Opinion: Animosity between Raila, Ruto threatens essence of truce

The growing animosity between Raila Odinga and William Ruto threatens whatever ambitions Uhuru Kenyatta and the former PM had in mind through the handshake.

Kenyatta and Raila explained that they had decided to come together to unite the country, recognising that an increasingly dysfunctional political competition was a threat to future stability.

While Ruto initially embraced the handshake, confounding analysts who saw the Kenyatta/Raila détente as a clog on his political ambitions, his hostility towards Raila is a sign of the pressures that the handshake has created in the political system, and evidence that Ruto would have been more sincere if he had openly rejected the harmony between Kenyatta and Raila.

Ruto’s quarrel with Raila brings into question the assumption that Kenyatta is in control of his party and that his actions have a binding effect on all members of the Jubilee Party, including Ruto.

Ruto’s posture indicates that the Deputy President reserves the right, whenever appropriate, to stage an open rebellion in Jubilee that would resemble the kind that was witnessed in Kanu in 2002, when Daniel Moi handpicked Kenyatta as the presidential candidate for the party in the elections held that year.

Because elections are still a long way to come, it is likely that Ruto will bid his time and only make a move closer to the event.

While many struggle to find a reason for supporting the handshake, the one reason that could justify such support is that, by reducing the polarisation that has come to characterise the country’s politics, the handshake has provided much-needed space for a reasoned and inclusive approach to resolving some of the problems that face the country.

The Raila/Ruto quarrel, however, upsets that argument and leaves intact the recriminations the handshake was supposed to help overcome.

Other than a more favourable personal status, Raila has derived nothing from the handshake. Given the denigration he faced from Jubilee before the handshake, an improved personal perception for a man who has always struggled to project the image of a statesman, is still an important gain. However, the quarrel with Ruto risks reducing Raila’s favourable standing. If this continues, Raila’s supporters may question the value of the handshake if it cannot even guarantee a modicum of respect for their leader.

The unfolding rivalry between Raila and Ruto leaves Kenyatta with two options. The first is to deliberately show support for one or other of the two rivals.

If Kenyatta showed a clear preference for Raila over Ruto that would probably accelerate open fallout with Ruto, with the possibility of profound implications for Jubilee.

If, on the other hand, Kenyatta showed support for Ruto over Raila, this would undermine the handshake as Raila would find little attraction in continuing to work with Kenyatta.

The second option, the only realistic one in the circumstances, is for Kenyatta to take a middle line, supporting neither Raila nor Ruto. While this is unlikely to be good enough for either of them, it is also unlikely to antagonise either of them into doing something that could upset the existing arrangements.

While some may choose to see Kenyatta’s balancing game as something that places him above the Raila/Ruto fray, another way is to see him as a prisoner in the quarrel between the two.

If the handshake was calculated to establish a new, consequential, political reality for the country, the window for doing so is fast closing. After an initial setback, the result of how unforeseeable the Kenyatta/Raila détente remained before it happened, Ruto has regrouped very well and will erect roadblocks for the two if their further actions undermine his political ambitions.

The effect is that rather than opening space for a new political reality, the handshake is maturing into new political stalemate, of the kind that existed between Raila and Kenyatta. The difference now is that the stalemate has Raila and Ruto on opposite sides, and a prevaricating Kenyatta between them.

In the circumstances, a stalemate may not be bad, and can even be a blessing. The reason why Kenyatta and Raila now find themselves boxed in is that they thought that, on their own, they would be strong enough to stage a mysterious political agenda under the handshake. Checkmated by Ruto, the two need support from somewhere to break the tie.

The only source of support that can break the stalemate is the long suffering public, which the two intended to ignore.

Having failed to impose on the country an agenda that the two conceived in a dark room somewhere, Kenyatta and Raila must now come clean, explaining that the country has problems that need to be addressed, and inviting a participatory framing of possible solutions.

While there are already grave, and ever-growing, reasons for fearing a future in which Ruto has ultimate control, Kenyatta and Raila must demonstrate that they are acting in the public interest, rather than just for themselves, as a means of securing much-needed support which not even the now-redoubtable Ruto can resist.