Are Ruto and Raila revisiting the unfinished agenda of 2007?

The 2007 Presidential poll was a defining moment for Kenya and Raila Odinga's politics. A short walk down memory lane should suffice.

In 2002, the key opposition figures, Raila Odinga, Wamalwa Kijana, Simeon Nyachae, Charity Ngilu and others suppressed their personal presidential ambitions and coalesced around Mwai Kibaki's candidature to root out KANU from four decades of choking political dominance, dictatorship, tribalism, and mismanagement of the economy.

The Rainbow Coalition, which catapulted Mwai Kibaki to the presidency, promised Kenyans a new dawn of inclusivity, prudent economic management and a highly consultative people-centered leadership. 

This promise and beautiful optics at the beginning of the Kibaki presidency gave tremendous reassurance regarding the future, and within a few months Kenya was catapulted to the prestigious status of being the most optimistic society in the world!

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Everyone was excited and, for the first time in the life of the mostly youthful citizens, they were proud to be Kenyan.

Then, without a warning, and to the chagrin of trusting citizens, President Kibaki started back-pedalling on the beautiful promises he had made during the campaign period.

When the President unveiled his Cabinet, it was a huge shocker. Most of the plum Cabinet positions, including Finance, Security, Energy, Attorney General, Constitutional Affairs, Lands, Housing, and several others were doled out to men and women from the President's Central Kenya backyard.

However, due to the huge legitimacy and confidence that the President enjoyed among Kenyans, he was given the benefit of doubt to use his judgment to fix the economy.

Then followed the appointments of Permanent Secretaries, and the President did not deviate from the same skewed script that was increasingly becoming a thorn in Kenyans' flesh.

Before Kenyans woke up from their optimism, almost the entire public service, including the military, state corporations and constitutional commissions were in the hands of the President's homies.

Kenyans joked that senior public servants under President Kibaki could hold meetings in their vernacular. The economy was growing competitively, but the dividends were being appropriated inordinately in favour of one region.

And since Kenyans had been bitten once by the KANU dictatorship, they were twice shy of a possible repeat of those dark days of Jomo Kenyatta and Daniel Arap Moi. By 2004, Kenyans had grown tired of Kibaki's tribalist tendencies and skewed appropriation of their tax revenues in favour of Central Kenya.

At the same time, the seeds of mega-corruption, including the infamous Anglo-Leasing and several other scandals were being planted. Within two short years of his reign, Kibaki had managed to divide the country right in the middle along ethnic lines, to levels that were unprecedented in the history of post-independence Kenya.

Kenyans were choked to the neck, and could not hold it any longer. A two-pronged strategy was adopted to rescue Kenya from the latter-day rapacious and arrogant regime.

The first one was to push through a new constitutional order that would guarantee cash transfers to the grassroots without executive interference. That was the beginning of the thinking around devolution as a development model.

The Kibaki regime rejected the idea of devolution which was being fronted by Raila Odinga and his opposition supporters. The government argued that devolution was akin to a "majimbo" system (federalism) which would potentially breed negative ethnicity in the country.

The second strategy, which was running concurrently with the first one, was to remove the Kibaki regime, and reinstate Kenya back to its ideals of national cohesion and broad-based development, stewarded by a government that reflected the face of Kenya in its diversity.

The selfish Kibaki regime was being systematically exposed, vilified and isolated by Kenyans other than those from the President's Mount Kenya backyard.

The left-wing of the government (opposition within) agitated for a referendum to be held on enactment of a new constitution, and in 2005, the government agreed to a plebiscite, believing that they would defeat the opposition.

The opposition adopted an "orange" as their symbol while the government side chose a "banana." When the referendum was finally done, Kenyans favoured orange over banana. President Kibaki responded by sacking Raila Odinga and all his supporters from the Cabinet.

The sacked group responded by forming a new political party called Orange Democratic (ODM) Party inspired by their referendum symbol and the "Orange Movement" wave that was then successfully sweeping across the political landscape in Ukraine. The ODM Party was created to pursue the second strategy of removing Kibaki from power through constitutional means.

The party became an instant attraction to the Kalenjin community, many of whose sons and daughters were being removed unceremoniously from their senior positions in the public service by President Kibaki.

Many other communities that felt aggrieved by Kibaki's discrimination quickly joined the ODM Party. Within one year, it became apparent that the next general elections slated for December 2007 were going to pit the Mount Kenya communities (Gikuyu, Meru and Embu) against the rest of Kenya.

In terms of demographics, that was 22% against 78% of the population. Since politics is not an exact science, it was possible to have some shifting positions towards the elections date.

However, the government side consistently lagged behind the opposition in the Gallup polls until the final day. Pundits opine that when President Kibaki sensed an imminent embarrassing defeat by the opposition, he got into a deal with Kalonzo Musyoka to weaken the opposition.

Consequently, Musyoka bolted out of the opposition ODM, and created his own party, known as Wiper Democratic Party. The speculation about a Kibaki/Musyoka deal would later be confirmed when Kibaki hurriedly formed his government with Musyoka as his Vice President while the presidential poll result was still being contested.

General elections were held in 2007, and as forecasted, William Ruto, Musalia Mudavadi, Najib Balala and other luminaries of the time mobilised their communities to ensure that Raila defeated Kibaki hands down to the presidency, by most credible accounts.

Besides the universal suffrage, Raila's ODM party had way more Members of Parliament than Kibaki's Party of National Unity (PNU).

However, emboldened by Kalonzo Musyoka's support and the presence of the unrelenting Kikuyu nationalists, Martha Karua, Uhuru Kenyatta and John Michuki, Kibaki hung onto the presidency like a leech by the skin of his teeth.

Rather than honorably leave the presidency to the winner, Kibaki opted to unleash security forces on innocent Kenyans whose only sin was to demand electoral justice. Hell broke loose, with security agencies mowing down Kenyans like grass.

When the police and military guns were finally silenced, more than 1300 Kenyans had needlessly lost their lives, most of them from gun wounds. In addition, at least 600,000 citizens were violently uprooted from their homes, ushering into Kenya a new phenomenon of Internally Displaced Peoples (IDPs).

What followed was a humanitarian crisis of monumental proportions. It took the intervention of the international community to bring the warring parties to the negotiation table under the chairmanship of former United Nations Secretary General, the late Kofi Annan.

The result of that negotiation was the formation of a Government of National Unity (GNU), with Mwai Kibaki as president and Raila Odinga Prime Minister. In that arrangement, the President and Prime Minister were dé juré equal partners, but in actual sense the latter was a junior partner in the GNU.

In essence, Mwai Kibaki stole Raila Odinga's presidency, and that theft was legitimized by the international community that enabled the President to misuse the executive powers to frustrate the actual winner of the poll.

The ODM party fraternity forgave but never forgot that blatant theft and arrogance by Kibaki and his lieutenants that included Uhuru Kenyatta, Martha Karua and Kalonzo Musyoka.

Subsequently, there were rearrangements in the political architecture of the country, and the ODM team of the 2007 - known as the Summit - disintegrated and members went their separate ways. For about ten years, Ruto and Raila seemed to be at crosshairs, and even competed against each other for the presidency in 2022.

But as they say, there is no permanent enmity in politics; only permanent interest. That is why it was not difficult for Ruto to reach out to his elder brother Raila when he was ambushed by the Gen-Z demonstrations across the country, demanding his vacation of office.

Curiously, when Raila made public his preference for a broad-based national dialogue, the fiercest criticism emanated from the Mount Kenya region.

A particularly incensing angle to the whole episode was the rejection by Mount Kenya leaders of the four ODM nominees to the Cabinet while fully embracing the eight or so people who were nominated from their region! A close scrutiny of the events of the last two months reveals two political formations that are beginning to take shape in Kenya.

One of the groups is bringing together Rigathi Gachagua, Martha Karua, Kalonzo Musyoka, Jeremiah Kioni and Uhuru Kenyatta (in hibernation).

The other group is coalescing around William Ruto, Raila Odinga, Wycliffe Oparanya, Musalia Mudavadi, Salim Mvurya and Ali Hassan Joho.

It looks like a reincarnation of the PNU and ODM by other names in preparation for the 2027 presidential poll.

Clearly, the chickens are coming home to roost.

Professor Vincent Ongore teaches at the Technical University of Kenya. He is currently based in Colorado, USA.