What role will Uhuru play if Raila Odinga becomes Kenya's 5th president?

President Uhuru Kenyatta speaks at Roysambu, Nairobi, December 2021. [Edward Kiplimo, Standard]

President Uhuru Kenyatta’s imminent retirement is confounding friend and foe alike, leaving all wondering what Kenya’s fourth president could be up to.

Doubt is beginning to cloud the way ahead, with some in the political class and religious circles advising Uhuru to pave the way and prepare to hand over power.  

Narc-Kenya leader Martha Karua becomes only the latest voice to loudly articulate what has been canvassed and whispered in quiet circles.

The antenna of the Anglican Church has also been raised, as has that of the Western diplomatic community in the country.

The diplomats recently sought assurance from Interior CS Fred Matiang’i that the fourth government was preparing for a smooth exit and handing over of power to whoever is elected president. 

On the last day of October 2018, the President warned the country about his succession. “I, too, will have a say in these things,” he said, chiming in on succession debates that were already heating up.

“Don’t imagine that I don’t have my own thoughts. When the time comes, I will speak my mind. And my choice for 2022 will shock you.”

The announcement was itself surprising. A few months earlier, Uhuru had been on his re-election campaign trail with the mantra: “Ten years for me, and 10 for (Deputy President William) Ruto.”

To put it beyond doubt, he told the last Jubilee Party campaign rally on August 6, 2017: “Let us send this old man (Nasa’s Raila Odinga) home once and for all, so he will not come back to trouble Ruto in 2022.” 

Uhuru’s intended way forward seemed clear in 2017. Less than six months to the election today, the President has equivocated and prevaricated. He has not definitively stated his choice, although suggestive indicators exist.

The optics point to ODM leader Raila Odinga. Uhuru recently told an assembly of youth at State House that he supports Azimio la Umoja movement. And on Jamhuri Day last year, he cautioned “those already on the campaign trail to “go easy...slow down.”

He said in Kiswahili: “This thing is a marathon. You may think that you are youthful and very swift. Yet the old man will plod along slowly, and eventually, beat you.”

These optics rest the searchlight on Raila, as do some of the President’s other public pronouncements. On Madaraka Day last year in Kisumu, Uhuru praised Raila and informed the country that he was working better than he had done in the first term, on account of the amity between him and Raila, after their March 9, 2018 handshake.

Moreover, the President said he looked forward to working with Raila in other capacities in the future. 

With that, it all ought to be clear that the future is with Raila. Yet it does not seem that simple and clear.

The President and his inner sanctum point to a significantly different possibility, prompting others to call them out.

Last Friday Ms Karua spoke straight to the President. “Please proceed on retirement after the elections and allow your successor to run the country without interference.”

Karua suggested to her party’s national delegates conference that Uhuru’s intention was to remain in power beyond his constitutional tenure.

His control of the Jubilee Party and the resolution of the party Parliamentary Group two weeks ago that he would remain as the party leader after August point the same way.

This and other optics suggest that Uhuru may not be keen on retirement. 

Karua hinted that Uhuru could be effectively planning to succeed himself, and retire without retiring. In effect, the position of Prime Minister will be invented, in one guise or the other, basically for him.

 “We have heard the Attorney-General being quoted in some reports saying there’s no constitutional obstacle blocking President Kenyatta from being appointed a prime minister in the subsequent government.

That would be illegal. The 10-year term limit for sitting presidents was put in place to allow for new leadership after a given period,” Karua said. 

Attorney-General Paul Kihara Kariuki is possibly advising the President that he can reinvent and repackage himself and continue to rule beyond his present constitutional time limit.

The idea of Chief Minister has been floated, if the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) remains stalled and the anticipated Prime Minister does not become a reality.

The AG’s office has run afoul of the law several times under the present tenancy. It seems to lay a premium on advising the Executive on how to get around the law rather than on how to respect the rule of law.

The President and some of his senior state officers have held court orders in contempt, with unmitigated impunity.

The case of the forced exile of Raila’s friend-turned-foe Miguna Miguna stands out like a sore thumb. So does the case of the five judges who the President refused to appoint to office, despite several court orders.

Attorney-General Paul Kihara Kariuki. [Chemtai Lochakapong, Standard]

The pick of the basket, however, is BBI. This initiative now awaits the last word from the Supreme Court after its effort to amend the Constitution was routed at the High Court and the decision upheld by the Court of Appeal.

But, significantly, the BBI resonates with echoes of the kinds of possibilities that Karua is wary of. Among other things, it attempted to expand the Executive by creating the position of Prime Minister, with two deputies. 

Was President Uhuru the person the owners of the initiative had in mind for the Premier’s position? It is instructive that while the initiative was the product of a caustic electoral process and its immediate hostile consequences, the BBI agenda was silent on electoral reform.

It did not address the integrity of elections and how to ensure they would always be simple, fair and verifiable, and be seen to be so by all concerned parties. Instead, BBI sought to create more positions, to make more people happy at the top in the Executive. 

As the country waits for the Supreme Court verdict, the frustration and anger that the legal setbacks have generated in government are palpable. Uhuru speaks of the ill fate of this initiative with blistering passion.

He has accused courts of judicial activism and just fallen short of citing them for disloyalty to their country. The prime minister narratives attributed to the AG point the presidential anger and frustration towards the possibility of intended continuity after August 9.

The scenario chimes in well with Cotu Secretary General Francis Atwoli’s public sentiments.

For close to six years, Atwoli has been the sounding board. He is of the public view that Uhuru is too young to retire. He has pushed the line that the law should be amended to allow Uhuru to succeed himself.

In Atwoli’s public proclamations in Kisii and Kakamega at the start of BBI rallies, Uhuru was going to be a part of the succession and continuity, but with Raila as president.

“And all these people whom you see here are going to be in government. Even I will be there. We will be in the Council of Wise Elders in State House, advising the president,” he said.

With the fate of the BBI hanging in the balance, other avenues can drive the same agenda. The next six or so weeks are going to be critical in the Uhuru Succession – and possibly continuity.

This is regardless of whether the continuity optically moves to another centre of power.

When ANC party leader Musalia Mudavadi and Ford-Kenya’s Moses Wetang’ula left One Kenya Alliance on January 23 to work with Ruto and UDA party, they accused Uhuru of trying to impose the next president on Kenyans. 

The barbs get steadily sharper. From the notion of imposing a leader, they now say Uhuru does not want to retire.

“President Uhuru wants to impose this gentleman on Kenyans so that he can manage him like a TV set with a remote control,” Mudavadi says.

“When he says move this way, Raila moves. When he says jump, he jumps. Do you want a president on the remote control?”

More blatant is Ruto, who says Uhuru wants to give Kenya a ‘kibaraka’ (stooge, or a figurehead leader, a lowly individual who serves someone else’s sinister agenda).

Uhuru’s passion for a possible Raila presidency and the demeanour he displays in pursuit of the Raila mission tends to go beyond the pale.

At his State House meeting with over 3,000 young people, Uhuru led the gathering in singing that all was possible without Ruto (Yote yawezekana bila Ruto.”) He commissioned them to traverse the country with the song and to ensure that everyone sang it. 

Mudavadi says the presidential restlessness is not about Ruto, nor is it about Raila, but Uhuru, who wants to continue ruling in another guise. The best option for him would be to hold a specific powerful office as anticipated in BBI.

The next option is to place the fifth president under an unspoken regency, led by the retiring president. Until his sudden migration from OKA, Mudavadi was perceived to be close to Uhuru, together with the rest of the OKA principals.

His allegations belong to the proverbial case of the alligator coming from the sea to report that the crocodile is unwell. The alligator is understood to know what he is talking about. 

But there is a galore of pointers that it is not all smoke and hot air. The possibility that Uhuru could want to stay on was first floated by Jubilee National Chairman David Murathe, who introduced the notion of Putin.

He was alluding to Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, who has ruled variously as Prime Minister and President. When one tenure ends, he packages himself and carries on.

The notion was advanced by Mutahi Ngunyi, a leading behind-the-scenes ideologue in the Uhuru-Raila political axis. This option would appear to be very much on the cards, prompting the concerns that disturb people like Karua and Mudavadi.

The grand Azimio philosophical notion is continuity. The President’s name is often invoked, with the rider that the next government must continue doing what Uhuru is doing.

Continuity was Raila’s grand pledge at the Azimio launch rally at Kasarani last month. Jubilee and ODM are scheduled to hold separate NDCs on Friday, with the common agenda of breathing life into the notion of continuity through a Raila presidency.

A revived Jubilee Party is set to unleash itself upon the electorate with a significant holdout against transition by political  Cabinet secretaries driving the agenda. 

President Uhuru Kenyatta at Sagana State Lodge during a past meeting with Mt Kenya delegates. [Kibata Kihu, Standard]

Defence CS Eugene Wamalwa is playing a lead role, especially in his native Western  Kenya, where he is the de facto leader of the newly formed Development Agenda Party of Kenya (DAP-Kenya). The party is at once pulling the rug from under ANC, Ford-Kenya and ODM parties.

It was birthed in the aftermath of the failure by its frontline champions Esseli Simiyu and Wafula Wamunyinyi to wrestle Ford-Kenya from Wetang’ula.

Kakamega Senator Cleophas Malala has described DAP-Kenya as a state project out to destabilise and scatter political solidarity in Western Kenya, targeting Mudavadi and Wetang’ula. 

Yet the entry of DAP-Kenya has by the same token weakened ODM, its deputy party leader Kakamega Governor Wycliffe Oparanya, and in effect Raila.

Wamalwa intends to use the new party and the presidential votes it garners to bargain for a Cabinet position against Oparanya, his regional competitor.

Azimio-leaning defections in the region are flowing not into ODM, but DAP-Kenya.

The Raila presidency, if it happens, should essentially be the case of a commander with a borrowed army, as is seen in the emerging devolution of political parties into regional outfits. 

The devolved parties under Azimio include Jubilee Party, PNU, DAP-Kenya, Kenya United Party, Devolution Empowerment Party, Maendeleo Chap Chap, Muungano, Narc, Maendeleo Democratic, United Democratic Movement, Pamoja African Alliance, United Party of Independent Alliance, Economic Freedom Party, Movement for Democracy and Growth, and ODM.

Each has a base command, with the command-in-chief hanging in the balance between Raila and Uhuru. Ultimately, if he becomes Kenya’s fifth President in this cocktail of parties, Raila should be an easy hostage to alternative centres of power, because of a fragile hold on the political class outside his native Luo Nyanza. 

As a dress rehearsal, the Uhuru Azimio revolution is eating up its children, as an inoculation against what could follow. Lacking a political party of his own as a plank to bargain from, for example, Mr Oparanya has found himself swinging hazardously in the political winds of the time.

Unlike the leaders of the Azimio devolved parties, Oparanya is a guest in Raila’s ODM, which he hopes to inherit. Yet, if successful, he could inherit an outfit that is a shell in his own backyard, as the struggle for Western now shifts to Uhuru, through the proxy DAP-Kenya; and Mudavadi with Wetang’ula on the other hand, with Ruto in a supporting role.

Aware of this, Oparanya is torn between staying on in ODM and Azimio, or finding other options. His own revolution is pushing him into a desperate corner, and perhaps into political oblivion. 

Meanwhile, it is instructive that a significant number of CSs are holding out in office when the rational thing would be to wrestle for political office.

Keriako Tobiko (Environment), Matiang’i (Interior), Mutahi Kagwe (Health), Peter Munya (Agriculture), Najib Balala (Tourism), Joe Mucheru (ICT/Youth), James Macharia (Roads) and Wamalwa (Defence), are among the most politically active CSs holding out. They are also campaigning for Azimio.

Even as he avowedly talks of continuity, it is hugely unlikely that President Raila Odinga would want to be lumbered with heavy political weight and cargo in the form of CSs from the Uhuru era.

Yet their holdout is a pointer to the faith that there will be Uhuru beyond Uhuru, and they will be a part of the system.

Also conscious of the unfolding reality is Wiper Democratic Party Leader, Kalonzo Musyoka. Kalonzo, who is also an OKA principal, is under intense pressure to join Azimio.

Curiously, however, he told a public gathering in Kisii that he was still negotiating with the President.

He should ordinarily be negotiating with Raila and not a retiring Uhuru. Kalonzo must know something that many people don’t know about the intended future in Azimio. But he is not alone. 

[Dr Muluka, is a strategic communication advisor.]