Many of us still remember how shocked we were when the Supreme Court invalidated President Uhuru Kenyatta’s victory following the 2017 general election and sent him to seek a fresh mandate from Kenyan voters.
Whether you considered this to be a singularly unfair and unjustified ruling or thought – as someone told me at the time – that “those who have been rigging us out have been caught in the act at last” in each case this decision must have come as a surprise.
And it has always been so with Kenyan general elections: At some point – before, during, or after the voting – some major surprises would spring up.
On this score of having many surprises, the current pre-election year has not disappointed.
First, ask yourself this: if in the months immediately after the 2017 elections, someone had predicted to you that come 2022, the humble wheelbarrow would evolve into the most potent symbol of youth economic empowerment, would you have believed it?
Especially bear it in mind here that the political tag-team of President Uhuru Kenyatta and Deputy President William Ruto had come into power in 2013 proclaiming a new ‘digital’ era in Kenyan politics, and declaring that each and every Kenyan schoolchild would receive a personal laptop. Yet here we are with wheelbarrow symbols everywhere.
But of course, the greater surprise, and one which even the most perceptive of political analysts could hardly have speculated on, is that at this point in the current election cycle, it would be Dr Ruto who would be touting the virtues of the wheelbarrow and the ‘hustler nation’, while – to put it bluntly – being out in the cold.
And that it would be veteran opposition leader and former Prime Minister, Raila Odinga who would have the full machinery of state behind him, despite his not having any formal role inside government.
All these are remarkable surprises. But there is one which is ongoing, and yet does not seem to have been much discussed: Why does Dr Ruto have none of the acknowledged regional political heavyweights backing his bid for the presidency?
True he has immense support in Central Kenya: something that was beyond all dreaming back in the dark days of 2008, when he was perhaps the politician most vilified by the people of that region.
But we know two things about Kenyan voting patterns when it comes to presidential elections:
First, that having the support of MPs is an extremely poor guide of the candidate’s likely support in any region, as about 70 per cent of all MPs are doomed in advance to lose their seats. So having a dozen or so MPs accompany such a presidential candidate as he goes round the country selling his agenda is no real signifier of electoral support, much less victory.
Second is that the support of acknowledged ‘regional kingpins’ is far more dependable. These are men who have come to personify the aspirations of a region; a region defined both by a shared culture and language, as by its economic base (ie, most of the people there grow the same cash crops or are all herders).
At any one time there are rarely more than half a dozen such men in the country, and at this time, apart from Raila and Dr Ruto, the others are all in the One Kenya Alliance. And it is noticeable that the leaders of the OKA will rarely direct any harsh words at Raila; but they in general continuously sneer at the ideas for national redemption put forward by Dr Ruto.
Nor has Dr Ruto made any attempt to appease this group, often terming his political rivals (both OKA and Raila) as dynasts who seek to ride to power on the coattails of their famous fathers.
So, from this distance, we would speculate that the One Kenya Alliance is more likely to end up working with Raila than with Dr Ruto. Which makes Dr Ruto the first substantive ‘Lone Ranger’ candidate for the Kenyan presidency who has managed to get serious traction in various parts of the country.
This too is a real surprise, as leading candidates usually have a team of regional kingpins behind them.
