Deputy President William Ruto is going flat out to win the crucial Mt Kenya vote bloc in his epic battle for the presidency in 2022.
An analysis by the Star indicates that in the past two months, DP Ruto has hosted at least 35 delegations at his Karen home.
Of those 35 meetings, more than 20 of them were with Mt Kenya delegations.
This means that for every three meetings the DP holds in his presidential bid, at least one is with Mt Kenya groupings.
The region has more than five million votes and Ruto needs a high percentage to win State House.
Analysts say it won't be easy.
On Sunday, Ruto visited three counties in Central Kenya. He was in Kieni, Mathira, Maragua, Kihara, Kandara and Githurai.
And just a day after returning to Nairobi, Ruto hosted a big delegation from from Gatanga, Murang'a county, in Karen.
Over the last few months, Ruto has hosted delegation after delegation from Murang'a, Nakuru, Nyeri, Kirinyaga, Meru, Tharaka Nithi and Kiambu.
His troops are led by Mathira MP Rigathi Gachagua, Kiharu’s Ndindi Nyoro, Kikuyu’s Kimani Ichung’wah and Kandara’s Alice Wahome. They are seen with him nearly every day.
In the last four years, Ruto has frequently pitched camp in the populous region and could have visited many nooks and crannies in the vote-rich area.
The meeting and frequent tours of the region reveal the DP’s all-out efforts to ring fence the region.
He draws big crowds and there's talk of a Ruto wave, which his rivals discount.
This comes as President Uhuru Kenyatta and business tycoons attempt to draw the region away from him.
Central, the President’s backyard, voted to a man (and woman) for Ruto and Jubilee in 2013 and 2017. The crucial vote bloc propelled Uhuru and his party to victory.
Pundits say the DP must secure 100 per cent of the vote bloc to win.
Citing the recent parliamentary by-elections in Machakos, Kabuchai and Matungu, where the UDA candidates were defeated, analysts Dismus Mokua and Martin Andati argue Ruto has not built a new support base outside the traditional Jubilee strongholds.
This implies the DP has to get absolute support of the region to ensure a repeat of the ‘duopoly' of 2013 and 2017.
“In 2013, they (Jubilee) won by a paltry 4,000 votes [the magic 50 per cent plus one]. And in 2017, the courts ruled the elections were marred by irregularities and illegalities. So, we don’t have any numbers you can take to the bank," Mokua said.
“It therefore means that for Ruto to win the presidency in 2022, he must get 90 per cent voter turnout in Mt Kenya and out of that, he must get 90 per cent," he said.
In 2013, Uhuru got 6.17 million votes representing 50.51 per cent of the votes cast, while his main competitor Raila Odinga garnered 5.34 million votes, or 43.70 per cent.
Mudavadi came a distant third with 483, 981 votes, representing 3.96 per cent.
In 2017, the 10 counties of Mt Kenya combined (including Nakuru) had about 5.3 million of the 19.6 million registered voters in the country.
Regionally, Mt Kenya had 4.4 registered voters, Rift Valley (3.9 million), Nyanza (2.7 million), Western (2.27 million), Nairobi (2.25 million), Coast (1.7 million), Lower Eastern (1.5 million) and Northeastern (0.9 million).
Andati said the recent by-election in Kiambaa, where the UDA candidate defeated Jubilee’s by about 500 votes, points to an uphill task to consolidate the region and guarantee outright victory.
“He has literally been to every village in Mt Kenya. Why all these efforts? In Mt Kenya, with Ruto as the candidate, the turnout will not be as high as if one of 'their own' was running. That will not be good for him, so he has to fight,” he said.
In addition, the analysts said, Ruto faces stiff challenges that call for scaling-up activities to penetrate and ring fence the bloc. They cited dissenting voices from some leaders from the region, likely voter apathy, the nominations headache and the DP's falling out with the President.
“Martha Karua, Mwangi Kiunjuri and other MPs are splitting away. The mountain is running away. There is also the issue of running mate and then finally the challenge of the nomination," Andati said.
“Sitting MPs and those who feel have helped him will demand direct certificates and if you don’t give them certificates, they run away," he added.
Uhuru apparently has settled on ODM leader Raila Odinga as his preferred successor and has heightened efforts to rally top politicians and tycoons from the region behind the former prime minister.
On Thursday, political heavyweights and business leaders from Meru endorsed Raila for president in an historic gesture seen to have been orchestrated by the President.
In the meeting held at Safari Park Hotel, Meru Governor Kiraitu Murungi led the powerful delegation in endorsing the ODM boss.
“Raila is a strategist, a man of ideas, energy, focus and determination. He knows more history than historians although he is an engineer,” Kiraitu said.
The endorsement came days after the President held a closed-door meeting with the leaders at State House in Nairobi.
Other bigwigs seeking to succeed the President, including ANC boss Musalia Mudavadi and Wiper’s Kalonzo Musyoka, are also eyeing the region’s votes.
Earlier this week, Mudavadi announced that he could pick his running mate from the region, in an apparent effort to entice the area.
In 2013, Jubilee narrowly surpassed the magic 50 per cent plus one vote by fewer than 10,000 votes.
In 2017, the President won by more than 1.2 million votes but the victory was nullified by the Supreme Court.
The apex court, then headed by Chief Justice David Maraga, said the polls were marred by illegalities and irregularities.
Uhuru’s main competitor, Raila, who challenged his victory, boycotted the repeat presidential election. Uhuru won with a margin of more than six million votes.
Nyeri Town MP Ngunjiri Wambugu said Mt Kenya will determine who becomes the next President.
“Ruto had tried to lock it by building a narrative that after Uhuru, it will go straight to him in 2022. But the Kiambaa by-election has shown the region is up for grabs,” Ngunjiri had said after the Kiambaa polls.
However, Ruto's men from the region say he has not only penetrated, but also locked the region.
His UDA party, they say, is the most popular and warned those who won't come onboard that they will be swept away.
"UDA is the party of choice not just in Mt Kenya but across the country. In Mt Kenya, you are either with us in UDA, or on the other side of Raila Odinga who is the President's project in the 2022 general election," MP Gachagua said.
(Edited by V. Graham)
