Uhuru playing political rugby

One day, the animals decided to go see the Lion, which was eating them to the point they were getting extinct. They agreed with the lion that they would each day send one of them to be eaten so they may also have time to reproduce.

On the day that a little Rabbit was to be eaten, he went and told the Lion that they were six of them but another Lion ate the rest. The angry Lion demanded to be shown where the other Lion was.

The rabbit took him to a well and asked the Lion to peep inside. On seeing his reflection, the lion decided to attack the other Lion and this is how he jumped into the well and drowned.

Politics needs such smart wits if one is to survive and these skills are also used in sports as a way to disarm the opponent. It’s a known fact that President Uhuru Kenyatta was an avid rugby player at St Mary’s School, Nairobi, during his high school days.

Clearly he loves the sport, and on many occasions, he has invited the Kenya rugby teams to State House for a camaraderie reception. I am not too sure what position he played in the game but he most likely was a good player given some of the political moves he has been playing of late in the political field.

Rugby is contact sport unlike football and for those who understand the game, it is very fast-paced and requires that the players to constantly produce ‘dummy runners’ to confuse the opposing players and therefore avoid being hard tackled.

At every stage in the last one year, President has produced deft political moves that have caught his political opponents flat-footed as he speeds off executing his agenda. More than a year and a half ago on the steps of Harambee House, he was able to cool the political temperatures in the country with a single handshake with opposition leader Raila Odinga.

With that move, Uhuru made his political rival a partner in his quest to ensure that the country remains united and cohesive. And with this unwritten coalition agreement, the president brought the support of the opposition into his development agenda.

Unfortunately, most supporters of Deputy President William Ruto see this relationship in the lens of succession politics. They are not seeing the masterstroke that is Uhuru’s dummy move on the opposition.

The divisions in Jubilee erupted almost immediately after the handshake and we had the battle lines drawn in the sand with many coalescing around the formations of Tangatanga and Inua Mama. They began openly campaigning against the Uhuru-Raila led reconciliation agenda dubbed the Building Bridges Initiative.

For a while, it seemed that Uhuru was cornered since he was loudly silent on taking on these political formations since they were led by very senior members of his party and key Jubilee MPs.

However, when these groups began taking their campaigns too frequently into his political backyard of Mt Kenya and mutated into the narrative that ‘who wins the region wins Kenya’, he hit out candidly at a function at Kasarani stadium.

The bride price to secure the Mt Kenya vote is now not obvious and surely not solely for the taking of William Ruto. On several occasions, Uhuru has left many guessing as to who he intends to support for the 2022 ticket unlike the chorus that was sung during the 2017 jubilee campaigns when the chant was ‘Uhuru Kumi-Ruto Kumi’.

Clearly this was just rugby ‘dummy run’.

The debate is now on a referendum; which no one is sure will happen but seems most likely. Again we are seeing the opposing side either coalescing around the handshake or Ruto’s 2022 bid.

Already, Raila has already blazingly stated that those who are opposed to the referendum will be swept by the political storm. The President himself having already publicly indicated that he believes constitutional reform is necessary he most likely is readying himself for another ‘political rugby’ move that will leave his opponents flatfooted.