How to make Uhuru pledge to back Ruto credible

A prominent former MP once told me that the biggest hurdle to good leadership in Kenya is the lack of trust among Kenyan politicians. In his view, this state of affairs inhibits planning, weakens institutions, and leads to a general belief in people, rather than institutions.

He gave an example of a former minister who found himself unable to delegate tasks to his assistants or Permanent Secretary because he feared that the two had direct lines to State House. The result was that everything that happened in the Ministry had to pass through the Minister’s office, thereby delaying several important projects.

The lack of trust obtains not just within ruling parties but also in opposition parties. Currently, the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) is in the middle of a tussle involving its Secretary General, Ababu Namwamba. Namwamba is accused of not being “loyal enough” to the party. He is also suspected of being a Jubilee mole. How can this be? Is ODM telling us that despite their stature as the biggest single party in Kenya they have no means of ascertaining whether Namwamba is indeed cavorting with Jubilee? Do they have evidence?

On the Jubilee side, the biggest trust problem at the moment is whether President Uhuru Kenyatta will back Deputy President William Ruto in 2022. The issue is so touchy that it may have led to the dissolution of the Presidential Strategic Communications Unit (PSCU). PSCU issued a statement this week reiterating Kenyatta’s commitment to supporting Ruto in 2022. Many thought that this was the clearest sign yet that all is not well with the UhuRuto bromance. As Wole Soyinka said, a tiger does not shout about its tigritude. The fact that Ruto has to be incessantly reassured in public is evidence that there is a deficit of trust in Jubilee.

I am not privy to the specifics of the UhuRuto agreement that brought them together ahead of the 2013 elections. All I can say is that this looks like a classic case of an obsolescing bargain. Ruto’s peak leverage was in 2012, right before he entered the coalition with Kenyatta. That is when he was in a position to extract maximum concessions -- and rumour has it that he actually did. To which I would say he is a very smart man.

Since then, his leverage has been on the decline. He may register an uptick in bargaining power ahead of 2017, but the second Kenyatta is reelected he will be done. The president has no means of compelling Kenyans to vote for Ruto. The agreement in 2012 was between William Ruto and Uhuru Kenyatta, not between their respective voting blocs. This is the reality that Ruto must face. And it is the reason why leaders from central Kenya have been eager to strengthen their bargaining power come 2022 by stressing that they do not want to put themselves in a straight jacket over an agreement that they were not party to.

In other words, the UhuRuto agreement over 2022 is not self-enforcing. As such it needs constant reinforcement and signaling of commitment.

But how may Kenyatta credibly signal commitment to have Ruto succeed him? In my view the best way to do this would be for President Kenyatta, if reelected, to resign from office before his second term expires. This action would automatically make Ruto president, and grant him the opportunity to appoint his own Deputy President, with the 2022 elections in mind. This move would also buy Ruto time to consolidate his base of support as an incumbent president before the elections. Kenyatta’s commitment would be credible because he would have to support Ruto in 2022 from a position of relative weakness.