What they have done is gone to the opposition hospital room, where its leaders were barely solely by sheer will and not only nurtured them to good health, but also paid their hospital bills.
The irony here is after nurturing the opposition back to good, healthy life and paying their hospital bills, the hardliners now want to have them dead.
That is the definition of madness.
How did we get here so quickly? One hour after the Supreme Court dismissed Raila’s petition challenging the presidential election results of 2022, I penned and had published a piece in which I congratulated President William Ruto and said it was time to unite the country. I did so knowing fully well there was half of the country that felt bitter and many are still bitter to this day because of their belief the election was stolen.
Ruto did not have to do much to unite the country. In fact, the country gave him enough goodwill, which had he properly utilised, we would not be talking today about hardliners helping bring the opposition to life and also wanting them dead.
Unfortunately, the President has allowed himself to fall into a trap many a new president does to their peril. When former President George H Bush was running for president in 1988, he famously urged voters to read his lips as he declared to the country there will be no new taxes if he was elected president. Many a voter who felt overburdened with taxation showed up at the polls and helped Bush trounce the hapless governor of Massachusetts Michael Dukakis.
Bush rode his no new taxes pledge to the presidency but on becoming president, he broke the pledge and promptly did the opposite by increasing taxes. The voters angry with the broken promise, punished Bush by rejecting him on his second term bid, making him a one-term president.
In 2016, one Donald J Trump figured there was a large segment of the American population that was resentful and hated Washington. So the millionaire from New York (he claims he is a billionaire) somehow convinced millions of these poor to low income class populace that he was one of them and that if they elected he will come to Washington and “clean the swamp,” meaning rid the city of corrupt politicians who only cared about catering to special interests and not the average voter.
The gimmick worked and figuring out that lies were just as effective if not more effective in convincing these gullible voters to vote for him, Trump delivered a boat load of them to nauseating levels.
On being elected, Trump proved every bit of the incompetent, reckless and totally deranged person most Americans knew or feared him to be. Sober-minded independent voters and Republicans who couldn’t stand seeing their country going to the dogs joined Democrats to boot Trump from office.
Like Trump, Ruto rode on unprecedented populism unlike anything we have seen in Kenya and with help from elsewhere, he emerged victorious and was sworn as our fifth President. No sooner had he been sworn did things start going south for him.
To be sure, the cost of living was high during Uhuru’s last term, but Ruto promised to fix the economy and bring the cost of living down. The masses believed him but many of them now lament that the President long ago abandoned them.
So much so such that the opposition saw an opening to turn these masses against Ruto by holding the demonstrations many of us deemed uncalled for but only in the belief that the President needed time to address these economic issues.
Meanwhile, the cost of living continues to sore and the hardliners are promising to set the country on a collision course with herself.
Something we said and the world said never again.
A recipe for a one-term presidency.
