Ruto tosses Uhuru playbook in battle with Gachagua to reclaim Mt Kenya

President William Ruto welcomed by Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua at JKIA after returning to the country from foreign trip. [PCS]

As soon as he landed back from Germany, President William Ruto rushed to the Mount Kenya region, a stronghold in the 2022 elections that is fast escaping his grip.

It had been weeks since the Head of State toured his favourite destination over the last decade. A round of trips in former Prime Minister Raila Odinga's backyard and two back-to-back foreign tours have kept him from Central Kenya.

It is through countless trips to Mt Kenya that he won the hearts of the masses and was able to claim the largest chunk of the region's vote in the last polls.

Such tours have been few and far between in recent weeks, ostensibly due to his all-out war with Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua.

But as he showed by going to Mt Kenya, the president is not willing to let Mt Kenya go that easily and is ready to fight it out with his deputy. He has used this strategy before on former President Uhuru Kenyatta.

As Uhuru avoided the road, Ruto was oversupplying his face and voice in Mt Kenya. His presence made him a familiar name, and the then deputy president would eventually wrestle the populous region from his former boss.

Gatanga Member of Parliament Edward Muriu made the observation last week during an interview on Citizen TV.

"In Uhuru's second term, he was nowhere to be seen... President Ruto took advantage, and he was able to endear himself to the people of murima (Mt Kenya). The crime which Rigathi Gachagua has committed is to reclaim murima to himself," said Muriu.

Indeed, Gachagua, who skipped Ruto's event in Nyeri on Sunday, seems to be trying out the same move, focusing all his attention on Mt Kenya. Ruto, it appears, also wants to camp there in the hope that he could reverse his deputy's gains.

With the gloves off, the president is taking the fight to Gachagua and recently assembled a host of lawmakers who endorsed Interior Cabinet Secretary Kithure Kindiki as the region's point man, with observers reading the move as aimed to undercut the DP.

"It is obvious that the president has fallen out with his deputy... in his mind, because he is a political animal, he is trying to see where he can get his votes again," said Nairobi Senator Edwin Sifuna.

Akin to the card he played on Uhuru, Ruto has his battery of attack dogs from Mt Kenya always eager to bark at Gachagua. They are unrelenting as they were when they went after the former president, attacking the DP for being an alleged tribalist and heaping countless other wrongs on him.

National Assembly Majority Leader Kimani Ichung'wah appears to be leading the charge. He does not hold back when on the offensive against Gachagua. On Spice FM yesterday, he termed the DP corrupt and vindictive as he accused him of running down the coffee, tea and milk sectors. 

"The person responsible is none other than the deputy president of the Republic of Kenya... He is the one who has convened all tea, coffee and milk sector reforms meetings. He has presided over the purported reforms in all these sectors," said Ichung'wah.

On Sunday, he urged Ruto to get rid of the "snake" in his government, with many reading the reference as directed to Gachagua, with the apparent endgame of impeaching the DP.

"Central MP caucus is making Gachagua popular for free, and for no apparent reason, by making him a subject everyday. If you don't impeach Gachagua now, he will impeach all of you in 2027," said Saboti MP Caleb Amisi, who believes an impeachment motion against Gachagua would be successful courtesy of Raila's and Ruto's numbers.

Similar claims of impeachment have featured previously, with Ruto saying that Uhuru had once accused him of trying to team up with Raila and impeach him.

University lecturer Gitile Naituli said such a move, which he said was difficult given the high legal threshold, would destablilise the country.

"Gachagua deserves the treatment he is getting because he was the most naive. He went on attacking is people but if I was Ruto I would think careful before impeaching Gachagua," said Prof Naituli. "Can he afford political instability? That is fighting a war he cannot finish and which will be treated as witch-hunt." 

Most of the criticism against the DP happens in the presence of the Head of State, giving off the impression that the said hired guns have Ruto's full blessings to dig in at Gachagua.

"You (Ruto) told those involved in Gachagua's planned impeachment to put a stop to the plans meaning that these are your people and you can call them off. Does it mean that you have triggered another gang, led by the majority leader, to brand the deputy president a tribalist?" Maragua MP Mary Wamaua Waithira posed last week.

When he was running Uhuru out of town, Ruto used allies, such as Gachagua and Ichung'wah, to deliver the diatribes, eventually winning over Mt Kenya.

They painted the former Head of State as a traitor for deserting Ruto to back Raila in the 2022 polls. They also branded Uhuru "an oppressor", saying he had weaponised the criminal justice system against Ruto's allies.

During the Spice DM interview, Ichung'wah implied that Gachagua held some of these attributes, accusing him of abusing his power and getting physical against government orderlies.