Gachagua ouster ruling fractures the opposition's pursuit of unity

The High Court’s determination of the former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua impeachment matter  has deepened his stumbling block role in opposition politics. 

In a sense, Gachagua has been a stumbling block in Kenyan politics, since 2022, when he was controversially selected as William Ruto’s running mate in the presidential vote.

Now the plot thickens for the united opposition, in its bid to field a common  candidate in next year’s election. Difficult choices and decisions have to be made. Giant careers are on the line, and the equivocation from the Judiciary only complicates matters. 

The Bench of Justices Eric Ogola, Justice Anthony Mrima, and  Justice Freda Mugambi evasively found that Gachagua’s rights were violated in the process that led to his impeachment by the Senate.

But it also shrewdly found that he was rightly impeached, and cleverly upheld the decision. The court has thrown the opposition into a deeper spin in an arena that was already complicated. 

It was always tricky, with the promise of getting even more complex; with legal, generational and ethnic tensions interacting in the search for a common candidate to face off with President William Ruto next year.

Amidst opposition anxieties between personal interest and individual political careers on the one hand, and the desire to dislodge President Ruto from power on the other, the Bench made a doublespeak determination that now leaves the opposition between the proverbial rock and hard place.

Do they continue nursing the hope that Gachagua could run against Ruto, or do the opposition chiefs each begin ploughing their own furrows? 

An impeached leader cannot occupy public office, according to Article 75(3) of the Constitution of Kenya (2010). While a straight finding that Gachagua’s rights were not violated would still leave him room to appeal and find his way to the ballot, in the event that he has not exhausted the appellate processes, the ambiguity in the recent judgement makes it essential for him to contest the sustaining of the impeachment by the court.

Any thought that he could be prevailed upon to step back from his presidential ambition and support someone else must accordingly perish, at least for now. 

Yet, would the competing personal considerations in the opposition camp have benefitted from a neater court determination, to reach a quick settlement on a flag bearer? Hardly possible. The contradictions in the Justice Ogola Bench, however, provide the fresh energy that must keep the united opposition divided on whom to field.

From the moment he was impeached, Gachagua has remained conscious of the fact that he has limited choices. He must either accept to go into the dustbin of political history, or fight like a wounded buffalo to redeem himself.

He has chosen to fight on, both on the legal and political fronts. And in this fight, he is a stumbling block to everyone in the civic space, be it Parliament, the Executive or, now, the Judiciary. Everyone is a legitimate target in the Gachagua strife for political self-preservation.

His immediate response to the caginess of the High Court was a firm rejection of the verdict, which he found both ridiculous and insolent. While his legal team is dealing with that side of his civics, Gachagua has announced that his next political move is to enter the deep strategic scheming space. He talked of going to Western Kenya, and of silent space, as well as sundry political scheming. 

Whatever it may turn out to be, one thing will be almost certain, Gachagua will be planning to beat President Ruto in next year’s election. But what is not so obvious is that he is also scheming to beat his opposition colleagues, for the joint opposition ticket.

Separately, he is scheming to maintain a firm hold on Mt Kenya politics.  With Mt Kenya firmly in place, he may toy with going it alone in his avowed promise “to humiliate Ruto.”

His quest to unseat Ruto is initially embracing mutual consent among the opposition chiefs as the path to a common opposition ticket. But runaway lone ranger options remain on the card as the last option.

Gachagua will be trying to persuade his colleagues to let him run, while also scheming to beat them through other internal mechanisms. But if neither works, he may want to surrender his colleagues to their own designs and devices, while he charts his own lone-ranger path. 

Field marshal

This is the perfect definition of Rigathi Gachagua. He is the quintessential political stumbling block. The political opposition must come to terms with this reality, in his post-High Court dispensation. He is a maverick civic field marshal. If you confront him, he will turn the confrontation into a rallying cry against you. If you work with him, you must hold your breath all through, for you could be working with him against yourself. 

If you leave him alone, you will become the subject of ridicule and sustained verbal attack.

President Ruto is waking up to this reality late, as he ponders what next in the Mt Kenya region, where he was once a darling. Gachagua has wasted him in this space. His incessant visits here amount to less than the case of the child who pounds water in the mortar, imagining it will soften. 

Having styled himself as the new king of the region, Gachagua is a huge political threat not just to Ruto’s dreams of a second term through the Mountain, but also to the dreams of the Presidency by Kalonzo Musyoka, Fred Matiang’i, and Edwin Sifuna, should he decide to run. That is unless he decides not to run and support them. If he runs, they are done.

Other possible aspirants are Eugene Wamalwa, George Natembeya, David Maraga, and Andrew Omutatah. They need the populous Mt Kenya vote, but Gachagua needs it more, and he has it sewn up, at least for now. He will probably want to run in the hope that in the worst case scenario, there will be a run-off between him and Ruto, or anyone else. 

How do they persuade him to step aside for them to benefit from this vote, when his own political future is so heavily defined by this vote? Moreover, Gachagua is in the political arena as a wounded buffalo. He smarts from the wounds of political betrayal by Ruto.

Trust anybody

He must find it difficult to believe that he will not be betrayed again. Why would he want to trust anybody when Ruto, whom he liked, trusted, and fervently campaigned for, betrayed him? This is the one question he must wrestle with in waking and in sleeping. 

But, the entire Mt Kenya region must also wrestle with the same question. Long styled by the rest of Kenya as incapable of voting for anyone who was not an indigene of the Mountain, the Gikuyu, Embu, Meru, and Akamba (Gema) communities proved Kenyans wrong, when they massively voted for Ruto in 2022. They may not shout about it in public. But the sense of betrayal in the community is felt and expressed in caucuses and conclaves, and of course in social media. “We were cheated,” that is the refrain. 

That deepens Gachagua’s dilemma.

If he was the conduit of the lie that was sold to the Mountain, why should the Mountain listen to him, when he returns to show them another “outsider” to vote for as President?

Out of the circumstances, it would appear, the name Geoffrey Rigathi Gachagua must be on the 2027 August presidential election ballot paper. Fighting all the way seems to be his only option. It is a fact the rest of the opposition chiefs may need to wake up to sooner than later. 

And Riggy-G, the man from Wamunyoro, is no pushover, as both those who have encountered him, and those who have run away, have learned. Little was known of this man as a first-term MP representing Mathira Constituency of Nyeri County. Yes, he had worked in provincial administration, and he had served as personal assistant to Uhuru Kenyatta in his days as Deputy Prime Minister. But many other people had served in the dreaded provincial administration

Kenyans learned to get used to their excesses and to live with them, and the name Gachagua did not signify much. 

He was brought into sharp focus when Ruto named him his running mate for the 2022 presidential poll. The announcement kicked up a storm about his suitability, being only a first term MP, and apparently adept at courting controversy.

He weathered the storms and, together with Ruto, romped into the presidency; only for the floodgates of fresh controversies and uncertainties to kick in. These have landed him into the present wars and battles that he must aim to win, regardless of who is laid to waste in the process. This includes his present colleagues in the united opposition.

But the case of the opposition is more complex than this. For, Gachagua is not the only one who must strive to survive in that space. It is a make or break affair for Wiper Leader, Kalonzo Musyoka.

Kalonzo is a classical school politico. He has carved for himself a composed gentlemanly and decent comportment. He  often looks laid back, on account of his mannered mien that frowns upon muddy politics.

Deep sea

When doves like Kalonzo swim with the sharks, they are literally cast between the devil and the deep sea. They can’t tell just how far to cooperate in the hope that the Gachagua’s will see sense and hand over the mantle, or whether they are better off starting it alone early in the day. 

Kalonzo was on the 2007 presidential election ballot paper. He came third behind Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga, in that sequence. It will be 20 years next year.

As the generationally oldest person in the team at 72, Karua (68), Gachagua (61), Matiang’i (58), Wamalwa (57) and Natembeya (55) it is natural to expect that he should have another go at it next year. Besides, Kalonzo is also the most seasoned politician in the united opposition camp. 

He stepped down for Raila Odinga three times, twice accepting to be the running mate (2013 and 2017).

In 2022 he remained in the shadows altogether, as Karua the joined Raila ticket. There is a mounting sentiment within his Akamba community that it has stayed in the cold of State access for too long, because of being in the opposition. Accordingly, Kalonzo as the person the community is looking up to for leadership, must get the Akamba back to the centre.

Next year

Akamba insiders say that if Kalonzo does not run next year, then he must prepare to lose the leadership mantle in the community. Put side by side with Gachagua’s own dilemma, the Kalonzo predicament compounds the crisis of the opposition mantle. Who should step down for the other? 

In both the Gachagua and Kalonzo camps, there is also the unstated matter of freeloaders and hangers on. These are the loud politicos, who like hanging on the coattails of senior political figures from the tribe. They cast themselves in the mould of loyalists, who must get political surrogate votes. This lot is electorally endangered when the big man from the community does not run for the big job.

They sense defeat and, therefore, insist that their man must run. They bank on reaping from the ethnic euphoria that goes with that. These personalities insist on their tribesmen running, purely to feed their egoistic needs.

Elsewhere in Western Kenya, the entry of Edwin Sifuna complicates the matrix. Within the united opposition, the sentiment is that the region is very consequential.

To lock out Ruto, inside sources indicate, the number two slot has been reserved for Western. What remains is, accordingly, who the running mate will be among the Western top guns, and who among Gachagua, Kalonzo, and Matiang’i should bear the flag. But what happens to this strategy if Ruto also decides to field a running mate from Western? 

Dr Muluka is an expert in politics and international relations