William Ruto regretted backing Raila's 2007 top bid weeks to polls

Azimio la Umoja leader Raila Odinga and President William Ruto. [File, Standard]

Ahead of the 2007 General Election, pitting the incumbent President Mwai Kibaki against his closest challenger ODM leader Raila Odinga, there was a spirited campaign by the opposition to clinch power.

At the time, William Ruto was one of the fiercest campaigners of Raila having traversed with him the nooks and crannies of the country and looked at possibility of getting into government through the ODM chief's victory.

Aden Duale who actively participated in the campaigns notes in his autobiography, For The Record, that weeks to the 2007 elections, he bumped into Ruto and former Tourism minister Najib Balala who were Pentagon members, at a hotel in Nairobi. They were upset with Raila over some unilateral decisions he had made.

"What's wrong with this man?" Ruto complained.

"I don't know. He doesn't have power yet, but he's behaving as if he has it all," Balala said.

"I knew they were talking about Raila, because I had also witnessed a certain air of importance about him, a willingness to entertain sycophants and praise singers, and shut down those who told him the truth, or who called out exciting but silly ideas that the sycophants put out," Duale writes.

The Defence Cabinet Secretary says he knew Ruto was unhappy with Raila's leadership style, perhaps because he could see some obvious campaign missteps that he (Raila) made as he led ODM to elections and he (Ruto) voiced these in the many meetings the Pentagon members held. Raila listened to some and ignored others.

"Duale, tell your friend that he must listen to wise counsel," Ruto told me.

As a Raila loyalist, I just laughed off their concerns.

Duale notes that Ruto and Balala appeared to be regretting their decision to support Raila's presidential candidacy, but at the time, it was too late to pull out. "They hung in there, hoping Raila would change. At some point, they sat Raila down and told him if he didn't listen, he would lose," he says.

Ruto, the CS reveals that he expected to be the third in command and land the Prime Minister position because he believed he had worked hard for it.

After the peace accord brokered by former UN Secretary General Koffi Annan that led to formation of the Grand Coalition Government, Kibaki and Raila took their lieutenants to agree on the number of ministers so that it would be shared out into two.

Raila asked Ruto, Sally Kosgey, Musalia Mudavadi and James Orengo to meet the PNU side and agree on the size of the Cabinet. And in the ensuing haggling, ODM insisted that since PNU had the president who was also the Commander-in-Chief, they yielded the Defence Ministry as well but asked that all the ministries be divided equally putting in mind their portfolios.

The talks dragged and eventually, Kibaki and Raila decided to ignore the team and went for rendezvous at Sagana lounge where the ODM team believed the former Prime Minister was played.

"Raila went to Sagana with Dr Mohamed Isahakia only to find Kibaki sitting with a trusted adviser and Head of the Public Service Francis Muthaura and Dr Romano Kiome."

When Raila came back from Sagana, he had the ministries of Local Government, Roads, Immigration, National Heritage, Cooperatives, Youth and Sports, Higher Education, Tourism, Agriculture, Medical Services, Water and Irrigation, Regional Development, Northern Kenya, and Arid Land and Public Services.

Duale writes that Kibaki had just split some departments, elevated them to ministry status, and handed 'these shells to grateful but clueless Raila.'

The book says Ruto who had worked on securing a good bargain for ODM but was not happy. The only powerful seat left was the Deputy Prime Minister and Ruto thought it was his.

"But when Raila put names and faces to the dockets, he picked Mudavadi as Deputy Prime Minister, Ruto as Agriculture and made me an Assistant Minister for Livestock Development, favouring Mohamed Elmi instead as the minister for Development of Northern Kenya."

By appointing Ruto to Agriculture bearing in mind his background from the North Rift bread basket and him (Duale) they felt was a strategy to have them concentrate in their home areas.

"That is how we read it, but later, I consoled myself and bought Raila's rhetoric that none of us got what we bargained for. He wanted the presidency and landed on Prime Minister, ..... The better half loaf than nothing at all."

Duale, who admits he was a Raila loyalist until the elections, explains that Ruto gained a good following in ODM, which was dissatisfied with Raila's leadership style.

He added that, just like Ruto, a number of ODM parliamentary groups outside the Nyanza region were impatient with Raila because of missed appointments and open humiliation.

Ruto was among those being sidelined in ODM by Luo Nyanza MPs. Duale explains that Raila also sidelined some ODM leaders and instead preferred to work with sycophantic ministers and their assistants, mainly from his region.

In an explosive parliamentary meeting in Naivasha, where Ruto was the session chair, some ODM MPs including Duale poured out their hearts.

"ODM is a national party. We all participated in setting it up. It belongs to all of us." He says there was pin-drop silence and Raila enthusiasts 'squirmed in their seats.'

It was ODM's heart-to-heart session coming months after missed appointments and open humiliation, Duale says he had become impatient.

"That night as an assistant minister and a senior official of ODM, I decided to speak the truth to the rank and file of the party, I was annoyed, I was fearless," he says.

The CS says Raila told the late Maj Gen Joseph Nkaissery who was seated next to him that, when Duale sits, he takes to the podium and discounts his attacks. "Piga yeye kabisa," Raila is said to have told Nkaissery according to the late minister's confession to Duale.

"We are not your sycophants. Don't make decisions and expect others to fall in line. We have a huge stake in this party," Isaac Ruto, shot in support of Duale in what almost looked like it was choreographed.

After the stormy meeting they rose to depart for dinner. We rose at 10.30pm to go for dinner.

"After I served and sat down to eat," Duale says somebody tapped him on the shoulder. "I turned to look and there stood Orengo."

"You are asking for trouble. We will deal with you," Orengo told Duale.

Duale responded: "You people will sink the party. I am a member of Dujis Constituency, I represent my people. You also represent your people. You won't take me anywhere."

After dinner, he went to sleep. "I was tired of the shenanigans, disillusioned that even after we laid out our case, the party leader had instead let minions tell us off. When he spoke, he was cosmetic in his remarks, arrogant even. He did not acknowledge any wrongdoing."

Raila, Duale notes downplayed everything they had said. "It was as if he had brought us to the meeting for his close allies to threaten us and make him feel good; and for him to have the privilege to hear us out, then ignore us."

That night, Duale reached out to Ruto and the journey to leave ODM and its cult-like practices began.

Ruto, as he promised in their candid chat, got an appointment with Harambee House, and we met President Kibaki, together with then Head of Civil Service Francis Muthaura and Internal Security Permanent Secretary Francis Kimemia.

"Raila realised he had lost so many of us when he saw the coordinated, pointed questions during the prime minister's question time every Tuesday afternoon," Duale says.

The CS admits they were marked as ODM rebels. Ruto was included, but Raila was unable to kick him out since that required numerical strength in the House.

After some state officials stole maize from the National Strategic Reserves and sold it to South Sudan, ODM hatched a plan to pin Ruto, the Agriculture CS, on the scandal.

Duale explains that the maize was stolen after the elections, days before the country suffered hunger.

"The trade-off is that within ODM, people schemed to pin the scandal on Ruto, while within PNU, they wanted Raila to carry the skunk," Duale reveals. And by the time Ruto realised what was being planned, there was already a motion in Parliament to censure him.

"Those of us dissatisfied with Raila's leadership saw witch hunt and sided with Ruto, while Raila's sycophants were firmly behind their leader, but when the scandal was tabled in Parliament, they realised it was a bag full of street talk and gossip," Duale says.

Ruto said he was ready to resign if they had evidence against him but he would not resign if the allegations were being pushed by his political enemies who want to bring him down.