Ruto ought to understand Rift Valley is not the same as Kalenjin

Kenneth Kwama

Word on the street is that Agriculture Minister William Ruto will next month convene the mother of all rallies somewhere in Rift Valley and use the occasion to officially declare his candidature for the presidency.

If it happens, the rally will be the final act in protracted attempts by Ruto to seek political divorce from Prime Minister Raila Odinga. I presume the gathering will also endorse Ruto’s new association with another political party and not the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) of which he is the deputy party leader.

I don’t think it is politically smart for the Agriculture minister to declare his candidature in his backyard. He should have done it elsewhere, say Kisumu, Mombasa or Nairobi if he is honest about his intentions. But because speculation is rife about his intent, it is only right that Ruto be told a few truths to guide his future.

He has all along been guided by false belief that he controls the Rift-Valley block vote and as such, it will follow him anywhere he goes. It is a position that has woefully been misinterpreted by commentators.

It is true ethnicity is a dominant factor in the trajectory of our politics, but it is not the only factor as most commentators presume. Whether or not ethnicity will resonate in 2012 is predicated on a very dynamic and sometimes indiscernible confluence of narratives.

The question we should be asking ourselves is: Why do you assume a bloc Rift Valley vote to an issue like Mau forest evictions even when it is apparent that within the region itself, there are diametrically opposed sub-blocs on the Mau question?

Where for instance would such commentators place National Heritage Minister William Ole Ntimama and the Maasai, when you assert that Rift Valley will go Ruto’s way, or the Turkana, Marakwet and Pokot? Aren’t they also part of Rift Valley?

There have been suggestions that Rift Valley opinion leaders won’t support Raila in 2012. I think it is fair to say that there are Kalenjin (and it’s important to capture them as such) opinion leaders who have disagreed with Raila and will possibly not support him. Totally ignoring the opinion leaders in the Raila camp as at now is to make the same mistake pundits made while predicting the direction of the Rift-Valley vote in 2007. If you recall, because of former President Moi (a dominant opinion leader at the time) and his perceived preference for Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka as opposed to Raila, it was conventional thinking at the time that the vote would most likely go Kalonzo’s direction.

But Rift-Valley votes went overwhelmingly to Raila. The lesson here is that voter behaviour is very dynamic and can be quite responsive to the arguments at play during elections.

Given the fact that ethnic blocs are important in predicting the direction of votes, I think it would be helpful for Ruto and his supporters to decompose the Rift Valley vote before wholesomely counting on it. To go ahead and assume that it wholesomely belongs to them is an inconsistent tad, especially because the sub-blocs have several competing interests.