Kenya needs a quiet but effective deputy president

 

President William Ruto and former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua after a press conference at State House Nairobi. [File, Standard]

Debatably, Rigathi Gachagua’s failure has been his catastrophic nearsighted view of what the office of the Deputy President (DP) entails. The DP is not a co-president. He is the principal assistant to the President. Political power is vested in the Head of State. My former college mate Sally describes the ideal bearing of a DP as akin to that of a brooding chicken; seated quietly in a corner, invisible from public view but engaged in very important life functions.

Yet the comportment of Gachagua as DP has been anything but quiet. Loud, and abrasive in his “take-no-prisoners” approach even to mundane issues, he has earned a huge crowd of admirers - and an equal number of detractors. For reasons that are in the public domain, he has been impeached by the National Assembly. The Senate has upheld the impeachment. However, there are petitions that are before the courts that may just give him a lifeline.

The alacrity with which the impeached DP has been denuded of the trappings of power points to a deep-seated animus. Evidently, the rancour goes beyond the prima facie charges to the dark currents running beneath the surface. President William Ruto has been uncharacteristically silent. But his silence is conspicuous. It speaks volumes about the deterioration of his relationship with his erstwhile DP.

There is a sense of deja vu in all this. Dr Ruto himself, as DP in the Jubilee administration of Uhuru Kenyatta, was estranged from his boss in the last days of his second term. But for Gachagua, modelling his office of DP after Ruto’s has not earned him the same dividend. The desire to be seen as a hardworking DP has backfired after making a hash of coffee and tea sector reforms. Trying to rid his Central Kenya ethnic constituency of illicit intoxicating beverages without clean, cheap alternatives has not resolved the problem of alcoholism.

But it is the latest accusations of assassination attempts by supposed government functionaries that are straight from the Ruto playbook. Gachagua’s plaintive cries, entreating his family to be left alone, are a page out of Ruto’s 2022 hymn sheet. One difference is that the former’s have a hollow copycat ring to them without the intended effect, which is, the galvanising of popular sympathy towards, arguably, Kenya’s most unpopular DP.

The other difference is that Ruto, when he was DP, managed to avoid impeachment because he had the support of both houses of Parliament. It was not for want of trying by elements in the Jubilee administration. Gachagua missed these crucial aspects. With the selection of Interior CS Kithure Kindiki as DP nominee, the relationship between Gachagua and Ruto is irretrievably broken down.

Prof Kindiki is a quiet, self-deprecating character whose fealty to the President is beyond reproach. He is the perfect yin to the President’s yang. If sworn in, he can be counted on to bring the much-needed political stability the presidency needs to execute its agenda. But make no mistake. His soft-spoken voice and cherubic features belie a steely strength of character. As CS Interior, he has brought peace to the restive North Rift and other bandit-prone regions in the country. For the first time in more than a decade, the guns in the killing fields of Kapedo are silent.

Mr Khafafa is a public policy analyst