Deputy President William Ruto walks a tightrope as allies defy party on contentious issues

The open defiance on the referendum campaign from a sizeable number of county governors from his URP wing of the Jubilee coalition places Deputy President William Ruto in a bit of a quandary.

This was emphasised last week when President Uhuru Kenyatta challenged Jubilee governors who are backing either of the separate referendum drives — one by the opposition Cord alliance led by Mr Raila Odinga and the other from the Council of Governors led by Bomet Governor Isaac Ruto — to resign and seek a fresh mandate.

President Kenyatta, speaking in Kericho, stressed that he and his deputy were speaking with one voice against the referendum campaign and asked Jubilee governors to follow suit.

BROWBEAT GOVERNORS

But left unstated was that, while the President has managed to browbeat governors from his TNA wing of the coalition, such as Nderitu Gachagua of Nyeri and William Kabogo of Kiambu, to abandon their initial support for the governors’ Pesa Mashinani campaign, his deputy has not been anywhere near as successful in his own backyard.

The public face of the referendum campaign remains the ever-defiant namesake of the Deputy President, Governor Ruto of Bomet, backed by his Rift Valley URP colleagues Simon Kachapin (West Pokot), Cleophas Lagat (Nandi) and Paul Chepkwony (Kericho).

Thus while President Kenyatta has mostly whipped his TNA-Central base into line, Deputy President Ruto’s Rift Valley-URP strongholds seem in rebellion against the Jubilee coalition platform.

This can greatly undermine Mr Ruto in two ways.

First, it might show that he is not in control of his own backyard, which would greatly undermine his position and clout in the power-sharing deal under which Jubilee was founded.

The unfolding scenario also serves to fuel suspicion amongst Mr Kenyatta’s TNA loyalists that Mr Ruto might be playing a double-game, expressing support and loyalty in public while secretly sponsoring rebellion from within the URP base.

There is no doubt that the UhuRuto duo get on famously well. In public the body language, jokes and laughter, use of first names, and easy familiarity suggest the best of friends, sometimes more like schoolyard pals rather than president and deputy.

But the camaraderie masks an underlying tension, which is to be expected of any political union brought together by expediency rather than a shared background, experiences and beliefs.

Although Mr Kenyatta and Mr Ruto were part of a team when the former was handpicked by then President Daniel arap Moi as his preferred successor on the Kanu ticket in 2002, they went their separate ways in 2007.

Ethnic alignments of the day drove Mr Kenyatta into supporting President Kibaki’s re-election bid under PNU, while Mr Ruto supported Mr Odinga’s bid on the ODM ticket.

COMMON FOE

In the post-election violence following President Kibaki’s disputed election victory, Mr Kenyatta and Mr Ruto came to be seen as the leaders of the combatants from opposite sides, and thus found themselves both facing charges of crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court.

Other than shared political pupilage in Kanu, the only other thing Mr Kenyatta and Mr Ruto have in common is the ICC indictments, and that’s what reunited them to fight a common foe and successfully make the entire campaign plebiscite against the ICC.

But the underlying issues came to the fore not long after the electoral victory when Mr Ruto’s allies led by his key pointman, Kericho Senator Charles Keter, started a loud campaign against powerful public officials inherited from the Kibaki regime.

In their sights were then Public Service head Francis Kimemia, Interior Secretary Mutea Iringo, National Intelligence Service boss Michael Gichangi and State House political adviser Nancy Gitau.

The four were accused of having used their positions, in the period before the Uhuru-Ruto rapprochement, to provide the information that had Mr Ruto nailed at The Hague.

HIDDEN HAND

Although Mr Ruto kept his counsel or publicly urged moderation on such demands, there was no mistaking the fact that Mr Kenyatta’s camp saw his hidden hand in the push fronted by his most trusted confidant.

The four officials have since all been removed over the past year or moved to less sensitive positions, but the kind of issues raised by Senator Keter have not abated.

First, there was his namesake, Nandi Hills rookie MP Alfred Keter, taking up the cause with all sorts of complaints against Mr Kenyatta’s leadership on issues such as public appointments, tenders, and allegedly inequitable sharing of the cake between TNA and URP.

Although Mr Keter’s loud campaign was publicly denounced by Mr Ruto, it seemed to gain some traction in the Kalenjin heartland, indicating that there were some issues the DP had to deal with in regard to demonstrating that he was not just a passenger in the coalition.

The younger Keter’s noise was petering out just as Governor Isaac Ruto leapt strongly onto the national stage with the referendum campaign, just the latest instalment in his duel with the national government over the rights of devolved government.

Although his is a national issue and one not tied to “domestic” Kalenjin, Rift Valley, URP or Jubilee, it is bound to be seen against the various constituencies and DP Ruto’s role and place in all of them.

This, then, impacts on the relations between the two coalition principals in the context of the ties that bind them together, and the presumption that Mr Ruto is slated to succeed Mr Kenyatta at State House.