Confidence gap: Ruto's credibility test in politics of competing truths

Chinua Achebe made famous the Igbo proverb about the lizard of the iroko tree. The little reptile that jumped from the high tree said he would praise himself if nobody else praised him. It is about self-validation. You are encouraged to blow your own trumpet, if nobody else will blow it for you.

In Africa, glowing in your triumphs is a mark of dignity. National days, such as Madaraka Day tomorrow, are astute occasions for self-recognition and congratulation.

For an hour or so, the topmost lizard unleashes a catalogue of both real and imaginary achievements. It is mostly about big-push projects, intended to paint pictures of unprecedented diligence, performance, and success. Added to these are fresh promissory notes on bright futures.

And so it should be with the 63rd Madaraka Day in Wajir, tomorrow June 1, 2026.

In Kenya’s emerging fashion of taking State celebrations to different parts of the country, a national celebration is being held in a semi-arid north-eastern county for the first time. This in itself will be celebrated as an achievement by the William Ruto government, now at the tail end of its fourth year in office.

Ruto’s UDA-Kenya Kwanza-ODM broad-based government is cringingly clutching on the hope of a second term from August next year amidst mounting pressure from the opposition, civil society,  and the citizens. The regime has been on a four-year topsy-turvy economic odyssey.

Infrastructural investment decisions have taken the character of unpredictable spur-of-the moment road-side declarations, usually angling for instant plaudits.

Delivery has been difficult, because of the unbudgeted and unplanned nature of State promises. This has led President Ruto into multiple layers of promises on the same projects. Equally significant has been the itinerant nature of the presidency, and its launching and relaunching of the same projects over and over.

Wajir should be no exception. The President is expected to speak lavishly and glowingly on what has been achieved in Wajir, and in the larger north-eastern Kenya, since he took over in September 2022. He should unveil a catalogue of new promises for the coming days.

The government is likely to crow about the 10,000 seater Wajir stadium that has specifically been constructed to host the Madaraka Day celebrations. In the absence of much else to show, it is likely to talk of social inclusion, abolition of vetting for national identification cards, and possibly the planned upgrades of the referral hospital in Wajir County. Promissory notes are likely to be around roads and electrification, possibly with emphasis on renewable energy for the latter.

Last year’s Madaraka Day speech celebrated “62 years of progress after attaining self-rule.”

It emphasized “self-belief, national renewal, and transformative development, driven by the bottom up economic development agenda (BETA).” The presidential address spoke of a five percent economic growth, reduced inflation, and a stronger shilling, among other achievements.

In technocratic terms, the speech was fairly coherent and credible. It made defensible macroeconomic claims on inflation and on the Kenya shilling, especially on improved foreign reserves.

Agriculture was also doing reasonably well, in some sectors. Wajir is likely to hear more of the same. This is difficult to fault, despite the challenges that have been thrown up by the fuel crises in the country, and elsewhere in the world, as a factor of the American/Israeli war against Iran, and many pre-existent economic and social blemishes.

Yet, the central social and political question is not whether Treasury indicators are improving. It is whether ordinary Kenyans feel the impact of the professed improvement.

Put together with rising ethnic tensions, largely as factors of pronouncements by Ruto’s  own allies, tomorrow’s Madaraka Day finds Ruto in a profoundly more complicated place than what his glorious 2025 speech suggested. For, the Kenya Kwanza government has steered Kenya into the trap of good macroeconomics and bad politics.

Corrosive regime

The President’s iterative speeches and their echo by his acolytes paint the picture of “fiscal discipline” at the top, regardless of the validity of the picture. On the flipside is the picture of a corrosive and extractive regime towards its citizens. The cost of living remains a thorn in the citizen’s flesh, even as the State caws about big infrastructural projects.

The taxpayer can barely afford to continue funding President Ruto’s pet “affordable housing” programme. Put together with a largely dysfunctional Social Health Insurance Fund (SHIF), the cost of food, transport, school levies, and now the digital platforms, the Ruto regime has distinguished itself as the most painful rule in Kenya since the first Madaraka Day.

Ruto’s technocratic language is not matched with lived realities at the politically brittle grassroots. The citizen is weighed down by unemployment and underemployment, poor wages, high taxes, coercive State extraction, expensive fuel, reduced disposable income, and an ever growing psychological distance from the government. These are pulsating concerns that citizens expect to be practically addressed.

If the Ruto State’s official balance sheets look good, citizens are not feeling the goodness. The BETA of Kenya Kwanza looked brilliant during the 2022 campaigns.

While he was President Uhuru Kenyatta’s deputy, Ruto was the de facto leader of the opposition. BETA was good for the opposition. It was especially potent where it weaved structural inequalities in the country into a moral political narrative. It framed the adversity in the country as a factor of the tensions between hustlers and dynasties. Hustlers were suffering under the weight of dynasties, so the narrative went. Ruto was the messiah to save them.

Being in government has exposed the tougher question of redistribution. If Ruto was expected to redistribute, he has faced two major challenges.

First, is a debt-ridden economy, and next to that a conflicted State, whose captains would also like to line their pockets and feather their nests. The debt situation has led to harsh extractive decisions. Residing in this space are the painful realities of the housing levy (to fund Ruto’s populist developmentalism), SHA contributions, digital levies, fuel taxes, and dozens of other hidden taxes and punitive levies.

But the second challenge coalesces around corruption, opulence and wastage. This coalescence finds its best resistance in Gen-Z disaffection.

The 2024 June protests were a fundamental turning point. If they did not achieve anything else, they raised the bar of political consciousness and the need to keep the State on its toes at all times. They took away the legitimacy in Ruto’s rhetoric, even as he keeps trying to regain his 2022 agility. Gone too is the populist intimacy that he had with the people, especially in the Mt Kenya region. What remains is a thin layer of his evangelical façade, and his aura as a self-made political tactician.

Ruto gets into tomorrow’s Madaraka within the reality of many citizens feeling that hustlers are eating up other hustlers. He remains “hustler-in-chief” and “eater-in-chief.” He is now seen as the face of harsh taxation and merciless extraction, the chief architect of coercive governance.

Besides, he cuts the figure of the driver of elite isolation that expresses itself in unending lavish feasts at State House, permanent airborne helicopter forays across the skies, heavy fuel guzzlers on bad roads, even to celebrations that could be sufficiently covered by a presidential address on national TV, followed by a modest reception at State House, largely for the diplomatic community.

The Ruto presidency has lost the monopoly of believable narrative. The opposition has careered itself into that space, forcing the State to seek emotional energy in dangerous ethnic discourses.

Last week’s outburst by the UDA Secretary General, Omar Hassan Sarai, was an indication of the new levels of desperation in UDA quarters. Their own polls, led by ICT statistics wizard Davis Chirchir, indicate an ever growing dive. The regime’s popularity ratings are at an all time low.

The solution has been to turn the guns on retired President Uhuru Kenyatta and the Mt Kenya communities. This is yet another paradox in the Ruto presidency.

Politically, he looks stronger than he was in 2022–2023. He has broader parliamentary alliances, a deeper consolidation of the State, an expanded capacity for patronage, and a good foothold in the diplomatic space, especially with the Global North.

Yet, Ruto is symbolically and emotionally drained. Yes, he is in a good place with a captive Parliament, and in expanded patronage networks. But a presidency also requires a good place in public imagination.

To tap into this drying well, Ruto and his senior allies are presenting Mt Kenya and President Uhuru Kenyatta in appalling colours. In the words of Omar Hassan, they are “tribalists” and “exploiters.” They have “looted land” and God knows what else.

Accordingly, “they should prepare to leave the Kenyan coast and go back to their home,” because “the owners want back their property.”

Those are early signals for ethnic cleansing and pogroms that have previously been carried out against ethnic communities in Kenya.

But the signalling does not stop there. Ruto’s senior political allies are openly talking about “stealing” the presidential election next year. It would be naïve to minimize this kind of talk as rhetoric, strategic provocation, or as jokes. Something very important is being communicated, way ahead of the casting of the first ballot. Meanwhile, the damage to the Ruto presidency is immeasurable.

The first casualty is Ruto’s legitimacy, now and in the future. Even the very worst regimes in electoral fiction have claimed to have been democratically elected, in free and fair polls. They do not forecast intended vote theft and other forms of rigging.

In essence, the regime and its acolytes are signalling loss of legitimacy and crowing about State machinery. They are telling the country that they do not need its votes, anyway. They will remain in power after August next year, whether the people want it that way or not.

As backup, and in order to slant the aftermath in the event of massive vote rigging, the populous Mt Kenya community must be isolated and demonized.

President Uhuru has been pulled out to state that the Mountain is not the enemy of the nation. He told the country, in Kiambu last Monday, that the Ruto regime has failed to deliver its promises. In effect, therefore, it is looking for anything it could hang on, to save itself.

Uhuru cautions that the Ruto regime  is leading Kenya to a dangerous place, by reigniting the ethnic rhetoric and flames that burnt Kenya, in the post-election violence of 2007/2008. Overwhelmed by what Uhuru sees as its failures, the Ruto regime is manufacturing a bogeyman to heap on blame. Uhuru has cautioned Ruto against engulfing the nation in negative ethnic passions.

For his part, Ruto has recently distanced himself from those saying they will rig him back into office.

At the Thursday prayer meeting in Nairobi, he told Kenyans that the will of God shall be done next year. If God deems it fit, He will grant him another term. But if it is otherwise, he will accept and move on.

The truth is beginning to sink in, gradually, and which is a good thing. A regime that recognizes that the public is unhappy with its performance begins preparing to vacate. It may still do its utmost to salvage what is salvageable, but most importantly, it is psychologically prepared to leave the arena.

As he addresses the nation tomorrow, President Ruto may want to reflect on the sense of belonging as the true spirit of nation building. Beyond concrete and mortar, it is how the people feel.

Without losing his cool, he may want to do a Jesus Christ thing and ask the few honest people around him, “What are the people saying? How do they rate my performance?”

It is not enough to be the lizard of the iroko tree. For, even this reptile sometimes needs independent validationTruth be told: Kenyans are not happy. 

Dr Muluka is a strategic communications adviser