Uhuru races to complete projects and unite fractured opposition

President Uhuru Kenyatta is racing against time, juggling his legacy-driven election promises with trying to unite the opposition to run on a joint ticket and succeed him next year.

Having separated from his deputy William Ruto, with whom he romped to victory in 2013 on an anti-West wave sparked by their crimes against humanity cases at the International Criminal Court, President Kenyatta faces a delicate balancing act and the ultimate test of time in his last year in office.

His March 2018 surprise truce with his fierce opponent in the 2013 and 2017 polls, ODM leader Raila Odinga, altered Kenya’s political trajectory and seems to be what he wants as his single biggest legacy when he retires next year.

President Kenyatta will be judged harshly if that experiment of vanquishing his deputy from the centre, embracing the opposition and hoping to field a joint ticket against his Number Two backfires, analysts say.

On Monday, he defended his recent State House meetings with Mr Odinga and One Kenya Alliance (Oka) leaders Musalia Mudavadi (Amani National Congress), Kalonzo Musyoka (Wiper), Moses Wetang’ula (Ford-Kenya) and Kanu’s Gideon Moi.

The exclusion of the DP from the meetings, he said, was only because his second-in-command, whom he asked to resign if  unhappy with Jubilee policies, was against the process all along. 

“They are all ganging up against us. You see some five, six men meeting in Mombasa to plot how to share power, and ganging up against hustlers, but we want to tell them we have God. We can no longer have a Kenya where leaders met to share out positions; we want to talk about the common man, too,” the DP said two weeks ago.

But for President Kenyatta, it seems, his race against time as the 2022 clock ticks is also largely centred on his Big Four agenda, which he announced after winning 98 per cent of the vote in the October 2017 repeat poll that Mr Odinga boycotted.

Just a year to the end of his term, not much progress has been made on his promise of universal healthcare, 500,000 affordable homes, a food-secure country, and raising manufacturing up to contribute at least 15 per cent of the country’s wealth.

This, the DP says, was because of the March 2018 Handshake and the reorganisation of the government that saw Interior Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i take a supervisory role that analysts say should technically be the DP’s job.

“Those that the president trusted (with the roles I was doing), either because they did not know what to do, or lack of capacity, or laziness, did not do what they were expected to do. That is why the big plan we had (the Big Four) is now in a state you do not understand,” the DP said on Inooro TV three weeks ago.

The Parliamentary Budget Office, which advises MPs on the national budget and finances, has expressed concerns that the Big Four might not be achieved by the end of the President’s term next year.

“Since 2021-22 is the last ‘full’ financial year of implementation, it is apparent that many of the Big Four targets will not be met by the current administration,” PBO said on June 10.

“Resources appear to have simply followed previous trends with the bulk being allocated to education and infrastructure sectors, as has often been the case. . . There hasn’t been any real commitment towards the implementation of the Big Four agenda.”

On housing, for example, PBO said Mr Kenyatta will not achieve the projected 500,000 affordable homes, with only 1,370 units having been built under the programme.

The current budget provides Sh12 billion to deliver 3,336 units by the end of the 2021-22 financial year.

The team also cites failures in large-scale irrigation schemes, slow uptake of textile and leather subsector interventions, failure in post-harvest handling mechanisms, challenges in reforming the national health insurer and setting up a universal health coverage scheme.

President Kenyatta, who had in his State of the Nation address last year, acknowledged that some of the promises may have to spill over to the next administration on Monday said the programmes were still on course.

“We give our solemn vow that by the end of 2022, we would have laid an unshakable foundation for the realisation of this vision which is a shared aspiration for millions of Kenyans,” said Mr Kenyatta in his State of the Nation address in November last year.

On Monday, he said: "I must admit I’m not where I would have preferred to be under normal circumstances. However, we have started to see the tourism, financial and agricultural sectors picking up. We are putting in a lot of money into all these small and medium enterprises, trying to see how we can ensure they become proper job-creators.""

But while achieving the Big Four and other 2017 campaign election promises might be the big plan, his real challenge, and the most immediate will be how he brings together a divided, politically charged nation, with his deputy on one side and an opposition split by raw ambition on the other.

“On this, the President is at a crossroads given that the deputy president, who should technically be the one he supports to take over, is pulling in a different direction,” University of Nairobi’s Prof Winnie Mitullah offers. 

“The opposition, on whose unity and joint ticket he seems to have pegged his legacy, is also splitting and is fragile. This will be his make-or-break, and it’ll be quite unfortunate if he finishes his term without achieving the harmony he so much seems to desire.”

For President Kenyatta, the next 12 months are not just about clearing a second term, but are an integral pivot point on how history will remember him.

And following the declaration by the Court of Appeal affirming a High Court decision that the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) was unconstitutional, his legacy, it seems, has now shifted from a focus on projects and their delivery to one of uniting Kenya.

While he says he has no plans for an "endless court battle", President Kenyatta says he will keep on with his task of uniting Kenya, even when he is out of office next year.

“Whether in office or out of office, I will continue to fight and advocate for those things that I believe in and I believe strongly that as a country, we need to be fair. We should shed this ethnic umbrella that we always say so and so because at the end of the day, we are all Kenyans and we need each other,” said President Kenyatta.

This, Prof Mitullah says, presents a challenge.

“The trouble with Uhuru’s last year is that it seems he has bitten too much, and whether that is a good idea is the big question… This brings the second issue: That he wants harmony but has too much on his hands to realistically get everyone happy and clapping,” she says.

But political commentator Herman Manyora thinks such thinking — that the President might be left with egg on his face in his bid to leave a united opposition that vanquishes his estranged deputy — underestimates the 59-year-old’s political genius.

“I think Uhuru is a master player. He is on top of his game and in the fullness of time, it will be open for all to see. If I were Ruto, I would be very worried that the man that wants to vanquish me does not look bothered by his antics at all, right now,” says Mr Manyora who also lecturers at the University of Nairobi.

Mr Manyora, who believes the only real challenger of the DP is Mr Odinga, says the current push-and-pull on the pro-BBI side is not a sign of what will happen once the campaigns start early next year.

“What we are seeing is politics and it is normal. In the end, Uhuru and Raila will organise. Do not underestimate the power of the Handshake,” he says. “It has brought this country together in a way that you cannot underrate, and going forward, I see it being brought to bear, this kind of unity, in the 2022 election.”

Therein, analysts say, lies his legacy — one he would rather hinge on his ambitious economic plan.

Will he succeed? Only time, which ends in one year, will tell.

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