As Uhuru cannot run for office again, his best option is to work with the two leaders, to stem and turn the Ruto-Oburu cartel power politics. It is a mixed bag of hopes and impediments, however. To his advantage, Uhuru arrives with a public elder posture. The Ruto regime has, by default, gentrified Uhuru. Whatever his own past sins may be, real or imagined, three years under Ruto have given Kenyans the opportunity to see Uhuru through fresh eyes. He, therefore, returns as a safe guide, whom those who did not trust in 2022 can now believe. 

Uhuru, himself a leading investor in the country, is a symbol of assurance to the business community. In like vein, he brings assurance to the diplomatic community and to Kenyans that they will be safe. His revival of Azimio is to be seen through these lenses. He is trying to legitimize dissent and to resuscitate the Opposition, after the Raila-Ruto diffusion of Opposition focus and solidarity, and now the Ruto-Oburu cartel strategies. 

That Uhuru maintained strategic silence at the peak of Ruto-generated tensions in his first three years has heightened his stature. At no point has he confronted Ruto head on. The time seems to be here, eventually, for Uhuru to simply open the game, and he is doing so. Political caddies will meanwhile be ready to jump on him, all fangs, talons and sundry attack paraphernalia bared. 

But while Uhuru is the necessary lead actor in this arena, he has his own limitations. He does not control the electoral machinery, which the Opposition keeps saying is being manipulated. He also cannot solve the economic pain in the country, although he can give hope. Finally, he has the heavy challenge of waking up mass enthusiasm in a despairing nation. To tip the balance, he must especially put Mt. Kenya's massive population in one docket. This means that, at some point, he will have to deal with the Rigathi Gachagua factor in the Mountain. The polarizing Gachagua must either be accommodated, or be defeated, ahead of the bigger competition with the UDA-ODM election cartels.

Having placed his hand on the plough, Uhuru will not want to look back. He cannot afford to blink. Yet, he still could. His personal welfare, as well as family security is a no-go red line zone. When in the first year of the Ruto regime national security apparatus crossed the line, an agitated Uhuru came out all barrels blazing. He challenged unnamed individuals to stop harassing his children and go for him, instead. The election cartels will want to think carefully before attempting to cross that line again. It could cut either way. 

Beyond that, however, Uhuru is not reckless. He surely must remember how vulnerable he was in 2002, when the Opposition called him a President Moi project and denied him victory in that year’s presidential race? Then there was the 2008 burden of international prosecutions, and the post 2013 asset scrutiny. He will possibly want to be measured and methodical in his intervention in the emerging political Kenya?

There is also the “don’t jump alone” rule. Hopefully, Uhuru has caucused with business elites, who will not just hedge quietly, but will also stand up to be counted, despite the political risks. For, in the end, the cartels will bring them down, anyway. Yet, if they will only hedge quietly but refuse public commitment, they could send Uhuru back to his comfort zone. This could also be the case if security apparatus send mixed neutrality signals, or turn outright against him. Similarly, he requires regional and continental leverage. In a word, for Uhuru to sustain what has been started, he needs credible guarantees that others will move with him. If not, he could retreat to his comfort zone.

Kalonzo must consolidate authority, and Matiang’i must begin building coalition breadth. The Opposition must, as an entity, stop looking factional and unserious. Nobody wants to invest capital in stillborn projects. While Uhuru may not, at this moment, need a winning candidate or formation, he needs a credible one. But he, himself, will possibly want to contribute to the essential solidarity by accepting the olive branch that the boisterous Gachagua keeps extending. Gachagua, for his part, will then do well to accept that Uhuru is the boss, and subordinate himself to him. 

Beyond that, timing is of the essence. If Uhuru and the Opposition wait too long, the cartels will solidify. Inaction is likely to be more harmful, despite the obvious odds. For Uhuru, his residual power and legacy are at greater risk. Ruto is busy dismantling everything that he built, and replacing it with nothing. If the cartels succeed in turning the country into a cow to be shared equally and eaten, history could frame the Uhuru presidency as the terminal collapse of constitutionalism in Kenya. And if it collapses, it goes with everything, including what Uhuru may think that he protects by restraining himself. Worse still, history will blame him for enabling a permanent cartel system to take root in the country.

At the provincial level, if the Ruto regime tries to bring down Mt. Kenya as the pathway to consolidating power, Uhuru must intervene. If he does not, he risks losing relevance forever. But as he ponders these factors, the lead horses in the Azimio – Matiang’i and Kalonzo – have their own assignments cut out for them. They must now get out of the comforts of their native homes. They must go out to seek, find and work with other Kenyans. They have the trust of the rest of the country to win and consolidate, in a nation where betrayal has become the norm. Time and tide will not waiti for them.  

The true endgame of cartel politics is a country in ruins, like many South and Central American nations that are today global headquarters of crime, drugs, and general dislocation. In post-ideological environments, negotiated power sharing becomes crime sharing. The outcome is the settled stagnation of South America. If Uhuru is neutralized, Kenya in 2032 will not be Singapore, but Venezuela, driven by negotiated political instability, violent crime, robbery, and drugs. And Uhuru would be neutralized not because he was wrong, but rather because the elites chose certainty over reform and fear over imagination.