Uhuru and Raila truce remains very strange, highly suspicious

Time continues to clarify the meaning of the recent handshake between Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga.

An emerging effect of the handshake is that it now places Deputy President William Ruto in the kind of place where Raila found himself after the 2007 election when circumstances brought him into power-sharing arrangements with President Mwai Kibaki.

The position of a Prime Minister, alongside that of an elected president, had no precedent in the country’s history, and neither was there precedent on what “power-sharing” would mean in practice.

It became the business of the bureaucracy to imagine ways of conducting public affairs to give effect to these unprecedented arrangements. It was soon clear that the bureaucracy, loyal to Kibaki alone, was only prepared to tolerate rather than embrace Raila, as a co-equal of the president.

As a result, and despite his title, Raila remained a political outsider rather than a co-equal of Kibaki, and even the relatively inferior Vice President, Kalonzo Musyoka, had a better place in the establishment.

Unable to accept this, Raila often complained, and loudly, and even though this resulted in new practices meant to show him as a co-equal to Kibaki, the substance of his place never changed.

The effect of the handshake is that, without holding a public office, Raila is now being treated as a political insider, sharing space with Kenyatta and relegating Deputy President William Ruto to the position of an outsider, who is increasingly at the mercy of Kenyatta.

While Ruto could complain, the way Raila did, he has so far kept his counsel, making a great act of supporting the handshake. In this regard, Ruto seems to be following the same path of stoicism that his political master, Daniel Moi, followed.

As the country’s Vice President, Moi remained a political outsider, vulnerable to demeaning treatment from members of President Jomo Kenyatta’s inner circle, which he bore with fortitude. Moi was so successful at playing possum, that his prospective presidency was viewed as a passing cloud.

Before the last elections, the deal between Kenyatta and Ruto was clear: Kenyatta would serve two terms and then support his deputy to take over.

Without Raila in the picture, it would have been a straight-forward matter for Ruto to seek to enforce this deal.

The handshake, however, complicates matters for Ruto, first, because while he remains politically active, Raila maintains a support base that Ruto would otherwise seek to grab, and second, because Kenyatta can leverage on his new relationship with Raila to repudiate the deal with Ruto.

Ahead of elections in 2017, the relationship between Kenyatta and Ruto, on one side, and Raila and his NASA co-principals, on the other, was toxic. The frequent public insults among them provided evidence of the considerable rancour in the relationship.

The level of bitterness was particularly strong between Raila and Ruto, with the former often making the most hateful attacks on the latter, whose supporters would reply in kind.

While the handshake was between Kenyatta and Raila, the relationship between Raila and Ruto has mysteriously improved. While Kenyatta and Raila have explained that their relationship improved after talks between them which did not involve Ruto, there has been no explanation as to how Raila and Ruto have managed to achieve the dramatically improved relationship.

Up to 2013, Kibaki and Raila stayed in the same unhappy government, trapped in an internationally negotiated agreement which was then reduced into a law that formed part of the Constitution of Kenya.

Further, the agreement in question was not personal to Raila, and in theory if he walked out, his party would have the chance to elect a new Prime Minister in his place.

By contrast, whatever the deal between Kenyatta and Raila, this remains undocumented and seems very personal to the two. It seems, then, that the Kenyatta/Raila deal is conditional on a good relationship between the two and lacks an independent monitoring or enforcement mechanism.

It is arguable that however difficult it would have been for Kenyatta to govern on his own and without a deal with Raila, he might have managed another five years.

Having invited Raila into a deal, Kenyatta has elevated Raila on whose support he has predicated the completion of his second term in office. Needing Ruto to win re-election, he now has less use for him, since elections are behind Kenyatta.

Instead, Kenyatta now needs Raila, rather than his deputy, in order to govern. As things stand, if Raila walked out on Kenyatta, Jubilee would fall. By contrast, a walkout by Ruto would not have the same effect on Jubilee.

While this strange deal-making has had a profound effect on the political landscape, simple questions remain unanswered.

The lack of clarity as to the substance of the deal between Kenyatta and Raila, the lack of a clear benefit to the public other than the peace that this deal has enabled, the absence of a clear benefit to Raila, and the strange amity that Ruto is showing towards an arrangement that obviously undermines his political future, are all factors ensuring that the Kenyatta/Raila handshake remains very strange, and highly suspicious.