Riggy-G picked on Media and Raila, failed to see where his waterloo would come from

“Mr. Speaker Sir, I rise on a point of order No.69,” pleaded Josephat Karanja, Kenya’s fifth Vice President, on the afternoon of April 26, 1989.

The end was nigh for the bespectacled man who had only warmed the seat of Vice President for thirteen months, during which he pushed the boundaries of sycophancy to new lows.

When the clergy and lawyers attacked executive decisions, Karanja would pounce on them with the alacrity of a German shepherd dog, in tough, incomprehensible English words.

On this day, Karanja had walked himself into a trap which had been laid down by a diminutive pair; Kuria Kanyingi in the trenches out there, and David Mwenje inside Parliament.

While Kanyingi started the chorus of a “kneel-before-me” politician in February of that year, Mwenje formally tabled Karanja as the man, and Parliament was mobilized to finish the job.

“This is a sad day for our beloved country. Common decency has been thrown out of the window. It has regrettably been replaced with political thuggery and vindictiveness,” Karanja went on, mocking the motion.

“The-so-called charges”, as he described them, “are totally false and malicious, tendentious and contemptible.”

As a matter of personal honor, he vowed he would not defend himself. The Princeton-educated man signed up his brief statement, needlessly, in style:

“My patriotism is beyond reproach. God is my witness and here I stand.”

It was as if he had not spoken anything for Parliament moved with speed and unanimously passed a vote of no-confidence. Karanja was left hanging precariously on his pride. In a matter of days, he resigned.

Fast forward to 2024, thirty-five years later, history repeated itself this time round in the name of Geoffrey Rigathi Gachagua, Kenya’s second Deputy President.

Like Karanja before him, Gachagua was far too lost in his political fantasies to see it coming. For 26 months as a Deputy President, he rode rough in Kenya’s political scene, trampling on everyone.

Unleashed, untamed by his boss and powered on state resources, Gachagua picked on former Prime Minister Raila Odinga, and the media, as his favorite punching bags. Together with retired President Uhuru Kenyatta, they constituted the “dee-state” they had trounced in the vote.

Two years before elections, Gachagua had already pronounced himself on the matter of Raila, one of the country's most consequential politicians: “Raila Odinga is unacceptable to the people of Central Kenya, come rain, come shine,” he said at the time.

Once in office, he continued to drive this narrative, but now reducing him to a nobody:

“Who is he in Kenya? He’s just an ordinary citizen. He’s not elected by any one in Kenya.”

Picking the cue from his boss, he repeatedly and derogatorily referred to Raila as “that old man”, “yule mtu ya kitendawili”, “mzee ya kuzimia”. For him, it was as if the usually messy electoral campaign period had been extended indefinitely.

Yet his boss, President Ruto, had ceased such terms immediately he was sworn in, perhaps appreciating the clout the former Prime Minister carries in the country. Gachagua continued to address Raila in a manner he would not even address his own children:

“Sikiza wewe Mzee (listen, you old man), we have no business with you in our government. We are not looking for you, and we have no time. The last time you joined the Uhuru Kenyatta government you destroyed it.”

At some point, he resorted to the widely-quoted but misguided counsel former minister Kiraitu Murungi offered late President Daniel Arap Moi in 2004. At the time, Kiraitu asked Moi to step back and see how proper governments are run.

In no time, Narc imploded from within, haunted by ghosts of corruption. Kiraitu himself was forced to resign.

“Can you step back, and watch how governance is done!” Gachagua told Raila, while presiding over a national coffee reforms workshop which Kiraitu was attending.

When he wanted it to hurt the most, he would lump Raila together with his father, Kenya’s first Vice President Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, or their community. He rarely deployed this card, but when he did, it hurt the most.

“He’s troubled Kenya for the last 60 years, together with his father. The time to dispense with him for good is now. Sasa ni sisi nayeye,” he once said, asking President Ruto to keep off as they “dealt” with him.

That is around the time Raila claimed there was an assassination attempt on him, as he mobilized the country against Ruto's first budget.

According to Gachagua, the only dialogue Kenya Kwanza could ever have with Raila is one which discussed his exit from Kenyan politics and permanent retirement from his own country.

When a bipartisan process was initiated under the National Dialogue Committee (NADCO) to bridge the political divide, he saw a Raila route to a political handshake and virulently opposed it.

“Nothing will come out of those talks. It is a waste of time. The talks will get him nowhere. We are in agreement with President Ruto that we will not get him into government,” he claimed at the time.

As he grew more confident, he installed himself the chief protector of the presidency, and ultimate distributor of Kenya (company) shares. At a funeral in Kericho, he boasted to the residents that he slept with one eye closed, to protect President Ruto’s government with the other.

“I was in Italy, and I was informed he was trying to make moves to confuse the president. I rushed back and stopped it, because I am the protector of this government. Around the State House, I have laid traps in every corner. We will not allow Raila to come in,” he said.

Diatribe against media, Judiciary

When he was not drumming Raila, the DP was hammering the media which he mockingly claimed was an extension of the “deep-state.” Every attempt by the media to raise matters of national concern was met with the refrain; "you are part of the mess."

“Your opinion is not necessary, and we don’t bother about it, because we know who pays you,” he said of the Kenyan media.

All the media censure to his infractions, including on the shareholding remarks, were all a matter of a media living in denial. He led the government wing that made it their business to bash the media, and push it into a corner.

“You have seen nothing,” he declared, adding: “It’s good you are feeling the way we feel. You have been hitting us left, right and centre but nobody has ever held you to account.”

In similar terms, he descended on the judiciary, again claiming it was an extension of the deep-state. He claimed judges were corrupt and singled out a judicial officer who had handled his corruption matter for censure.

For the whole of 2023, Ruto’s first full year in office, his deputy was in full political combat mode. While he held official functions on critical national issues, he easily reduced them into factional politics, and Azimio, and then the media.

As the year wound up, even his own colleagues in government were beginning to realize they had a bad-mannered DP with them. When King Charles III came visiting in November, Gachagua was quietly, but conveniently assigned official duties abroad.

Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi took over his brief over the four day state visit, welcoming the King to the country. While Gachagua was battling frost issues in cold Germany, Raila, Ruto and Mudavadi were dining with the King at an official banquet held at State House.

But something else happened over the visit which betrayed the fact of the unwanted man at the top. A photo-shopped image of Gachagua lurking behind a window as the King was being ushered into State House was leaked to the blogs and social media.

“You are gonna wait for a long, long, long time, and you will be disappointed. There will be no cracks in this government. This is a government made of leaders who have been brought together by a plan,” he dismissed the emerging cracks, again ascribing them to media.

With this sense of self-denial, Gachagua crossed into 2024 while still running his mouth. Through these “truthful” talks, unmistakable disdain for critics, Gachagua catalyzed the realization among Kenyans that Kenya Kwanza government was fast pushing them on the brink of a precipice.

The path to Waterloo 

Other strange things began to happen in his world. Junior officers in the KK government began to take him on, quietly. He would arrive in Harambee’s in his own backyard, and then a junior official would spring up to deliver the President’s donation.

When President Ruto traveled out of the country, Kenyans began to note that an ordinary Cabinet Secretary or the Prime CS would receive him at the airport. The truthful man was missing in action.

But while all these happened, Gachagua was lost in his own world of delusions. He was fixated on Raila, media and the dethroned deep-state. He continued in his divisive rhetoric, and false pride, while advancing KK’s hard-sell policies.

Kenya Kwanza officials below him, including parliamentary committees, took cue and forced Kenyans to swallow a bitter pill in the Finance Bill of 2024. The younger Kenyans were not going to have it any longer hence the “Gen Z” protests of June which shook the political system.

As Gachagua and many of his comrades in government were trying to make sense of the whole tribeless, faceless and leaderless thing, the gods were demanding a political sacrifice to pacify the situation.

President Ruto and his handlers did not have to look far for in their own midst, lay a perfect sacrificial lamb which had long identified itself for that purpose. The moment had merely presented itself.

When the President convened the political leaders to sign the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (Amendment) Bill at the KICC, ominous clouds began to gather for the truthful man.

For a start, the Bill was a product of NADCO talks which he had dismissed as useless. Two, the Azimio leadership he had been bashing, including Raila, were the chief guests of the presidential event.

Three, the President had been cornered by the Gen Z’s and needed to placate them. A parade of the country's consequential politicians was more than critical at that point. In that parade, Gachagua looked like a rained-on chicken, completely out of place.

When Raila spoke, he invited the President to conclude, intentionally side-stepping the DP. The President corrected the anomaly, and allowed Gachagua to speak, but the message had been passed.

From there on, Gachagua was on a free fall. Now clutching at straws, he tried to hang onto National Intelligence Service (NIS) boss Noordin Haji, but it was too late.

The murmurs against him became louder and louder and junior officials, like Kanyingi before them, began to speak of a “snake-in-presidency” which needed to be shaken off.

"Don't be afraid, shake off the snake. That viper on your hand, the viper, the snake in your government, please shake it off. Not for your own sake so that it doesn't bite you. Shake it off so that your hand may do what the Lord proposed that hand to do,” National Assembly Majority Leader Kimani Ichungwa told President Ruto in a church event.

But the DP went on offensive of his own, whipping up tribal emotions which only worked to catalyze his own fall. Like Karanja, he did not seem to appreciate where it was all coming from, and kept saying the President had given him assurances that he had no issues with him.

When the impeachment talk started, Gachagua claimed he reached out to his boss about it. Apparently, Ruto told him he knew nothing of it, and described the whole idea of impeaching an elected DP as foolish.

Behind the scenes however, things were moving very fast. The DP was struck off a high-level Whatsapp group which hosted the president’s diary. Henceforth, he wouldn’t know where the President was going or not going, hence his own diary was similarly affected.

“I was not aware of the time he was arriving back,” he said of the President’s arrival from a foreign trip, betraying his own lack of touch with his own boss.

Again, at another public event in his home turf of Nyeri, the President presided over the event with his deputy’s seat prominently empty. Gachagua was in the neighboring county in another event, and claimed he was not aware of the visit.

“This is the last time this seat will be vacant, I swear,” Ruto’s economic advisor Moses Kuria posted on his social media pages.

At around this time, his helplessness was displayed in national television when the host, Sam Gituku, asked him whether he knew the President was leaving the country later that day:

Gachagua: “Yes I am aware but I do not know the time!

Gituku: But he’s leaving the country…

Gachagua: I know, but I have not talked to him today.

He began to host more and more media interviews at his official residence, this time round soliciting for them. Before this, he did not have the slightest regard for the media, and had little patience for their censures.

“You guys are wonderful, you are good people. No wonder you are called the fourth estate. I don’t know where we would be as a country without you. We would have so much impunity, we would go back to dictatorship without the media,” he was now telling media

But he was already a dead meat, and President Ruto’s fixer Oscar Sudi was gloating that he would be out in two weeks. On September 27, 2024, a KK coalition member Mwengi Mutuse presented a draft motion to impeach Gachagua.

For the next 21 days, Gachagua fought the impeachment in Parliament, courts and the court of public opinion. Not even a penultimate act of dramatic hospital admission could save him the Senate wrath.

“It was nothing but malice and fiction,” he told reporters as he left hospital, two days after he was impeached.

"It was a political game by the president to get rid of me."

Like Karanja before him, Geoffrey Rigathi Gachagua neither knew the day nor the hour the political thuggery and vindictiveness he practiced on others, would be deployed on him.