As Ruto crunches political arithmetic...

Kipkoech Tanui

If you combine the Kamatusa vote with Miji Kenda, to be brought on board by Trade minister Ali Chirau Mwakwere, central Kenya's political alliance by whatever name would be beaten hands down. This is not my calculation but backbone of the amalgamation of parties Eldoret North MP William Ruto has from his political kitchen been stirring, baking and ready to serve Kenyans in platefuls.

The starters already brought to the table and cleared by us, analogously is the ‘No’ vote in the referendum on the Constitution. So, just as the launchpad for Orange Movement was the ‘No’ vote wave in the 2005 referendum, so is the Red Card against the current Constitution going to be for Ruto and his brigade.

The assumption here is all members of Kalenjin, Maasai, Samburu, Turkana and Miji Kenda communities will vote for Mr Ruto, the fire-spitting former Higher Education minister, and that the designated tribal chiefs will deliver their communities in one basket to United Republic Party, now that the UDM dream has scattered with the winds.

Which reminds of an ill-intentioned wag who told me URP actually stands for Usual Ruto’s Puppets. Some others said on Facebook it stands for Ukiona Ruto Potea (when you see Ruto duck)!

Predictably the aroma spewing out of Ruto’s political kitchen, where he is donning white aprons with Adan Dualle, Joshua Kuttuny, Cyrus Jirongo, and a host of Kalenjin MPs whose re-electability is a matter of conjecture, has been most inviting and enchanting to the Kalenjin community where Ruto enjoys stardom, and is almost a political deity.

It seems it matters little that on a road race from Nairobi to Mombasa, he takes his team to Naivasha first then start the race to catch up with a team already in Emali.

Of course to catch up you either have to risk burning yourself out or resort to roguish tactics. On this ethnic arithmetic, bear in mind that for the Maasai, the designated chief is Francis ole Kaparo, while for the Turkana, it is David Ekwe Ethuro.

The Hague roadblock

For the other non-Kamatusa communities there is no shortage of presumptive tribal chiefs such as Dualle (Somali), Omingo Magara (Abagusii) and even the two Eastern Province politicians, Mithika Linturi and Kiema Kilonzo, who are, however, seen to be either sitting on the fence, playing safe, or are in Ruto’s gunboat shingo upande (half-heartedly) for the Meru and Kamba, respectively.

I am told Ruto is keen on wrestling Nyanza from Raila and that he will be making more trips there, praying he will be met with the ‘rudi ODM’ enthusiasm that greeted him in Kisumu last month.

A friend of the Eldoret North MP told me his dream of taking over State House is buoyed by the fact that in their mathematics, Kamatusa vote is 600,000 more than that of the Gema group, that is Kikuyu, Embu and Meru communities, and the latter-day entrants to this club, the Akamba.

That is why in Ruto’s game of numbers, the political assault against Raila would be two-pronged; either amass the Kamatusa vote and fight Raila man-solo, or team up with Uhuru, hoping The Hague does not erect a roadblock on either of their roads, and form Uhuru-Ruto alliance, in which case the running mate would be obvious.

But as we have said earlier, Kalenjins expect Ruto to run, not to take them to the T-junction where they will agonise over whether to take the route down to the lake, or the arduous one climbing Mt Kenya again.

And if he does not run, for which he is under pressure because of the belief this would force a run-off at which point Raila may be buried alive, Ruto may never be the prize bull in the Kalenjin kraal thereafter. So win or no win, and buoyed by the nostalgia of the days retired President Moi was at State House, the ball is on the roll for Ruto in as far as Rift politics is concerned.

That is why it is not so much about parties and what they stand for, but just a political vehicle for Ruto. It is this affinity to move in and out of parties, the tendency to court and reinforce tribal loyalty, and the deployment of similar political strategies that makes me wonder why Raila and Ruto often look so much alike, even in the way they run their parties, and yet are so far apart.

Already in the Rift, there are murmurs over the three-year journey in the UDM wilderness, which Ruto took Kalenjins saying he knew what he was doing and where he was taking them, only to be humbled by political greenhorns in UDM. But again, the best excuse is to blame the fiasco on Raila just like the ICC case, and National Security Intelligence Service, who Ruto’s group see as part and parcel of Uhuru’s electoral machine.

Inside URP kitchen

But even in the hurry to get a new home, Ruto’s group should have remembered that by picking on a cow horn as symbol, which is coveted by pastoralist groups and even used as beer cups by Gema communities, at political rostrums, the shouts of URP may be met by cheers of Ng’oooooombe!

Now it is up to you do decide whether this is good, just like Kalonzo and his Wiper thing, which could easily fan the imagery of baby wipes that do not come cheap in supermarkets.

But anyway, Ruto too needed a piece of the regional pie just like Kalonzo’s Akamba Wiper and Eugene Wamalwa’s Bukusu New Ford-Kenya.

By the way I am also told the Ruto team would never leave Eugene alone in the kitchen because he is too cozy with Uhuru and who knows what he may just put into the food cooking in the URP boat.

The bottomline is that you have not heard the last on Ruto and Uhuru, and that could be why the son of Jomo is busy refurbishing his old Kanu castle. All because in Kenya all politics is tribal.

The writer is Managing Editor, Daily Editions, at The Standard.

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