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Why there is method to Ruto's chaos of creating and solving major crises

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President William Ruto. [PCS]

There are many theories being propounded for Prezzo Bill Ruto erratic decrees, I’d have called it payukaring, but I am respectful, and which seem to suggest that the Head of State is in a state of discombobulation.

I am not talking of his sustained assault on the opposition which he charges, without adducing any evidence, they are brainless. Or even his recent rantings allegedly expelling some corporates from Kenya forthwith, only for his government to quietly ask the parties to draw up close to the table for a conversation.

Or his recent edict ordering foreign hustlers out of the country, only for them to be urged to stay on and regularise their stay. After all, Prezzo Ruto seemed to suddenly realise, tit-for-tat attacks on our hustlers elsewhere would leave everything and everyone in a disarray. I did not invoke regional protocols that demand protection for such individuals because none of that really matters to Prezzo Ruto.

I used to think he was fashioning the State in his own image, but Siaya governor Jimmy Orengo thinks it goes far deeper. He says Prezzo Ruto is intent on grabbing all the nation’s wealth for himself, including the rivers and the seas and the mountains. I don’t know if that’s possible but in our country, one can never tell. Everything lies in the realm of the possible.

I refuse such analyses because, as Prezzo Ruto keeps reminding us, he is not a mad man, so he knows what he’s doing. I’m inclined to concur with him. Just see the anxiety that his 20-second soundbite has generated all over the world, especially in regard to Burundian hustlers.

Prezzo Ruto is well versed with the doctrine of pan-Africanism, at least the version that endorses issuance of the Kenyan passport to Sudanese warlords fleeing from justice after orchestrating genocide in their own land, specifically targeting black women and children in Darfur. That, too, is not my problem. If one wants to dine with the devils, who are we to stop him or her?

A short history of migration teaches that my own ancestors were domiciled in the Congo forest barely a few centuries ago. In that sense, I am Congolese. And in the last decade, my barbers have been Congolese. One has since relocated to the United States. When he speaks with those he left behind, he always remembers to send his regards to me.

I don’t think Prezzo Ruto is against foreign hustlers; though he doesn’t seem to remember it’s the local hustlers who voted him into power. But then, it’s been such a long time and Prezzo Ruto doesn’t seem to remember how he got himself to power. He even disputes his erstwhile deputy Rigathi Gachagua aka Riggy G played any role.

I wouldn’t say that power got to his head because that space is full of books on plant physiology that he read for his PhD. Neither am I persuaded that Prezzo Ruto’s erratic edicts are mere distractions.

I think his motivations go much further and deeper: Creating major crises and swiftly resolving them is a performative political strategy of acting God. He is the messiah who shall redeem the world. His word is law, and law is his word.

That may be so, especially given his insistence that, as recent polls show, almost all Kenyans think the country going in the wrong direction. But Prezzo Ruto thinks things have never been this good.

That’s possibly true, at least in his individual circumstances now that, as Orengo would have us believe, he is intent on grabbing every State asset and consign it to himself, evocative of French King Louis XIV who proclaimed: I am the State and the State is me.

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