Gachagua, a fighter, walking into political oblivion with eyes open

Impeached Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua arrives at Parliament Buildings, Nairobi, during National Assembly impeachement hearing. [File, Standard]

The takedown of impeached Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua was so effective that, in the end, he was left with Hobson’s choice: Resign or fade into political oblivion.

As a person who his critics say is his worst enemy, he didn’t do himself any favors, opting to willingly lose his job, a setback that's certain to soon snowball.

Blame hubris, a never-quit mindset, a bad strategy and, more important, coarse-grained statements that embarrassed his tribesmen and women and alienated the wider public.

The man failed again and again to step back and not to go over the cliff. Chances came up one after the other, but he smugly plowed ahead with his ill-fated plots, and now he is learning — the hard way — that misfortunes never come singly. 

Initially, Gachagua had a good, if aggressively hostile, Plan A, but had no Plan B to win in his punch-up with President William Ruto. 

First chance

Gachagua blew his first opportunity on October 1, when National Assembly Speaker Moses Wetang’ula accepted the impeachment motion, saying that its supporters exceeded the required minimum threshold of 117 lawmakers.

That day, Gachagua went AWOL, wasting a moment he could have used to resign to live large in peace and under the protection of the State’ security and munificence.

He only reappeared on October 7, a day before the impeachment vote, and held a tawdry press conference in which he called Parliament a “theatre of the absurd.” During his two-hour-long presser, he made a vow to fight to the bitter end, a declaration of a long, bruising war with the State House. 

Wetang'ula fired the first shot when he said the House found the appellation “theatre of the absurd” “abhorrent” and reminded the-then deputy president of the rules that barred one from discussing pending matters elsewhere, especially by a person who is a subject of an impeachment motion.

Characteristic of his never-say-die spirit, the unapologetic Gachagua's response was to say that he had a “tremendous respect for this great institution” and then went ahead with his speech, drunk with his own self-affirmation and innocence.  

That day he wore a happy-go-lucky attitude, showing little emotion as if his job was at an imminent risk.  In his zeal to have a blaze of defense speech, he vilipended his boss, raising the stakes. As is his wont, the feral DP burned a new bridge: The presidency.

Since his feud with President Ruto burst into the open, Gachagua did everything to try to survive a sure-fire ouster or, at least, find ways to take Ruto down with him.

While defending himself against an accusation that he broke with the government's policies on the eviction of people residing along Nairobi river, he said, "Deputy President is being accused of undermining his boss by just doing what his boss said."

"Rigathi Gachagua has learnt his job from his boss," he said, "that public officers must be called to order when they fall short of expectation. And I never saw anybody bring William Ruto here for impeachment or criticizing the IG (Inspector General of police) or the DCI (Department of Criminal Investigation). This is a very unfair allegation."

From there, it's all downhill, and saving him from a disgraceful fall was nigh impossible as divorce was seen as the only viable remedy for his strained ties with his boss. 

Gachagua had an opportunity to be graceful and adopt an aw-shucks style. But that is not Gachagua. A pugilist by nature, he wanted to prove that he was not a scaredy-cat.

After speaking an hour and a half, in which he rejected all the 11 impeachment articles demanding his ouster, Gachagua closed his papers, checked the time on his wrist watch, crossed his hands on his chest, leaned on the lectern and appealed to the lawmakers, smiling in a matter-of-fact manner and cutting an image of a man who was in a rush to right an injustice and had little time for courtesy or PR.

“Search your conscience and decide,” he said. Seconds later, he added: “If you are so persuaded and you search your conscience without any intimidation or coercion or inducement and you think it's the right thing, please go ahead and do so.”

And so the lawmakers did and voted him out.

When the results were declared, the House erupted in applause and babel.

Earlier, the mover of the motion, Kibwezi West MP Mwengi Mutuse, said Gachagua “chose to be reckless” on June 25, when rioters stormed parliament buildings during the Gen Z protests that rattled the government and threatened the president’s rule. He said Gachagua's "inflammatory remarks” had the potential to tear at the social fabric of the country. 

"The DP did mislead the public. The DP did live below the expectation of the office that he holds, (and) made unfounded, sensational statements,” he said.

According to the impeachment, Gachagua bullied officials, attempted to divide the country, violated the constitution, engaged in corruption and disobeyed his boss, among other damning issues.

He rejected all the charges calling terming "nothing but malice and fiction." 

"It was a political game by the president to get rid of me,” said the potty-mouthed DP after the fact.

Armed with a phalanx of lawmakers, he mounted a ferocious defense against the accusations, calling them “outrageous.” He said the accusations had “no basis, that is sheer propaganda, that's a scheme to hound me out of office because of other political considerations and has nothing to do with violation of the Constitution.”

"It has nothing to do with gross misconduct and it has absolutely nothing to do with committing international or national crimes,” he said.

He called the public participation exercise that preceded the debate “shoddy exercise” and urged lawmakers to “focus on the corruption scandals around our country, the Adani corruption, the issues in the public health sector, the glaring theft of public resources.”

“That is what Parliament should consider and take time and that is what the people of Kenya want,” he said.

But lawmakers would have none of his entreaties.

Gladys Boss Shollei said Gachagua was "guilty of treason and other allied offenses,” as he had "gone against his oath of allegiance" and the official secret act and oath of secrecy by contradicting his boss and revealing secret issues in public.

“In fact, it’s juvenile,” she said of his statement hitting out at the country’s spy chief, Noordin Haji, arguing that it revealed that he was "a person who is unhinged and can’t control his tongue."  

Other lawmakers piled on.

After listening to the lawmakers’ blistering critique, Gachagua continued to stick to his guns, wondering why he was being vilified for "just being truthful." 

"My only problem with the president is just being truthful,” he said days later: 

The National Assembly’s impeachment was the second strike against him. Yet, Gachagua had a better chance of securing a soft-landing, but he didn’t make use of it.

On October 17, the day the senators were to vote on his removal, Gachagua employed a doomed tactic, whose objective, according to his critics, was a last-ditch attempt to shake off the impeachment or buy time.

Hours before the actual vote, the second in command called in sick, a cop-out that briefly threw the impeachment process into confusion, but didn’t stop the Senate’s proceedings.

His lead lawyer’s claim that his client was unwell got little sympathy among the senators waiting for his response and the lawyers champing at the bit to cross-examine him.

In the end, the senators chucked Geoffrey Rigathi Gachagua out of office before midnight on Thursday, in a session that approved 5 out of the 11 articles of the impeachment – and with it ended the service of the phenomenon that was Riggy G as Ruto's second in command.

What looked like a chef's kiss of a delaying tactic soon became a thumbing defeat for Gachagua, a drubbing that even cautious courts are trying to plough through checking the process of removing him.

Ultimately, Gachagua’s blitz of more than two dozen preemptive lawsuits, as well as his gripes, bravado, veiled threats and pleading for forgiveness availed him nothing. His cries of innocence were not enough to soften the hearts of the lawmakers of the two houses.

His enemies decided enough is enough, and President Ruto's strategy to settle accounts with his rebellious principal assistant, who let him down at his hour of need on June 25, eventually worked like a charm.

There was “no cure” other than ousting Gachagua, said Senate Majority Leader Aaron Cheruiyot before the decisive vote, citing the worsening working relationship between Gachagua and Ruto.

"Instead of getting better, things have gotten worse,” he said, later adding: “This evening, Mr Speaker, duty calls and when duty calls, Mr Speaker, there is very little that we can do.”

If Gachagua’s pick as a running mate in 2022 was a fluke and bad judgment, his fall, it seems, was a well-thought-out, winning strategy.

Conversely, the deputy president’s gambit was long on short-term tactics that briefly proved exceptionally successful, but was short on long-term strategy that would have helped him retain his political career and its attendant trappings or allowed him to exit the scene honorably.

Throughout, Gachagua didn’t seem to have doped out the fact that his ouster was an either-or choice, that it’s now or never.

Prof Macharia Munene, political historian, recently told Spice FM that Gachagua "impeach(ed) himself" after he "set himself up" for failure. "His utterances are immature," he said. "... Apart from being a deputy president, he's an adult. And there are some things you don't say or do as an adult." 

Prof Makau Mutua equated Gachagua’s attempts to prolong his stay at Harambee House Annex to the tactics of former US President Donald Trump in 2020, when he tried to obstruct the certification of his rival's victory. 

The deputy president’s “strategy was simple: SAMSON OPTION!” said lawyer Donald B Kipkorir. “In such defence, when your life, political or otherwise is under existential threat, you pull down all the walls on your enemies! You go down with all. It is a strategy with no exit for all,” he said.

One can hardly accuse Rigathi of being inarticulate or of not showing great aplomb in public, but the man's recent fight has exposed his proclivity for excessive risk-taking, his lack of off-ramps or a nationwide prop to fall back on when the going gets tough. 

On Oct.ober 7, he sniggered at the mere suggestion of resigning from his position.

“This is a man elected by a seven point two million (7.2 million) Kenyans,” he said, pausing for two seconds for effect. "How dare you suggest to him that he can do so without a public participation ( six more seconds of pause). I have no intention, whatsoever, to resign from this job.”

"I will fight to the end,” he said, with seconds of pause punctuating his words. During his two-hour-long presser, he sprinkled seconds of chuckles and pauses to emphasize that he was not a man to take flight.

“I don't think it's honorable to be a quitter. I think you must fight on from within and pursue what you intend to do" he said on July 19, 2022 during the deputy presidential debate. ".... You can't be a quitter. You must fight on.”

Gachagua's removal is a big relief for State House, which quickly named his replacement, Kithure Kindiki, the Interior Cabinet Secretary. 

State House betted the farm on the coup de grâce against a brash man who was out of tune with its policies. It cut the Gordian knot.

Gachagua's ejection was an epic unraveling of the once warm relationship between him and the president.

Before the election, Gachagua said it would be “incomprehensible” that he and Ruto would even think of "having sideshows and things that are unnecessary." He said the previous falling-out between Ruto and Uhuru was primarily brought about by "inferiority complex," a dig at the former president, Uhuru Kenyatta.

"People must allow strong leaders to prevail and you shouldn't have a problem when your deputy is strong and sharp and focused," he said. "You should just be able to accommodate him and use that as a strength to serve the people of Kenya.”

He said his bond with Ruto was "so important that no sideshows can come in between (us and) the focus that is before us, the need to restore the dignity of the Kenyan people is such an important aspect of our life, our leadership."

Gachagua fell lonely, with almost no allies willing to take up the cudgels for him. The votes of the lawmakers who stuck by him counted for nothing in the grand scheme of things. Even few in his beloved region — Mount Kenya — expressed open grief, as many elated politicians relished his downfall and quickly started a scramble for his position. Either his love messaging didn't get through or he was loathed. 

"Look at the **  now," said Jubilee Party Secretary General Jeremiah Kioni, making fun of Rigathi after his fall, even though he said he was not happy about the way he was treated. 

Prof Munene said last May that Gachagua's mantra of one man, one vote, one shilling formula of revenue sharing was just part of his "political desperation to sound as if he cares about people in the mountain, was being used as a campaign slogan so that's why he's doing, just trying to regain ground that he thinks he lost." 

Gachagua, Munene said, "undermined his own stature" in the process of trying to become a Mount Kenya kingpin. "He had a chance to be a leader, actually a very good chance," he said, but "fell short of expectation." 

In the last two years he has been DP, Riggy G's assertive style turned off many of his fellow tribesmen and women -- not to say anything of other Kenyans' aversion to his Mount Kenya idee fixe.

In the eyes of many, Gachagua came across as an artless rookie who was in a tearing hurry to achieve many things in a record time, regardless of the toes he stepped on.  

But he was neither capable of adapting to the new Kenya under Ruto nor was he adept at deciphering the intricacies of regional and national politics.

Gachagua will be best remembered for his tribal chauvinism, fetish for more power, loose talk, desperation to load it over Mount Kenya and paranoia to an extent that he had even given up — according former Cabinet Secretary Moses Kuria— to have tea at the State House out of fear of being poisoned. On Monday, Gachagua claimed that he had survived two attempts to assassinate him through poisoning.

“I think he failed the test of respect and took other leaders for granted and he started the fight too early and I think he picked on the wrong people,” said Ng’aru last May, well before the impeachment motion was tabled in the House. She said Gachagua “took the seat (the DP position) as a co-principal and forgot that he's the deputy president.” 

In politics, Prof Kagwanja said, one has to bring money and voters to the table.

“Unfortunately for our friend, he wanted the seat of the deputy president, (yet) he didn't have the numbers (and) he didn't have the money,” he said.

His foibles aside, Gachagua's impeachment has captivated Kenyans, who were glued to their phones or TV screens to follow the riveting proceedings at the National Assembly and the Senate.

“Last two days, Mr Speaker, together with other Kenyans we have watched with lots of bewilderment, hard to believe pronouncements and difficult, Mr Speaker, to believe that here is where we find ourselves as a nation,” said Senate Majority Leader Cheruiyot.

He said the country had reached a stage it had to "make the difficult decision of having to say good bye to his excellency the Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua because, Mr Speaker, the reasons that have been listed have consequences by law, of what you do when this happens.”

On Monday, low-spirited Gachagua, without his security detail or the horde of aides that used to hover around him, let fly at the president , calling him "cruel and vicious."   

"The man I am seeing is not the one that I thought I knew," he said, before later adding:  "Please leave me alone. Let me be. God would take care of me. I don't have to have security. I don't have to have drivers, I don't have to have cars."

Nationally, few Kenyans appear to sympathize with Gachagua, who, for decades, cared more about himself.

“You're still alive, right…Chill,” said McOure, the activist. "Don't try and whip up emotions and try to make it look like the country is going to clashes. There will be no clashes.  Not for you.”