Former Daily Nation Managing editor and political commentator Macharia Gaitho has aired his opinion on the state of the relationship between President Uhuru Kenyatta and DP William Ruto in the run-up to the 2022 polls.
On his opinion piece for the publication on Wednesday, January 1, the veteran journalist opined that the DP had used President Kenyatta's cordiality with ODM leader Raila Odinga to marshall support in the Mt Kenya community.
Raila's entrance into the political scene, in Gaitho's opinion, was perceived as threatening to the agreement between the president and his deputy where after Uhuru's term, DP Ruto was to take over the reins of the country for a further 10 years.
Gaitho intimated that the DP's complaints about Raila's entry into Jubilee politics had raised suspicions amongst his Rift Valley bastions and by extension, the Mt. Kenya populace, painting Uhuru as ready to renege on his agreement to support the DP's presidential ambitions.
"The presumed Jubilee succession pact in which Uhuru would back Ruto in 2022 has come into play, alongside feelings that Uhuru, and by extension, his community, owes Ruto much," he wrote.
The support, Gaitho narrated, had also emboldened leaders that have coalesced around DP Ruto and are well aware of their capacity to frustrate President Kenyatta's efforts in the National Assembly and the Senate.
"The President finds himself prematurely reduced to a lame duck. A powerful faction loyal to DP William Ruto is in open defiance and boasting the numbers to shoot down his maneuvers in both Houses of Parliament and the moribund party organs," he opined.
Such sentiments, he revealed, have reduced President Kenyatta to a leader helplessly watching as DP Ruto's forays forced him to rethink his steps if his legacy was to survive.
"Legacy projects aside, 2022 will be critical for the President's succession strategy. If not backing Ruto, anything he tries involving Odinga as well as opposition alliance co-principals Musalia Mudavadi and Kalonzo Musyoka will run into headwinds in Jubilee," he stated.
Gaitho predicted that if Uhuru did not take bold steps to influence politics at the moment when he is in power, it would be much tougher for him to try wielding influence after his term was done in 2022.
This, he revealed, was because the Mt. Kenya populace had shown a history of having little time to do with leaders who do not wield political influence.
Gaitho urged the President to learn from former president Mwai Kibaki's alleged hand in trying to block their ascension to state house in 2013 in favor of Mudavadi, using the cases at the ICC as indictments as a probable cause.
In his opinion, the move failed because Kibaki no longer had access to power at the time and his word was to a huge extent inconsequential.
