Ruto-ODM dalliance signals power shift

President William Ruto is welcomed by Mining, Blue Economy and Maritime Affairs CS Hassan Joho during the Kilifi County International Investment Conference (KCIIC) at Vipingo Ridge in Kilifi County on November 5, 2024. [Kelvin Karani, Standard]

The ongoing loud cawing by ODM leaders in Cabinet speaks to the migration of power in the government. Influence in the management of public affairs is shifting from the elected leadership to the visitors in President William Ruto’s broad-based government.

Raila Odinga and his men have finished marking time in the Kenya Kwanza space. Always persuaded in their heart of hearts that power was stolen from them in the August 2022 election, they deftly slipped into the power and influence space when the opportunity came in July, this year. They are now slowly, but surely, taking over from Kenya Kwanza State operatives.

Kenyans have noted that the Orange Democratic Movement leadership in the Ruto Cabinet are speaking with authority, where their UDA counterparts are either shy or invisible. Their show of bravado could speak to their surrender of everything that they previously believed in, and to self-betrayal. In the alternative, however, it speaks to a political team that has skillfully set in motion a civilian coup against President Ruto’s United Democratic Alliance (UDA) and the Kenya Kwanza formation.

Political power

The impeachment of former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua was the most significant public act in a power shift that began in the middle of the Gen-Z uprisings, in June to July. President Ruto unwittingly opened up the space to the ODM takeover of influence when he invited Odinga, at the apex of the Gen-Z crisis, to nominate some of his top lieutenants into a reconstituted Cabinet. Since then, ODM has methodically spread its wings into all quarters of government. Last Sunday, the ODM leader crowed at an event in Vihiga County about how he has outwitted Gachagua in getting to the centre of power, in State House. The unspoken message was that while he has no specific office in government, Odinga and ODM are now critical to all key decisions in the State, hence the notion of a broad-based government.

While he is angling for the Africa Union Commission chair, Odinga remains the de facto leader of ODM. As a candidate for that office, he announced on August 27 that he was stepping aside from local politics. He however remains active, and from time to time steps out of the shadows to throw political salvos and volleys at selected individuals. Last Sunday, he triumphantly reminded Kenyans that Gachagua boasted of having set up snares everywhere in the State House, to ensure that they would catch him (Odinga), if he tried to access President Ruto for a power-sharing deal. It would seem, however, that Odinga has not only beaten the traps, he is also calling the shots. Ruto cannot do much without seeking consensus with Odinga. Accordingly, Odinga’s triumphalism has now spilled over to his lieutenants, who have begun to make heroic pronouncements, like people who are comfortably ensconced in the heart of political power.

Taunting the fallen former DP Gachagua about “making poor political decisions,” Odinga scoffed, “He said that he had set traps for Baba, claiming there would be no handshake or Nusu Mkate. Where is Gachagua now?”

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Choral team

It is an oblique admission that ODM is now a part of the government and that nothing major can be done without them being on the same page with President Ruto. Their crowing echoes with the victorious energy of political chessboard masters whose calculations are now in the most significant stages. If the ODM catcalls are not a sign of surrender, then they can only speak to the fattening of the UDA Bull, ahead of inevitable slaughter. For, apart from Odinga’s own chest thumping in Vihiga, his commanders are confounding friend and foe alike with overzealous defence for a Ruto administration perceived in the public arena to be at its lowest ebb of its fortunes. Their energetic defence of the status quo runs completely against everything ODM has stood for, thus far.

Drafted into the choral team that now sings President Ruto’s praises is the quartet of John Mbadi (National Treasury), Opiyo Wandayi (Energy and Petroleum), Ali Hassan Joho (Mining, Blue Economy and Marine Life) and Wycliffe Oparanya (Cooperatives and SMEs), they have become Kenya Kwanza’s new voices in a season when the regime is fighting off a scandal-riddled image. The new sirens speak to a critical stage in an ongoing takeover of political space and power.

Roped into the takeover and State apologia is the Minority Leader in the National Assembly, Junet Mohamed. In pronouncements that he made at the Coast, and in the Rift Valley, last week, Junet said that there is now nothing to oppose the government about. “We are now one, and we have a shared vision on things that were in our two manifestos. Accordingly, we cannot criticise the government.”

Junet lambasted people whom he said were slowing down the government. “People elect governments to serve them and to bring about development. There is no need to allow some people to slow down development through something called public participation,” Junet said at the Coast. He proposed that the present constitutional requirement for public participation in critical decision-making by the government should be removed.

For his part, Joho has labeled as “unpatriotic” those who criticise the Ruto government. He is particularly unhappy with youth who post in social media footage that is critical to the administration. He considers them to be “lazy idlers, without anything useful to do with their time.” Joho has angrily promised to “go for them and to teach them a big lesson.”

The government’s image has meanwhile taken a beating due to the Adani tenders that were eventually cancelled owing to public pressure. The mystery-clad deals that involved hundreds of billions of shillings have been seen as poster projects of an administration that is perceived as mired in corruption in every sector of the national economy. Before the June-July Gen-Z unrest, ODM spoke loudly against these tenders. Surprisingly, after the inclusion of its members into the Cabinet, ODM moved swiftly to own Adani.

Odinga called a press conference in August to tell Kenyans that the Adani Group of companies was well known to him. He gave a detailed dossier that linked him and the Prime Minister of India, Shri Narendra Modi, to the Adani Group of Companies. He then gave them a clean bill of health, assuring Kenyans that they were above censure. He praised their work in other parts of the world, and told Kenyans that Adani would do a sterling job at Kenya’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, the centrepiece in the tempest against the government’s dealings with the Indian outfit. His MPs and ministers picked up the cue. They went into zealous overdrive to justify the deals, even as what was left of Ruto’s original Cabinet and his new UDA appointees fell silent over the matter in the power transition matrix.

Wrapped up together with allegations of corruption in the Kenya Kwanza Government and the ODM apologia is abuse of human rights. Mystery abductions by masked men, torture, and disappearance of critics, collectively define a regime that promised Kenyans paradise during the election campaigns.

Civil society, religious leaders and the youth are now calling the Ruto government to order. Some have coined the hated mantra of “Ruto must go.” It is a mantra that rattles the government, even when used about the 2027 elections. The triad of civil society, religious leaders and youth online have asked the government “to end abuse of human rights” and “to stop lying to Kenyans.” They have also called for an end to corruption, including “taking bribes to the Church.”

It is in the wake of this harsh disillusionment with the government that the ODM squad has come out, shooting from the hip. It is inconceivable, however, that they would do this strictly to save the Ruto regime. Word on the street is that Odinga is the new power behind the throne while Ruto has the formal command and signatory authority.

But if ODM has not staged a civilian coup, then it has won the war of liberation against itself. The activities and pronouncements of its government leaders must then speak not so much of betrayal of the greater public good as of betrayal of their own earlier beliefs. Such betrayals are deliberate inflictions of fatal blows against everything that you have previously stood for, a suicidal taking out of the man of ideas and principles who has lived within you.

George Orwell (1903–1950) focused on such betrayals when he wrote these words: “The creatures outside (the house) looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”

Orwell was the master of the literature of lost causes, the power of self-betrayal, and the surrender of the revolutionary class. The people’s hero wins the war, not against the enemy but, against himself, by joining hands with the enemy. Together, they sit down to dine at a common table. Hence, in the dystopian novel Nineteen-Eighty-Four, the revolutionary Winston Smith throws away everything that he has believed in. From now on, he fashions his life and activities on the triple refrain of “War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength.”

Orwell concludes Smith’s story with the words, “But it was all right, everything was alright, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.”

Is this where Odinga and his lieutenants are stationed today? Do they love Big Brother? Has the character of the revolutionary of yesterday diffused into that of Big Brother? For when the creatures outside the joint UDA-ODM house look from Odinga to Ruto, and from Ruto to Odinga, it is impossible to say who is whom. Odinga’s lieutenants take the parody several notches higher, as the proverbial outsiders who weep louder than the bereaved.

The metamorphosis began with the Finance Bill 2024. During its life, ODM politicians, led by Odinga himself, were strenuously opposed to the propositions. The party’s Central Committee wrote a memo to all its Members of the National Assembly underscoring the need for the Bill to die in the House. Party Secretary General, Edwin Sifuna, wrote in part,“You are further requested to suspend any other engagements that would otherwise see you out of Nairobi during this critical period.”

Gen-Z uprising

The MPs were directed to be in the House during both the tabling of the Bill and voting on it. They were expected to collectively vote against the Bill. In spite of the overwhelming No vote by Opposition voices, the Bill survived in the House, to die some other day. ODM’s leadership under Odinga was incensed. On July 2, the party sanctioned the start of a process that sought the recall of six members who had supported the Bill. Never mind that at this stage, President Ruto had withdrawn the Bill following wild protests against it by Kenyan youth across the country. The hitherto revolutionary ODM leaders were keen to identify themselves with the Gen-Z uprising. They wanted to be on the right side of revolutionary history. This even as the Gen-Zs besought them to keep off their activities.

More significant was a corrosive televised live debate between the party’s national chairman at the time, John Mbadi, and the chairman of the National Assembly Finance and Budget Committee Kuria Kimani. A fire-breathing Mbadi operated from the brink of despair. He just fell short of bursting into tears as he tore into the Bill. Kimani assiduously defended it. In the end, the Bill sailed through the assembly even as Mbadi continued to berate it outside the House in the days that followed.

Then the Generation Z protests that had gone on for a few weeks took a new turn. The youth invaded Parliament on June 25. They turned the place upside down. The first knee-jerk response by President Ruto was a televised reading of the Riot Act to the Gen-Zs and their alleged sponsors. A follow-up televised interview with three of the country’s topmost journalists didn’t break the Gen-Z jinx either. And so Cabinet was dissolved, to return with four senior ODM politicians, including two who had so far been most vehement not just against the Finance Bill, but the Ruto administration broadly.

Mbadi has confounded the Kenyan nation with his overzealous defence for a replacement of a Bill that he berated before joining the Cabinet. He has defended the new Bill and indicated that it will be brought to the House for enactment. Parliamentary Standing Orders provide that a Bill that has suffered the fate that the Finance Bill 2024 encountered may be reintroduced after six months. It will be six months in the Christmas week since the withdrawal of the Bill. Parliament is expected to be in recess at the time. However, listening keenly to both Mbadi and President Ruto, Kenyans should expect to see the Bill before Parliament early next year. Despite the wrath that MPs who voted for the rejected Bill faced before the electorate, there is every likelihood that it will sail through with even bigger numbers, this time with the entire ODM squad behind it.

Sing praises

An increasingly prickly President Ruto has very tricky times ahead. Having all but lost the 2022 levels of support from the Mt Kenya region, he has to cuddle ODM with tenderness. His hope must remain that he can trust the ODM strongholds to tarry with him. For this strategy to hold, the tribal card must be placed on the table. The Mt Kenya region must be recast as people who are opposed to Ruto purely for tribal reasons. The rest of the country should be coaxed to hold together against this one Mountain community.

This is not enough, however. For the plan to be foolproof, Ruto must consult ODM bigwigs before making any move. It is at once a curious and precarious place to be. The people’s elected President has lost those who were elected with him. To survive to 2022 and beyond, he must be good to the ODM chiefs. He must cave into their demands and allow them latitude to crow as they wish.

Luckily, at least for the time being, they are singing his praises. To keep them there, he must allow them to enjoy the leverage that they have defined for themselves in the political space. They must increase in stature while his UDA lieutenants diminish. There can be no telling where this transition and transfer of power will end up, however. Without a doubt, President Ruto is walking the tightrope. Provided that he treats the ODM chiefs well, he remains in a safe place. But for how long?

Dr Barrack Muluka, PhD is a strategic communications advisor