Long before it became obvious that President Uhuru Kenyatta had no desire to have Deputy President William Ruto to succeed him as president, the DP was already in overdrive in his presidential quest.
The quest began on the day after Ruto was sworn as deputy president in 2013.
On that day, he must have known three things: One, that only he, the TNA leader, their close allies, and the system knew they would be sworn as president and deputy president after round two of the polls regardless of what happened at the election.
As I have maintained since 2013, nobody attained the requisite 50%+1 in round one of the presidential election. However, Raila Odinga’s campaign was so poorly managed that the vote was close enough for the system control folks to do away with the runoff.
To be sure, and as I have also readily admitted, had there been a runoff, Uhuru would have won because the Cord campaign was badly organised compared to Raila’s 2007 bid.
It will never be understood why the system chose to rig the elections in round one instead of simply going to a runoff and winning cleanly. But again, in politics, nobody trusts even themselves.
This is the first thing Ruto knew — they were sworn in not because they met the constitutional threshold but courtesy of the system.
Secondly, Ruto knew that if the system was able to have them sworn in 2013, come 2017, the voters elected them, thanks to miracles they would have performed in their first term.
Except no miracle happened and the only records broken were massive looting and backbreaking loans that will burden the country for decades.
Indeed, as 2017 approached, there was hush-hush talk that Uhuru would replace Ruto as his running mate. This was because it finally dawned on Uhuru that while he was asleep at the wheel, his deputy was busy amassing wealth and creating his own power base in the Mt Kenya region at his expense.
Balancing the pros and cons of replacing Ruto as running mate, however, the powers that be decided it was far much better to retain him but later either have him removed as deputy president or completely neuter him politically in the second term which, of course was guaranteed.
This is the third thing Ruto knew and knowing this, he went into an overdrive in not only amassing more wealth but using the same to buy support mostly in Mt Kenya region.
For a while there, it looked as though if elections were held two years ago or even last year, he would have swept the region and possibly made it a close election countrywide against whoever was his primary opponent.
All that momentum in Uhuru’s backyard is gone and the inroads he made are now mostly covered in murky mud rendering them impassable and thus useless.
Some of his foot soldiers may be stuck in the same mud but they soon may just bail out, save for the most diehard and well fed.
Two reasons account for this. One, Ruto and his handlers completely underestimated Uhuru and two, they naively believed Raila is a spent cartridge. Neither of which was true as they are now painfully beginning to realise.
Meanwhile, while taking advantage of the lies and smears peddled in Mt Kenya region about Raila, Ruto has found nothing but love and admiration of Baba in all the crucial areas of the country where even just the liking of the man will deliver the votes he needs to win and be sworn as president.
