Gachagua, the never-say-die fighter, walking into political oblivion with eyes open

Impeached Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua arrives at Parliament Buildings, Nairobi, during National Assembly impeachement hearing. [File, Standard]

The takedown of impeached Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua was so effective that, in the end, he was left with Hobson’s choice: Resign or fade into political oblivion.

As a person who his critics say is his worst enemy, he didn’t do himself any favours, opting to willingly lose his job, a setback that’s certain to soon snowball.

Blame hubris, a never-quit mindset, a bad strategy and, more important, coarse-grained statements that embarrassed his tribesmen and women and alienated the wider public.

The man failed again and again to step back and not to go over the cliff. Chances came up one after the other, but he smugly plowed ahead with his ill-fated plots, and now he is learning — the hard way — that misfortunes never come singly. 

Initially, Gachagua had a good, if aggressively hostile, Plan A, but had no Plan B to win in his punch-up with President William Ruto. 

First chance

Gachagua blew his first opportunity on October 1, when the Speaker of National Assembly Moses Wetang’ula accepted the impeachment motion.

That day, Gachagua wasted a moment he could have used to resign to live large in peace and under the protection of the State’ security and munificence.

He only reappeared on October 7, a day before the impeachment vote, and held a tawdry press conference in which he called Parliament a “theatre of the absurd.”  

Wetang’ula fired the first shot when he said the House found the appellation “theatre of the absurd” “abhorrent” and reminded the-then Deputy President of the rules that barred one from discussing pending matters elsewhere.

Characteristic of his never-say-die spirit, the unapologetic Gachagua’s response was to say that he had a “tremendous respect for this great institution” and then went ahead with his speech, drunk with his own self-affirmation and innocence.  

In his zeal to have a blaze of defence speech, he vilipended his boss, raising the stakes. The DP burned a new bridge: The presidency.

Second chance

While defending himself against an accusation that he broke with the government’s policies on the eviction of people residing along Nairobi river, he said, “Deputy President is being accused of undermining his boss by just doing what his boss said.”

“Rigathi Gachagua has learnt his job from his boss,” he said, “that public officers must be called to order when they fall short of expectation.

‘‘And I never saw anybody bring William Ruto here for impeachment or criticising the IG (Inspector General of police) or the DCI (Department of Criminal Investigation). This is a very unfair allegation.”

From there, it’s all downhill, and saving him from a disgraceful fall was nigh impossible as divorce was seen as the only viable remedy for his strained ties with his boss. 

After speaking an hour and a half, in which he rejected all the 11 impeachment charges demanding his ouster, Gachagua closed his papers, checked the time on his wrist watch, crossed his hands on his chest, leaned on the lectern and appealed to the lawmakers, smiling in a matter-of-fact manner and cutting an image of a man who was in a rush to right an injustice and had little time for courtesy or PR.

“Search your conscience and decide,” he said. Seconds later, he added: “If you are so persuaded and you search your conscience without any intimidation or coercion or inducement and you think it’s the right thing, please go ahead and do so.”

And so the lawmakers did and voted him out.

When the results were declared, the House erupted in applause and babel.

Earlier, the mover of the motion, Kibwezi West MP Mwengi Mutuse, said Gachagua “chose to be reckless” on June 25, when rioters stormed parliament buildings during the Gen Z protests that rattled the government and threatened the President’s rule. 

He said Rigathi’s “inflammatory remarks” had the potential to tear at the social fabric of the country. 

“The DP did mislead the public. The DP did live below the expectation of the office that he holds, (and) made unfounded, sensational statements,” he said.

According to the impeachment, Gachagua bullied officials, attempted to divide the country, violated the Constitution, engaged in corruption and disobeyed his boss, among other damning issues.

He rejected all the charges calling them,”nothing but malice and fiction.” 

“It was a political game by the President to get rid of me,” said the potty-mouthed DP after the fact.

Armed with a phalanx of lawmakers, he mounted a ferocious defence against the accusations, calling them “outrageous.” 

He said the accusations had “no basis, that is sheer propaganda, that’s a scheme to hound me out of office because of other political considerations and has nothing to do with violation of the Constitution.”

“It has nothing to do with gross misconduct and it has absolutely nothing to do with committing international or national crimes,” he said.

He called the public participation exercise that preceded the debate “shoddy exercise” and urged lawmakers to “focus on the corruption scandals around our country, the Adani corruption, the issues in the public health sector, the glaring theft of public resources.”

“That is what Parliament should consider and take time and that is what the people of Kenya want,” he said.

But lawmakers would have none of his entreaties.

Gladys Boss Shollei said Gachagua was “guilty of treason and other allied offenses,” as he had “gone against his oath of allegiance” and the official secret act and oath of secrecy by contradicting his boss and revealing secret issues in public.

“In fact, it’s juvenile,” she said of his statement hitting out at the country’s spy chief, Noordin Haji, arguing that it revealed that he was “a person who is unhinged and can’t control his tongue.”  

The National Assembly’s impeachment was the second strike against him. 

Yet, Rigathi had a better chance of securing a soft-landing, but he didn’t make use of it.

Third chance

On October 17, the day the senators were to vote on his removal, Gachagua employed a doomed tactic, whose objective, according to his critics, was a last-ditch attempt to shake off the impeachment or buy time.

Hours before the actual vote, the second-in-command called in sick.

His lead lawyer’s claim that his client was unwell got little sympathy among the senators waiting for his response and lawyers waiting to cross-examine him.

In the end, the senators chucked him out of office before midnight, in a session that approved five out of the 11 charges of the impeachment — and with it ended the service of the phenomenon that was Riggy G as Ruto’s second-in-command.

Ultimately, Gachagua’s blitz of more than two dozen preemptive lawsuits, as well as his gripes, bravado, veiled threats and pleading for forgiveness availed him nothing. 

His cries of innocence were not enough to soften the hearts of the lawmakers of the two Houses.

His enemies decided enough is enough, and President Ruto’s strategy to settle accounts with his rebellious principal assistant, who let him down at his hour of need on June 25, eventually worked like a charm.

If Gachagua’s pick as a running mate in 2022 was a fluke and bad judgment, his fall, it seems, was a well-thought-out, winning strategy.

Prof Macharia Munene, political historian, recently told Spice FM that Gachagua “impeach(ed) himself” after he “set himself up” for failure. “His utterances are immature,” he said.

“Apart from being a deputy president, he’s an adult. And there are some things you don’t say or do as an adult.” 

Prof Makau Mutua equated Gachagua’s attempts to prolong his stay at Harambee House Annex to the tactics of former US President Donald Trump in 2020, when he tried to obstruct the certification of his rival’s victory. 

Excessive risk-taker

One can hardly accuse Gachagua of being inarticulate or of not showing great aplomb in public, but the man’s recent fight has exposed his proclivity for excessive risk-taking, his lack of off-ramps or a nationwide prop to fall back on when the going gets tough. 

On October 7, he sniggered at the mere suggestion of resigning from his position. “This is a man elected by 7.2 million Kenyans,” he said, pausing for two seconds for effect. “How dare you suggest to him that he can do so without a public participation ( six more seconds of pause).

‘‘ I have no intention, whatsoever, to resign from this job.”

“I will fight to the end,” he said, with seconds of pause punctuating his words. During his two-hour-long presser, he sprinkled seconds of chuckles and pauses to emphasise that he was not a man to take flight.

“I don’t think it’s honourable to be a quitter.

‘‘I think you must fight on from within and pursue what you intend to do” he said on July 19, 2022 during the deputy presidential debate. “You can’t be a quitter. You must fight on.”

Relief for State House

Gachagua’s removal is a big relief for State House, which quickly nominated his replacement, Kithure Kindiki, the Interior Cabinet Secretary. 

His ejection was an epic unravelling of the once warm relationship between him and the President.

Before the 2022 election, Gachagua said it would be “incomprehensible” that he and Ruto would even think of “having sideshows and things that are unnecessary.” He said the previous falling-out between Ruto and former President Uhuru Kenyatta was primarily brought about by “inferiority complex”.

“People must allow strong leaders to prevail and you shouldn’t have a problem when your deputy is strong and sharp and focused,” he said. “You should just be able to accommodate him and use that as a strength to serve the people of Kenya.”

He said his bond with Ruto was “so important that no sideshows can come in between (us and) the focus that is before us, the need to restore the dignity of the Kenyan people is such an important aspect of our life, our leadership.”

Gachagua fell alone, with almost no allies willing to take up the cudgels for him.

The votes of the lawmakers who stuck by him counted for nothing in the grand scheme of things. Even few in his beloved region — Mount Kenya — expressed open grief, as many elated politicians relished his downfall and quickly started a scramble for his position. Either his love messaging didn’t get through or he was loathed. 

 Prof Munene said last May that Gachagua’s mantra of one man, one vote, one shilling formula of revenue sharing was just part of his “political desperation to sound as if he cares about people in the mountain, was being used as a campaign slogan so that’s why he’s doing, just trying to regain ground that he thinks he lost.” 

Gachagua, Munene said, “undermined his own stature” in the process of trying to become a Mount Kenya kingpin. 

“He had a chance to be a leader, actually a very good chance,” he said, but “fell short of expectation.” 

In the last two years he has been DP, Riggy G’s assertive style turned off many of his fellow tribesmen and women — not to say anything of other Kenyans’ aversion to his Mount Kenya idee fixe.

In the eyes of many, Gachagua came across as an artless rookie who was in a tearing hurry to achieve many things in a record time, regardless of the toes he stepped on.  

But he was neither capable of adapting to the new Kenya under Ruto nor was he adept at deciphering the intricacies of regional and national politics.

In politics, Prof Peter Kagwanja said, one has to bring money and voters to the table.

“Unfortunately for our friend, he wanted the seat of the Deputy President, (yet) he didn’t have the numbers (and) he didn’t have the money,” he said.

His foibles aside, Gachagua’s impeachment has captivated Kenyans, who were glued to their phones or TV screens to follow the riveting proceedings at the National Assembly and the Senate.

“Last two days, Mr speaker, together with other Kenyans we have watched with lots of bewilderment, hard to believe pronouncements and difficult, Mr speaker, to believe that here is where we find ourselves as a nation,” said Senate Majority Leader Aaron Cheruiyot.

He said the country had reached a stage it had to “make the difficult decision of having to say good bye to his excellency the Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua because, Mr speaker, the reasons that have been listed have consequences by law, of what you do when this happens.”

Last week, low-spirited Gachagua was without his security detail or the horde of aides that used to hover around him   

“The man I am seeing is not the one that I thought I knew,” he said, before later adding:  “Please leave me alone. Let me be. God would take care of me. I don’t have to have security. I don’t have drivers, I don’t have to have cars,”he said.