A year later, the Jubilee leadership must learn to accept and move on

President Kenyatta (Right) and Deputy President Ruto (Left). The Uhuru-Ruto administration has continued to play on the factors that united the base against real and imagined foreign enemies. PHOTO: FILE

What you need to know:

  • Even after coming into office, however, the Uhuru-Ruto administration has continued to play on the factors that united the base against real and imagined foreign enemies.

Depending on your chosen vantage point, the Uhuru Kenyatta-William Ruto tag-team has either been a roaring success or an unmitigated disaster. Or anywhere else in-between.

As the president and deputy president at the head of the Jubilee coalition assess their first year in office tomorrow, exactly one year since they formally took office, they should be engaging in self-analysis.

Unfortunately, politicians are not given to standing aside and looking at themselves dispassionately. More often than not, they are driven by delusions of grandeur. They honestly believe that the public adores them, and that they can do no wrong.

On the rare occasions they admit to some shortcomings, they will manufacture easy scapegoats in the opposition or in external enemies.

In the run-up to the first anniversary, President Kenyatta asked all Cabinet secretaries to make public self-appraisals of their respective dockets.

One would have expected that a Cabinet for the first time in Kenya drawn almost exclusively from professionals, academics and technocrats outside the regular political networks would offer some honest self-appraisal.

But when the reports started coming in, it became evident that the Cabinet secretaries had adopted the habits of their political masters. All offered glowing assessments of their achievements, but hardly anything on failures.

Most of the dry and stultifying reports concentrated on the humdrum things the ministries did as a matter of routine. Jubilee administration.

That was not surprising. The ministries were told to report on their achievements, not their failures. In that scenario, even occasionally reporting to work on schedule can be listed as an achievement.

The administration, in any case, has perfected the art of blaming external foes, and that should not be surprising for a regime that rode to power on galvanising its key support base against real ‘foreign enemies’ and their local ‘agents’.

FANATICAL SUPPORT

Way before the Jubilee team was elected, I offered that a day would come when Mr Kenyatta and Mr Ruto would genuflect at the feet of then ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo for an indictment that gave them reason for being.

Add to that the “choices have consequences” warning from the US State Department and the “limited contacts” threat from the British High Commission, and the perfect ingredients were offered to build the near fanatical support that condemned opposition leader Raila Odinga to yet another defeat.

Even after coming into office, however, the Uhuru-Ruto administration has continued to play on the factors that united the base against real and imagined foreign enemies.

To the believers with religious fervour, anything and everything, probably even drought and pestilence, must be blamed on Mr Odinga, US President Barrack Obama, British, German, Scandinavian and other Western leaders, former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Mr Ocampo and his successor Fatou Bensouda, and every other person or entity around the globe who has not in the Jubilee fan club.

Such an environment does not provide room for honest self-appraisal. Instead, it is geared towards hero-worship, condemnation and silencing of independent voices.

In my own assessment, the UhuRuto administration is neither a roaring success nor an abject failure. It has recorded some important achievements, key among them being the way in which it parlayed the negatives of ICC indictments for crimes against humanity to first ensure electoral victory, and then wage a campaign that has united Africa behind the Kenyan leadership.

There is no doubt now that the ICC cases are in very perilous state. Key Western nations that sought to isolate President Kenyatta and Deputy President Ruto are having  to look for face-saving ways to mend fences.

Whether the cases ran into trouble because they were built on straw in the first place or because key witnesses were intimidated or made to disappear is a story for another day.
Going into the second year, there is a need now to borrow from one stultifying Jubilee mantra: Accept and move in. We will not move forward by looking backwards and blaming imagined enemies for our own failures.