Kenyans have a right to question the President's mental wellbeing

Article 144 of the 2010 Constitution encourages Kenyans to reflect on their President’s health. It allows them to entertain the thought that the President could be physically and mentally unwell. Article 144 (1) frames it as losing  “physical and mental capacity to perform the functions of the office (of the President).

Kenyans are encouraged to ask, “Is all well with our President?”

We are allowed to label our President’s behaviour and, if need be, find out if he is still fit for office. Our Constitution especially encourages us to investigate our president’s physical and mental health. It also shows us how to go about this assignment. When the president has become uncontrollably noisy and cantankerous, respecting nobody – not even himself and the office he holds – the people have cause to fear that he could be losing it.

They must, accordingly, do the only thing that must be done, which is to find out if he is well. Characterisation of individuals depends on their conduct and bearing in the spaces they interact with.

President William Ruto’s deafening and insolent obsession with Uhuru Kenyatta, George Natembeya and Edwin Sifuna is beyond the pale.  It is sad when pejorative idiom starts becoming the only descriptor left for the person who holds the most respected and dignified office in the land. Office is often respected to the extent that it stops us from asking disturbing questions. 

Ruto has now brought us beyond these guardrails. He increasingly cuts a disturbing public figure that must be examined. For several months now, he has come across as an extremely frustrated and angry individual, entirely incapable of self-containment. His tantrums speak to a disturbed individual, who is at best courting public sympathy and pity. At worst, he is just not in control. And he would not know.

Sarah Elderkin, recently put it succinctly in this paper. Whatever his circumstances, Ruto’s public conduct is completely unbefitting of his office. He is simply unpresidential, and it is probably beyond his means to do anything about this. Maybe, only caring external professional intervention could help. It is sad that citizens should find themselves whispering about their President’s uncontrolled public outbursts of anger.

Our president’s performance is disgraceful. There is no other descriptor. When people increasingly question deviant behaviour that has invaded an individual, he would ordinarily find time for quiet reflection. He would ask himself whether all was really well with him. Having done so, he would probably begin showing signs of growth and development. But Ruto remains defiantly on course. He is feverishly cutting across the country, spewing angry and insolent words, stirring up partisan crowds to insurrection. We must ask the disturbing question. Is he in control?

It is useful to be more blunt and ask the wider question, “Is President William Ruto well? Is he physically and mentally sound? Is there cause for Parliament to begin the process of investigating the physical and mental health of the president, as contemplated by the Constitution?”

The converse is that President Ruto is simply in paranoic denial that the presidency could be slipping away from him. He seems to be both worried and afraid of next year’s elections. When you listen to members of his kitchen cabinet, you hear them saying, in stark terms, that they will steal the election and impose Ruto upon the country for a second term.

It is instructive that this is often said in Ruto’s presence, at public gatherings, and in the full glare of audio-visual cameras. The president makes no effort to discourage these inflammatory remarks. It is possible that he thinks that way, too. He imagines that he could acquire a second term in office by force. In this thinking, Ruto and those around him completely ignore the public mood.

The bad news is that, put together, Ruto’s anger –  and his acolytes’ war-mongering – spell doom for the possibility of a second Ruto term. But they also spell disaster for the country. Their inflammatory words are invitations to violent engagement. For, violence often begins in the mind. After the mind, it is verbalised as speech. And from speech it morphs into action. The action attracts counteraction. Suddenly, it is a free bloodbath. 

Does the fact that Kenya’s president is the lead player in the current dirty war of words call for invocation of Article 144? After his experience with the International Criminal Court a few years ago, Ruto cannot possibly comport himself the way he is doing, outside the fears addressed by Article 144? If Kenya does not act today, could tomorrow prove to be too late?

-Dr Barrack is a strategic communications adviser.