Ruth Mucheru: I was ready to be deputy president

"A couple of years ago when I was out of a job for two years and seven months, I had decided that if I got a job as a driver of an ambulance I would take it up! Even though I am a high-speed driver, I have never caused any accident."

We are seated at a gazebo on the rooftop of Morningside Office Park on Nairobi's Ngong Road, having taken the lift from the Mwaure & Mwaure Waihiga Advocates below.

At the deputy presidential debates, she came across as serious and corporate-like, determined to sell the Agano Party's manifesto.

Agano Party presidential candidate Waihige Mwaure and his running mate Ruth Mucheru when they were doing their last campaigns in Nairobi on 6 August 2022. [Esther Jeruto, Standard]

"Mwaure has been a family friend. We had had another relationship of running for governorship when Mike Sonko (former Nairobi governor) was thrown out," she says.

He wanted a female running mate and had approached others but she fit the position best in the end.

"We got all our documents cleared and everything. Then out of nowhere, I see on the 1pm news, 'Gavana aapishwa.' I was wondering, of which county?' Only for it to be Nairobi. It was Ann Kananu. I wondered what we had been doing all that for then, but let bygones be bygones," she says.

"I feel like God was preparing us the first time when the governor opportunity came. Because we chased around our papers and felt a lot of pressure, by the time the presidential one was coming, I was fully in it," she says.

They thought they had everything ready but IEBC (the electoral body) chairman, Wafula Chebukati, rejected them the first time.

"If you are weak, do not get into the race. It is not for the faint-hearted," she says. Chebukati, however, let them try again.

"He is very soft-spoken. He stipulated what needed to be amended and the second time we sailed through," she says.

The campaign trail was strenuous, she says, especially financially, and a little disappointing. "Out of the normal expenses, the other unfortunate bit is the culture of Kenyans expecting handouts. When you are up there, people are shouting, 'Unga! Unga!' Some are holding plates," she says.

"I am thinking, 'Do you need to listen to someone because they are coming to give you cash? You are choosing a leader because you want a better tomorrow. You work, and you increase the money in your pocket. But people ask for it and if you look like you have nothing they start shouting your opponent's name just to irritate you. Or they get rowdy."

She says most of the people who would show up at the rallies were drunk young men, yet it was still morning: "I was wondering, 'Is it parenting? The society? The economy? Who do we blame?' There is a problem with the boy child."

Ruth has two daughters, aged nine and six, but she hopes to work with boys to rectify the situation in future.

Kenyan elections usually have two people at the top of the race, either of whom are usually considered the likely winners, but Ruth says she believed that they would win.

"A two-horse race? That did not bother me an inch. My fifth was Mwaure. I was optimistic. I was very sure and ready," she says.

For someone driven by fear of failure, watching the results come in was no fun for her.

"I would look at them and comfort myself that it was our first time, and then decide to make myself busy," she says with a laugh.

"My family would comfort me and say, 'Ruth, relax!' They would find a polling station in the interior and show me that we got 300 votes in a place we had campaigned in."

They were the first to concede. "He (Mwaure) called me and we weighed our options... and decided to accept defeat," she says.

They decided to support President William Ruto "because we share common values and have the same Christian beliefs".