Ruto's best chance to shed political baggage, change country's trajectory

President William Ruto. [PCS]

Former US President Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt in Pennsylvania on Saturday while drumming up support for his presidential bid.

Mathew Crooks, 20 years old, took a shot at Trump from atop a building with a clear view of the rally venue. Like Trump, Crooks was a Republican.

Trump becomes the second former US President after Theodore Roosevelt to survive an assassination attempt. In 1912, John Schrank attempted, but did not succeed in killing Roosevelt at a rally in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 

Sitting US Presidents so far assassinated include Abraham Lincoln in 1865, James Garfield in 1881, William McKinley in 1901 and John F Kennedy in 1963. The very first attempt on a US President was in 1835 against Andrew Jackson, but he survived after the assassins’ pistols jammed.

Crooks action might have stemmed from mental illness, or some form of polarisation; either affective or ideological polarisation. The former is a dislike of individuals from other political formations, while the later is based on individual beliefs on what is right and wrong. 

Ideological polarisation could be the reason Crooks wanted to take out Trump who has been quite caustic against Biden, deriding him, questioning his mental capabilities and threatening to annul most of Biden’s policies on the first day in office should he win. 

Trump’s campaign strategy is premised on keeping his supporters ignorant, fearful, and angry. It is the same strategy that William Ruto used  against Uhuru Kenyatta in 2022. The Hustler vs Dynasty narrative encompassed both affective and ideological polarization and was crafted to cause anger among the poor. 

While this served him well, it inadvertently created class consciousness and birthed a monster he must now deal with. Barely three years into his first term, he is fighting for survival.

There is a new sheriff in town calling the shots, and Ruto is constrained to play along. Looked at objectively, however, it is not such a bad thing. The new sheriff wants the tenet of accountability in government pushed from the paper to the action stage. 

Moreover, the sheriff is out to restore power, appropriated from the people by a cabal of crooks, back to its rightful owners as an exercise of democracy. The only thing Ruto stands to lose is, perhaps, his ego, but will gain in every other respect.

He has the chance to scrape off the political leeches that have hung onto him in the name of ‘pay-back’ time or ‘regional balancing’ without worrying about repercussions. 

Arrogance and hubris among the politicos conspired to trigger an eruption of mass hysteria in Gen Z, a cohort that has been denied everything, hence has nothing to lose in their abrasive demand for justice, equity in national resource allocations and accountability in governance.

Their outrage has pushed an arrogant, untouchable ruling elite onto unfamiliar grounds where they are cowering instead of waving their ill gotten wealth in the faces of the poor as had become tradition.

It is refreshing to see how deflated elected leaders have become. Most of them are struggling to hide their wealth, where days ago they competed in a display of opulence. Nowadays, MPs visit their constituencies quietly, in the back seats of nondescript small cars they would otherwise never be caught dead in.

The fear is gone, and the scales have dropped off the eyes of the electorate who now know they have the power to shape their destiny. The allure of the church to politicians is gone for fear of running into angry, hungry masses. 

The hunter has become the hunted, and the hunt is exhilarating for the balance it seeks to restore. Gen Z has given Ruto the chance to rewrite our history by taking up the challenge and becoming the president who brought sanity, equity and slayed the ogre of corruption in government. He should seize the moment and run away with it.