Handshake: Raila, Uhuru braced for Ruto’s punches

Watching Kenya’s politics can sometimes feel like sitting through a village tailor’s repair job on an old garment.

The holes may look patched up fairly well, but you still leave the workshop thinking that sooner or later the garment will burst open at the seams again.

The March 9 handshake between President Uhuru Kenyatta and his opponent in the past two elections, Raila Odinga, brought a sense of calm to the streets of Nairobi and other opposition strongholds where the prospects of further protests cast a long shadow.

But, as sure as day and night, the so-called ‘Building Bridges’ unity pact between the scions of Kenya’s most famous political dynasties is sparking deep divisions elsewhere.

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The magnitude of force with which the little kalausi handshake has arrived on some sections of the country has been simply stunning; it has taken barely two months for a political crack the size of a Mai Mahiu fault line to emerge in the Rift Valley.

A stream of delegations to former president Daniel arap Moi’s Kabarak home in recent weeks has sent tongues wagging about a political formation gravitating around his son, Gideon Moi, emerging to challenge Deputy President William Ruto’s clout in his Kalenjin stronghold.

The highlight of heightened political activity at Kabarak was, of course, the visit of Mr Odinga – a get-well-soon call on the former president that looked cleverly choreographed to send a political message to Mr Ruto’s local power base at Sugoi as well.

But the falling-out from the Uhuru-Raila pact also underlines how predictable Kenya’s politics is.

2022 ELECTION
Just about every social media commentator who ventured an opinion on the handshake back in March thought that Mr Ruto would see it as part of a scheme to try to stop him from succeeding Mr Kenyatta.

The President last week weighed in on the public debate, telling mourners at Kenneth Matiba’s memorial service in Murang’a that his newfound relationship with Mr Odinga had nothing to do with succession politics.

In the coming months or years, Mr Kenyatta might need to do much more, including renounce the handshake in public, to calm Mr Ruto’s nerves.

Whatever reservations he had have until recently been expressed through his allies.

SUPPORT
The Deputy President initially appeared to embrace the handshake and even tried to profit from it – his first post-handshake visit to the Coast turned in a bountiful harvest of ODM MPs.

But he looks finally set to make his true feelings known.

His resumption of personalised attacks on Mr Odinga at the Devolution Conference in Kakamega last week suggests that the gloves are off.

It could get nastier, with Mr Ruto’s punches likely to land on Mr Kenyatta’s face sooner or later.

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