Deputy President William Ruto is a consequential presidential aspirant with a 50-50 chance of winning or losing. The DP’s early campaigns place him in the frontline of the President Uhuru Kenyatta succession.
The possibility of being first or second makes it curious why the DP’s cantankerous allies forget the 60-year history of presidential exclusion.
Aisha Jumwa was the first to go rabid. She was scouting for an alternative meaning of what an ODM MP Junet Mohamed said half in jest. Joking about other people’s age and health was such a low for the Malindi MP. Kandara MP Alice Wahome saw ‘reveration’ in Junet’s statement. She was fear-mongering about imaginary exclusion, after the 2022 election.
Then there was Naivasha MP Jane Kihara’s ethnic slur on people who don’t pay rent. The flipside of the hate-mongering is that there are displaced Kenyans who are yet to return to their homes in Rift Valley, after the 2007-08 post-election violence.
MPs Kimani Ichung’wah, Ndindi Nyoro, and Rigathi Gachagua picked up the chorus. Gachagua enjoined CS Mutahi Kague in the rant. His worry was not what Junet said, but why the Health CS was clapping.
Gachagua’s reaction is consistent with his ogrenisation of ODM leader Raila Odinga. Fellow voyeurs have confessed they demonised the former Prime Minister only because he was competing with their sons – Mwai Kibaki in 2007 and Uhuru in 2013 and 2017. Murang’a Senator Irungu Kang’ata read exclusion even though Junet’s party advocates national reconciliation, through the Azimio la Umoja.
The responses would be excused, or ignored, if they came from allies of a drowning presidential aspirant. Team TangaTanga caned Junet with such fury, as if their strategy depends on demonisation of the competition.
Junet said the fifth president would come from Nyanza, during a fundraising in Kisii last week. The first president was from Central; the second from Rift Valley; the third from Central, and the fourth also from Central.
Jomo Kenyatta presidency was synonymous with Gatundu, which he represented in Parliament. Gatundu’s Ichweri village hosted visitors of the founding president. Other Kenyans went there as visitors. Old Jomo’s handlers were hardliners from Kiambu. The ‘Kiambu Mafia’ swore the presidential motorcade would not cross River Chania. Other Kikiyu districts – Murang’a, Nyeri, Kirinyaga, Nyandarua – were strangers to power.
The presidential standard crossed River Chania in 2002, after Raila Odinga declared Kibaki Tosha! Raila was the captain of the National Rainbow Coalition that campaigned for Kibaki during his third run for president.
During President Daniel arap Moi’s 24-year rule, executive power reposed in Baringo. He had residences in Kabarnet, Sacho, Kabarnet Road, Nairobi, and State House. Moi hosted visitors in Karabarak, which was synonymous with presidential power.
Kibaki was the patron of the ‘Mt Kenya Mafia’. He expanded his power circle to include David Mwiraria and Governor Kiraitu Murungi, from Meru. But the main call centre, during the decade he ruled, was State House, Nairobi. His Muthaiga residence was the citadel during the formative months of the Rainbow era.
Members of the Rainbow Summit, including Moody Awori, Raila Odinga and Charity Ngilu, had to go through shifty gatekeepers to see the president. Kibaki’s first State House comptroller, Matere Kiriri, rationed access to the president.
These reactions ignore 60 years of exclusion of many Kenyans from the centre. The feelings of the responders to a Junet joke is what other Kenyans have lived for six decades. This is what right-thinking citizens want addressed.
President Uhuru Kenyatta raised the same issue, in a different way, early this year, during the burial of ANC leader Musalia Mudavadi’s mother in Sabatia. Kenyans, he said, need change from the Rift-Central presidential relay.
