Ruto-Uhuru public spats a threat to orderly power transfer

Kenya is sliding into a moment of ‘hegemonic instability’.

Scholars have used the concept of‘ hegemonic instability’ to refer to emerging threats to stability now facing Africa’s more influential states: Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa.

Pundits fret that a festering feud between President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto poses an existential threat to an orderly transfer of power after Kenya’s high-stakes August 9 elections and could wreck the country’s role as an anchor state in the larger Horn of Africa.

An orderly transfer of leadership is the expected outcome of any election.

Despite this, in Kenya, as elsewhere, a peaceful change of leadership after elections is still a ‘rare and a recent practice’.

Adam Przeworski, in his 2014 study, which was published in the Journal of Comparative Political Studies (2015), concludes that 68 countries had never had a peaceful transition of power resulting from an election since 1788.

Peaceful transition

Even worse, democracies have been slow to enact laws to govern peaceful transitions.

The United States of America only enacted its ‘Presidential Transition Act’ in 1963.

Kenya only passed its ‘Assumption of the Office of President Act’ in 2012.

Former President Mwai Kibaki signed the law on August 27, 2012, five years after the disputed 2007 presidential elections, when the opposition accused him of “swearing himself into office at night”!

The coming into force of the Act on the March 4, 2013 election, which was won by Kenyatta and Ruto, marked a significant milestone in ensuring a peaceful change of guard.

This is the law that Kenyatta invoked on July 6 when he activated the Transition Committee and named its members to oversee an orderly transition of power to the next President.

Earlier on, during the National Annual Prayer Breakfast on May 26, Kenyatta had declared that he was committed to a peaceful transfer of power.

A regime’s most enduring legacy is its commitment to hand over to the next democratically elected leader. But an orderly transition is still a delicate process.

The doctrine of peaceful transition is everywhere at risk of power grabs.

The world is currently observing with bated breath as a special panel probe into the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, when pro-Trump armed protesters tried to overturn the 2020 election and keep President Donald Trump in power.

Americans breathed a sigh of relief when Trump finally announced that he was committed to “a smooth, orderly and seamless transition of power”.

Fall-outs are normal hazards in the realm of politics.

Although now festering, the Kenyatta-Ruto feud is neither new nor unexpected.

What is worrying is that, despite a two-term limit that renders the incumbent ineligible to pursue a third term, a tragic turn in the war of words is raising the stakes for Kenya’s stability.

The earliest signs of a Kenyatta-Ruto feud appeared two years into Kenyatta’s tenure when he launched an anti-corruption drive during his State of the Nation Address in March 2015.

Ruto saw the anti-corruption drive as a big stick his boss was wielding to unfairly target his United Republican Party (URP) side.

Certainly, by the time the Jubilee Party went to the 2017 elections, ‘things had fallen apart’ and the centre could no longer hold, to paraphrase the poem, ‘The Second Coming,’  by Willian Butler Yeats.

Rival factions

The tipping point was Kenyatta’s ‘Handshake’ with his rival-turned-ally, former Prime Minister Raila Odinga, on March 9, 2018, which split the ruling Jubilee Party into the pro-Kenyatta ‘Kielewekwe’ and the pro-Ruto ‘Tangatanga’ camps. 

By January 2021, the rival factions had morphed into two distinct parties: Ruto’s United Democratic Alliance (UDA) and Kenyatta’s refurbished but feebler Jubilee Party.

Long before the courts shot it down, the DP and his allies did not hide their distrust for the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI), which flowed from the ‘Handshake’, which they saw as a trojan horse for Kenyatta to position Odinga as his successor.

UDA launched a propaganda blitz, accusing Kenyatta of reneging on a power-sharing and succession pact.

Notably, the feud is unravelling within the wider canvass of Kenyatta’s decision to influence his own succession.

Power-sharing pact

Ahead of the Jubilee party's National Delegates Conference (NDC) on February 26, the President hewed a new power-sharing arrangement with Odinga that will enable him to retain power after his presidency expires both as Jubilee Party Leader and as Patron of the Odinga-led Azimio La Umoja-One Kenya Party.

From late June, the escalating war of words, public spats and grandstanding have turned the feud dirtier, nastier and riskier, making the prospects of a peaceful handing over of power highly problematic – especially if Mr Ruto wins the evidently closely contested election.

In what appears like a campaign strategy to discredit Kenyatta and hold ground in Mt Kenya, UDA’s strategists have cynically stirred up the Uhuru-Ruto tensions to a dangerous fever pitch.

On June 30, while launching the Kenya Kwanza manifesto, Ruto vowed to establish, “within 30 days, an inquiry into ‘cronyism’, ‘state capture’, enforced disappearances and human rights violations, and to reverse Kenyatta’s policies.

The message, reminiscent of the imprisonment of former South African President Jacob Zuma in June 2021, is clear: UDA government will not fear going after the President once he leaves office.

Ruto’s ‘I-almost-slapped-Uhuru’ remarks, in a leaked audio clip on July 3, went beyond the pale.

However, Ruto has since downplayed it all as a figure of speech.

But his campaign has sustained the assault on Kenyatta as an ‘ungrateful’ and ‘weak’ leader who is unable to make up his mind or keep his word. ‘I made you president,’ Ruto told Kenyatta on July 5.

For his part, on July 2 Uhuru publicly castigated Ruto for politicking instead of performing his duties, attacking the same government he serves and giving Kenyans empty promises.

Earlier on, on February 23, he told Mt Kenya delegates during Sagana III that: “My deputy is unfit to rule,” exhorting them to elect Odinga because he will help “protect our interests and legacy”.

In the ongoing battle for votes, Kenya’s top leaders need to tone down the rhetoric and invest in an orderly transfer of power. This will guarantee Kenya’s and the region’s stability.

Prof Kagwanja, a former Government Adviser, is currently the Chief Executive of Africa Policy Institute and Adjunct Scholar at the University of Nairobi and National Defence University (NDU) Kenya.