Ruto, Raila meeting leaves tongues wagging

By KIPKOECH TANUI

The question is not whether Mr Raila Odinga met Mr William Ruto but what they discussed, what has changed and why. Ruto confirms, Raila has not denied, meaning there is a lot we not being told. Someone here is testing the waters, and another is recalibrating his suspicionmeter.

As someone said months ago, Ruto should not have burnt his bridges with Raila, for the simple reason that politics is dynamic and turbulent and you do not know who you may need tomorrow.

Ruto obviously began with the premise that if he remained in the Orange party, he would not gain much since Raila would be the presidential race flag-bearer and Mr Musalia Mudavadi, running mate.

So the house was suffocating and to get out, what better strategy than to preach to the Kalenjin nation a gospel with three key messages. First, Raila is ‘shetani’ (evil), who uses and dumps, and is selfish.

Second, his hands are on the steering wheel of the International Criminal Court, and it matters not that a huge chunk of the so-called evidence stacked against him, was handed over to Luis Moreno-Ocampo by our national intelligence and other security agencies — through Kenya National Commission on Human Rights and the Waki Commission. These agencies were directly under Kibaki and his men and the objective was to ‘fix’ ODM as the bloodsucking serpent targeting people with roots around our landmark mountain.

Thirdly, the Cabinet decision on Mau Forest evictions, was quickly turned into a ‘Raila project’. The only ridiculous thing Raila did was to, swallow the bait, line and sinker, forgetting that the implementation units were with Kibaki, namely; Head of Civil Service, Police Commissioner, Permanent Secretary Internal Security and Provincial Administration, and the Minister for Finance. He only had Ministry of Lands, which has no money to buy new settlements. So he walked into the trap headlong. People were removed and no land was given!

Having turned Rift Valley against Raila, Ruto and his team moved to the next ‘project’ — getting his own party, starting with a misadventure in United Democratic Movement (UDM) before he goaded his people into United Republican Party.

‘Madam VIP Activist’

Then three factors set in, seemingly destabilising Ruto’s political mathematics. First, Mudavadi too left ODM, assumedly lured by Kibaki’s inner-circle not so much for the love of Musalia but as a stab on Raila’s back.

This took away from ODM the man who Ruto felt should not have been picked ahead of him in 2008 in the nusu mkate sharing room.

With Mudavadi’s exit, something happened in Central Kenya, where Ruto counted on support by projecting himself as Mr Uhuru Kenyatta’s likely ally. Faced with the prospect that Uhuru, like Ruto may not run over the Matemu-Baraza precedent, Gema communities appeared to trust Mudavadi more.

And having planted Musalia in UDF, ‘Madam VIP Activist’ decided to ‘join’ the rest of her community in The National Alliance. That is what car owners do, you hit the road once you confirm your tyres are okay, and you have thrown the spare wheel into the boot.

Secondly, Uhuru because of the nostalgia of the Mzee Jomo Kenyatta era among Gema communities, surged forward in opinion polls, creating a situation where logically any discussions on who should be G7 alliance candidate would no longer be in doubt, for in life, small rivers join the big ones — never the other way round!

Thirdly, even with the flight of the entire Pentagon from ODM, Raila still remained top of opinion polls, with Uhuru second but closing in. The trickier prediction of the pollsters was that in the first round, Raila would beat Uhuru, but in the second round Raila would lose to the man who said he has come of age, he is no one’s project, and just happened to have sprung from Jomo’s loins by accident of fate.

Now this is where the mathematics seems to have led Ruto and Raila to share a table. As situations changed, Uhuru showed he was keener on picking Mr Eugene Wamalwa as running mate, and if he won’t run, his community would shift to Mudavadi.

Furthermore, this notion of an Uhuru win at run-off is anchored to the fact that all factors remain constant. But there is a little problem here; the historical rivalry between Kalenjins and Kikuyus undermines the notion that Ruto would be able to goad the Kalenjin vote to Uhuru, and probably Musalia. That’s probably why Uhuru has never bothered to even pretend he would pick a running mate from Rift Valley.

So with Uhuru and Raila in front, what I gather is you can’t rule out Kalenjins may likely choose the one they call the ‘lesser evil’, because they have no history of land ownership tussle with them. So Ruto may be right, a wise fisherman casts his net wide in the sea.

River crossing

Yes, Ruto met Raila as we are told, but out of mutual political exigency, for both are in need, and whether the talks will yield anything, Ruto the calculative politician will have succeeded in at least raising his premium in G7 Alliance, and putting back a wooden plank across that river between him and Tinga.

There is one factor we left out because it is too obvious; Raila has lost key supporters, and the perception is ODM turning into an abandoned grass-thatched hut with mud-walls peeling off. He is desperate to catch a ‘big fish’ that comes along dangling a basket bulging with potential votes. On top of this, many enemies are sharpening knives against him, and if he can disarm one or win him over, he will have won a public relations coup, even if temporarily.

Finally, remember political alliances like all forms of friendship are like the hand and the eye that share a symbiotic relationship. When the hand hurts, the eye cries and when the eye cries, the hand wipes!

The writer is Managing Editor, Daily Editions, at The Standard.

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