How Ruto's political troubles pushed him toward Vision 2060

William Ruto, a complex, self-contradictory man, is ambitious, forceful, and politically calculating. Like US President Donald Trump, his American contemporary, he has contempt for history and the humanities and still expects history to be nice to him.

Each has disdain for others, innate messianic urges to reshape society, and wants recognition as being greater than any of their predecessors. In his desire to be recognized as greater than Jomo Kenyatta, Daniel Moi, Mwai Kibaki, and Uhuru Kenyatta, Ruto mounted grandiose schemes that effectively disrupt post-colonial institutions, create poverty, undermine national interests, and negate sense of sovereignty. He seemingly ‘privatized’ Kenya’s critical assets to foreign entities and to his emerging ‘new-class’ of the super-rich.

In the process, Ruto seemingly plunged the country into deep debts, appeared to take instructions from external forces, and watched the economy, national institutions, and basic services such as health and education deteriorate.

In return, he received praise and luxurious invitations as a privileged African ‘leader’. He fell into trouble with the Kenyan public in part because he was oblivious to Ptahhotep’s advice roughly 4400 years ago in ancient Egypt.

The vizier warned the ‘learned’ not to boast of their knowledge or pretend to know all and that it was “a foolish thing ... to speak on every kind of work.” He wanted leaders to be “honoured for knowledge and kindness”, upholding the law, not causing “fear among men for the God punishes likewise.” and also to avoid greed for “gluttony is an abomination ... the quality of a beast.”

Since Ruto repeatedly talks of his brilliance and ignores complaints and grievances because he is president, tensions developed in the country.

Consistent in dismissing other people as Mafala (idiots) who cannot measure up to him, he likes displaying ubiquitous consumption that leaves the poor mesmerized. A picture in Kilgoris during daughter Charlene’s betrothal ceremony appeared to capture the contrast between luxury and misery.

It showed concerned Raila Odinga Junior addressing hapless onlookers on the other side of the high fence, watching the grandees arrive in ‘helicopters’ and splashing wealth. No other ‘dignitary’ stopped to greet the on-looking wananchi who probably were wondering why they were not part of the ‘eating’ within their neighborhood.

Winnie Odinga, Charlene’s political power ‘sister’, joked about ‘sister’ Charlene snatching her potential man. Both are politically inclined ‘daughters’ of two of Kenya’s political power houses; the Rutos and the Odingas. The opulence displayed at Kilgoris contrasted sharply with the rising tensions in the country.

The accumulated unhappiness had several outcomes. First was the 2024 Gen Z uprising and the subsequent rise of the ‘goon’ political phenomenon in which seemingly ‘police’ protected thugs harass the public as a way of discrediting the demonstrators. Second, the Gen Z uprising effectively created an opportunity for a political alliance between Ruto and Raila Odinga to mount a campaign to remove Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua.

In addition, the Ruto-Raila gang-up produced the ‘broad-based’ UDA-ODM government in which Raila proxies were appointed ministers in what John Mbadi, one of the appointees, had called a ‘skunk’. This alliance, however, had led to friction within ODM as youthful members, led by Nairobi Senator Edwin Sifuna, expressed strong reservations to joining the ‘skunk’.

Third, Raila, having seemingly tarnished his image as a champion of the ‘oppressed’ by ‘betraying’ the youth to join Ruto, needed to do something to reprieve himself from his new negative political brush. Raila was good at re-engineering himself politically, as he had done in 2002 by abandoning KANU to jump into the winning Mwai Kibaki-Michael Wamalwa Kijana-Charity Ngilu side to declare ‘Kibaki Tosha’.

He reengineered himself again by gravitating to the youthful Sifuna wing of ODM by declaring that when Sifuna speaks, the party has spoken. Although Raila died defending Sifuna’s right to disagree and speak for ODM, his party was irreparably split.

There were two expectations arising from the Ruto-Raila gang-up, which flopped and produced two political movements associated with charismatic individuals. First was the failure of the expectation that Gachagua, re-baptized Wamunyoro, would fade into political oblivion.

He did not, because his resilience enabled him to recover in the eyes of the public by exploiting the perceived unfairness of his impeachment. This allowed him to come very close to his main dream of being accepted as leader of the Murima.

He had embarked on that dream as soon as Ruto made him his Deputy Presidential candidate in the 2022 election. As DP, he tried to discredit Uhuru, craved for ‘muthegi’, and tried to pressure other Murima leaders to accept him because he was Number Two in the country.

He also made unwise statements which alienated people and was reportedly violent to those who differed from him. The unfairness of the impeachment, therefore, was politically good for Gachagua because it energized him to fight back.

Fighting hard, with an inexhaustible supply of serious information, he attracted sympathy and support, coined the “Wantam” slogan to mean that Ruto would serve only one term, and he sent the Ruto team into a panic mood.

The other failed expectation was that ODM would fizzle out as an opposition force but it did not because the split in ODM became open. In the Oburu pro-Ruto faction, mainly those appointed ministers in the broad-based government, Junet Mohammed switched into a vocal Ruto promoter.

Many in the ODM followed Sifuna despite Ruto giving Raila posthumous presidential honours and awards. In Sifuna’s camp were Babu Owino, George Natembeya, and veteran political player James Orengo. Like Wamunyoro, Sifuna’s crowd-pulling prowess was unusually strong and politically worrisome. 

The perceived Gachagua and Sifuna political threat sent Ruto back to his political drawing board, especially after the Ol Kalao by-election fiasco for Ruto’s UDA.

Ruto seemingly reinvented himself as a man of vision and called on Kenyans to have a ‘conversation’ about his Vision 2060 instead of complaining about shortages of essentials. The repeated touting of his supposed successes sounded like a broken sahani’ playing in old gramophones because the ground looked and sounded different from what he was claiming.

He hoped that his new vision would be seen to deliver, better than his failing BETA, on its mission to take people to a mythical First World via an equally mirage Singapore. Still, there developed a dispute over the ownership of Vision 2060 as ODM leader Oburu Oginga, while demanding more pawa and policy positions in Ruto’s present and future governments, declared that his ODM fully supported Vision 2060 because it was Raila’s idea.

Whether or not Ruto borrowed Raila’s ‘dream’ of imitating East Asian economic successes, he supposedly ‘breathed life’ to the idea and was henceforth to be identified with it. He recruited four political scientists previously associated with the University of Nairobi, two from the ‘Murima’ (Michael Chege and Karuti Kanyinga) and two from the Lake (Peter Anyang’ Nyong’o and Peter Wanyande), to give his anticipated vision a semblance of intellectual seriousness. The four were reinforced by a Duke University economist, Hiroyuki Hino, whose IMF experience should have elevated the ‘Ruto Vision 2060’ above Mwai Kibaki’s Vision 2030 and the 1965 Sessional Paper Number 10 on African Socialism and its Application to Planning in Kenya. It did not.

Dubbed “Beyond Vision 2030”, the ‘Conversation’ was launched at KICC and turned out to be a big show that fell flat. Despite efforts to deny the ‘Conversation’ was a political move with Mbadi insisting that Vision 2060 was not Ruto’s, the public believed otherwise. \

Hino, instead of heaping expected praises on Ruto, short-circuited Vision 2060 by declaring that the Singapore dream was impossible in one generation and that it cannot be achieved with high corruption, wastage of public resources, and policy-making incompetence. That way Hino practically poured cold water on Ruto’s expensive but wet rebranding clothing. He seemed to compound Ruto’s woes.