What should worry Ruto ahead of 2022 polls

Does William Ruto intend to win the presidency in 2022? From the look of things, it appears that the Deputy President may have given up on this goal. Just this week, the Treasury projected that by the time President Uhuru Kenyatta retires from office, the Jubilee Administration will have pushed the national debt to over Sh7 trillion. That is more than Sh5 trillion more than the total value of the national debt back in 2013. In addition, Kenyatta has saddled Kenyans with deeply unpopular taxes. These factors, combined with reports of graft and government inefficiencies, will continue to sour the public to the Jubilee Administration over the next four years. Simply stated, Ruto may lose the 2022 election even before he starts campaigning to succeed Kenyatta.

This is not how things were supposed to play out. Political Scientists have long argued that governing political parties work best when they are structured to incorporate overlapping generations of leaders. That is, if the party dynamics are such that incumbent older leaders feel indebted to future younger leaders, and therefore work to guarantee the future leaders’ electoral success. An implication of this observation is that under such parties, incumbent leaders and administrations work to meet voters’ demands with a view of priming future leaders to claim credit for specific successes.