Ruto at debate: Did he impress or disappoint?

Deputy President William Ruto’s wife Rachel Ruto was among the first Kenyans to comment on her husband’s performance after the presidential debate on Tuesday evening.

“Congratulations Bill,” she tweeted. “You were perfect. The last man standing. May God carry you through.”

Rachel accompanied her husband to the debate alongside their children and some of DP’s allies and was one of many who thought Ruto did well answering tough questions from Yvonne Okwara and Eric Latiff. 

But some Kenyans expressed their dissatisfaction with the DP, and claimed he was underwhelming and evaded questions that needed specific answers. Some would ridicule him online. Ruto knew he would be alone in the debate, with Azimio presidential candidate Raila Odinga having declined to participate. And so he would get ample time to clarify some of the issues the moderators would raise.

Right off the bat, the DP took the fight to President Uhuru Kenyatta, tying his failures to Raila, in a bid to score points. He had the benefit of Raila’s absence. The Azimio leader denied himself the chance to offload the baggage of incumbency that Ruto has spent years insisting he must bear.

It is a strategy his running mate Rigathi Gachagua consistently deployed in his debate with Martha Karua, Raila’s running mate. Gachagua had claimed that the Azimio team was part of the government, blaming them for Jubilee administration's unfulfilled promises.

But unlike his deputy presidential nominee, Ruto is the second in command and the moderators would remind him as much whenever he tried to escape responsibility for government’s failures. The plan to make the country food secure, Ruto would say, had been sabotaged.

That and many other plans fall under Jubilee’s Big Four Agenda of Food Security, Affordable Housing, Manufacturing and Affordable Housing.

But he was not just on a lamenting spree and proposed fixes that he said a United Democratic Alliance (UDA) government would implement. On how he would enhance food security, Ruto offered increasing agricultural productivity in a three-pronged approach.

But he was put to task over why the plan had not taken off, since it was one of the Jubilee promises.

“We went to the handshake and to BBI (Building Bridges Initiative) and the rest is history. We didn’t get time to do what we had promised,” Ruto said before adding that the president had sidelined him. But his narrative of sabotage did not explain the projects that failed during Jubilee’s first term such as the Galana Kulalu. And the DP’s plan to disown Jubilee’s failures was somewhat thwarted, taking up the burden of incumbency that opposition figures, the world over, use to spring their campaigns for “change.”

Ruto has based his campaign on stopping President Kenyatta from “extending his term” through Raila, who he has termed “a project.” But that card was put to its most formidable test, with questions on the role of the DP in the current regime, more so in the failings of the first term.

When the subject of tackling national debt came up, the DP was not as clear on whether he supported renegotiating the country’s debt obligations with international lenders. He had made a U-turn from his initial rejection of proposals of renegotiations, supporting it, rejecting it and in the end saying it was not “necessary.”

Ruto said it would be reckless to reach out to the lenders, which he said would send the wrong signals on whether Kenya could pay her debt. The statement would contradict his response to questions on whether Kenya’s debt was manageable. The national debt subject opened up debate on Jubilee’s failure to disclose contracts signed by the government with Chinese lenders, in violation of court orders, which he would blame on his limited powers as DP.

For most of the discussion on the topic, the DP projected helplessness, repeating several times that the buck stops with the president. But by later claiming he had pushed for “operationalisation of the Judiciary fund”, his powerlessness was put into question.

And he would de-link his role as DP from his personal role as a “leader.” He kept on with the posture of helplessness in the next of national security. He claimed he had been in charge of mobilising and providing National Police Reservists in Kerio Valley in Jubilee’s first term and said they were withdrawn in the second term to punish him.

Tasked to explain the conspiracy to punish him, Ruto said he had been offering a solution whose cause he had blamed on the competition for water resources. He said Arror and Kimwarer dam had been mooted to solve it, opening up a can of worms on the collapse of the project. He said it was cancelled for political reasons but was at pains to explain why the scandal was picked up by investigative agencies.