Yes, Ruto is Kenya's silver bullet in political chess, buying loyalty

President William Ruto during a meeting with teachers at State House, Nairobi, on September 13, 2025. [PCS]

President William Ruto says he is Kenya's silver bullet, a capsule of the first four presidents. Placed on the weighing scales of governance, leadership model and style, he is probably right.

All the four embraced pork barrel politics, neopatrimonialism, prebendalism and political particularism. President Ruto's Kenya Kwanza is the finest there has been in these respects. Ruto knows how to tap the hungers that afflict Kenyans. These hungers are mediated by a huge sense of ethnic sentiment, and accelerated by greed. The two mediators make most Kenyans easy prey to the political elite in divide and rule ploys.