It is less than seven months to the general election and it’s clear the frontrunners are Deputy President William Ruto and ODM boss Raila Odinga.
DP Ruto has a double digit lead against Raila [according to Tifa's opinion polls in November], while other hopefuls in the One Kenya Alliance are in single digits.
What is interesting to note is the clear shift between Ruto and Raila in terms of their brand of politics.
To begin with, Ruto is the deputy president, while Raila is the opposition leader. However, ever since the handshake in March 2018, Raila’s ODM/Azimio is more government, while Ruto’s UDA is more opposition, in government. And it’s an open secret that the state candidate is Raila.
Second, the question of who represents what interests is critical. Ruto’s presidency would essentially be a continuation of the Jubilee administration.
However, Raila is the one who seems to carry the baggage of incumbency, especially since Ruto has been largely sidelined by the very government he helped create.
This provides a grotesque scenario whereby Raila wants to take credit for an administration he never formed, while Ruto has had to openly criticise his own jubilee government.
In whose hands are we safe? Who has more experience?
Two things emerge: Raila is older at 77 years and has been in the Executive for about nine years as minister during the 1998 Kanu-NDP Cooperation/merger, minister in the first three years of the Narc government, and five years when he served as prime minister during the grand coalition government of 2008-13.
Ruto, on the other hand, has served as assistant minister attending Cabinet meetings, as minister under President Mwai Kibaki for five years and as deputy president for 10 years by the end of his term.
In terms of experience of running government, Ruto has an upper hand. Raila has been the doyen of opposition politics, having been in the trenches for many years, championing the cause of the common mwananchi.
As we head to the polls, Raila has shifted his brand of politics to that of being pro-establishment hence winning the backing of the shadowy state mandarins commonly known as the ‘deep state’. This, however, alienates him from his erstwhile constituency.
Ruto, on the other hand, was seen to be prop-establishment for a long time. If fact, many people had come to associate him with status quo since his entry into politics was through the famous YK92 lobby group.
He has, however, adopted a pro-people agenda, with the bottom up economic model as his rallying call to resonate with the masses across the nation and beyond tribe.
Politics is a game of strange bedfellows. Raila is championing a Sh6,000 handout programme to the poor and the unemployed, a policy inspired by his left-leaning redistributionist history.
Ruto is focusing on business-oriented empowerment through enterprise development. His rhetoric is right of centre bordering on ‘social’ re-engineering.
Pro-status quo networks of money and patronage as typified by the Mt Kenya Foundation essentially make Raila the candidate of the right wing. This is the most ironical of situations in our present day Kenya that the right has a candidate that is left leaning and a traditionary right wing candidate has his support base with the hoi polloi.
Raila thus represents the past and its history, by promising the conservatives of security of property, and stability. Thus the older generation that has enjoyed first, second, and even third generation privilege in post-independence Kenya find solace in his candidature through a one-term, low energy presidency, before taking over to continue ‘governing’ Kenya (enjoyment of state largesse).
Ruto, having been edged out of the high table, has formed a coalition with the masses through young upcoming leaders promising equal opportunity for all.
Considered an outsider by those who have long sat at the high table of power, his candidature scares them due to their fear of going into oblivion.
This was heretofore Raila’s dilemma only that this time round, he has chosen to join the elite. He is currently enjoying unrivaled mainstream media coverage that they own or control, while Ruto has had to rely on the social media that the younger Kenyans who form his core support base are increasingly relying on to get news: It is more openly sourced thus democratic save for fake news.
Raila is the guru of coalition politics and is thus relying on small tribal parties to shore up his ambition, while Ruto has mastered the art of building one strong united national party as demonstrated during the recent voting in the National Assembly. The Azimio coalition of seven parties had 158 votes against UDA caucus’s 138. This is a clear case of direct nationalism (national party) versus tribal nationalism (coalition) as building blocs towards legitimate capture of state power.
In matters religion, Raila borders on the traditional as recently quoted at PAG Lang’ata, stating that a traditional medicine man (mganga) ‘treats’ people. Ruto has on his part largely relied on churches as his key entry point to the masses; regularly quoting the Bible and leading prayers.
In conclusion, these glaring differences shall be amplified as we get closer to elections and its only then that the true title of ‘the 5th’ shall be conferred upon the ultimate winner!!
