William Ruto this week upset the apple cart, beating Raila Odinga to become the fifth president of the Republic of Kenya.
"It was always going to be a strange race, but the conventional wisdom did not allow for a Ruto victory...
Ruto has deputized President Uhuru Kenyatta for the last ten
years, an alliance which in itself was an unlikely one at the time it was
forged. Both men stalked by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for their
alleged involvement in post-election violence in 2007 where they were in
opposite camps, came together to beat Odinga in 2012.
After winning a second term in office in 2017 the two men
fell out spectacularly, which laid to Uhuru backing the opposition candidate Odinga
against his own deputy in the just concluded race, making Odinga the
establishment candidate, a role that did not seat well on the perennial
challenger. This was Odinga’s fifth attempt at Kenya’s topmost office, a 25-year
odyssey that has always ended in tears.
So Ruto the deputy president was the opposition candidate. You
will be forgiven the cognitive dissonance.
The accepted wisdom is, being in opposition means that you
cannot leverage the government’s infrastructure to drum up support. Being in opposition
means your agents will be harassed like stray dogs at every turn. And the ace
in the hole is that if you are in opposition, you have no chance to “influence”
the result if it is not to your liking.
Nearly 60 years of unbroken electoral practice in Kenya means that the opposition have sued for and won some space to maneuver, so their fate is not as dire as some of their counterparts in the region. But that space has been paid for with blood, sweat and tears over at least half a century. Odinga, who was at the forefront of fighting then president Daniel arap Moi to open the space for multi-party democracy has been exiled, detained, teargassed, seen his friends impoverished, maimed and killed, suffering any number of indignities in the process....
But to take advantage of that crack in the door, required
the skills and will of a political operator like Ruto.
From his first parliamentary victory, where he beat Moi’s
favoured candidate in 1997, Ruto has shown himself to be a meticulous organizer.
In this election in particular, his pinching of the Kikuyu vote – the country’s
most populous tribe, from under the nose of the Kenyatta backed campaign was
the game changer. That did not happen by mistake.
Ruto was not only battling the state apparatus but also the
media – official and independent, were unashamedly rooting for the Odinga
campaign. They as shellshocked as the establishment at the turn of events. They
say when perception comes up against fact, perception wins all the time. Ruto
has shown otherwise.
The media harped on his vast wealth as a sign he was corrupt,
in a country where you cannot spit without hitting a corrupt official in the
eye.
Ruto’s campaign while making the expected denials
nevertheless worked hard to position the candidate – the chief hustler, as one
of them and not one of the entitled political dynasties, which themselves have
a lot of unexplained wealth hanging loosely on their persons.
|"Ruto’s ability as a challenger to go toe-to-toe with Raila in every constituency except in Odinga’s Nyanza province backyard is a function of his organizational capacity. On the flip side the are stories of how Odinga’s campaign was shambolic, suggesting they were complacent.
Some will argue that Ruto is a rich man and therefore has
the resources to splurge on his campaign, but who is richer than the state? And
haven’t we seen people with money being beaten in elections by lesser advantaged
opponents in constituencies around the country?
So the Ruto campaign in its own strange way has powerful
lessons for the opposition on the continent. One, that wrestling power from the
status quo is a process not an event. Ruto leveraged on the gains won by the
opposition to make the electoral process in Kenya more transparent to win.
Secondly, that regardless of how disenchanted the population
is, organisation that shows the opposition as a worthy alternative is critical.
In the end people are not foolish, they vote their interests and in the face of
great uncertainty, vote the status quo either physically or by staying away
from the ballot.
And eventually the cause has to have a champion who is not
only credible but can stick on message. Despite massive provocation for Ruto to
lash out and validate the narrative the Odinga allies had drawn around him as an
impulsive, violent and even callous operator, he remained largely calm and did
not allow the bad press to stick.
The Odinga camp has threatened to appeal to the court as is
their right, which if they do will only improve the democratic space in Kenya.
But for now, Ruto is the toast of the town and its hard to begrudge him his
victory.
