President William Ruto (left) interacts with Co-operatives CS Wycliffe Oparanya during a joint Cabinet and Principal Secretaries meeting at State House, Nairobi, on August 12, 2024. With them are PSs Susan Mang'eni and Abdi Dubat.
Pockets of opposition have emerged in Mt Kenya region with sharp criticism of the decision by President William Ruto to appoint opposition figures in his Cabinet.
After the President dissolved and reconstituted his Cabinet following sustained anti-government protests led by Gen Zs, he named six Cabinet Secretaries from the opposition party Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), whose leader, Mr Raila Odinga, last week rallied MPs allied to the outfit to back the political deal.
However, the President on Monday, August 12 said that the ruling Kenya Kwanza Alliance and ODM have not entered into a coalition agreement but have only agreed to join forces in a bid to tackle the challenges facing Kenyans.
“There comes a time when the most important thing is not what benefits leaders or political parties, but what benefits the people,” he said while on a tour of Kisii and Nyamira counties.
But there is persistent grumbling by some Kenya Kwanza leaders, especially the allies of Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua. And factions have emerged in the Azimio la Umoja coalition on whose ticket Mr Odinga contested the presidency during the 2022 General Election with Narc-Kenya leader, Martha Karua, as his running mate.
ODM’s warming up to the government has drawn condemnation from its Azimio partners. Jubilee, Wiper chief Kalonzo Musyoka, Democratic Action Party (DAP-K) under Mr Eugene Wamalwa, Ms Karua and Party of National Unity (PNU) leader Peter Munya have opposed the move. Ms Karua has since started the process of Narc-K to exit from Azimio.
In the President's United Democratic Alliance (UDA), which is a constituent party of Kenya Kwanza Alliance, Nyeri Governor Mutahi Kahiga — a staunch ally of Mr Gachagua — has questioned the ties with ODM.
“We are witnessing strange happenings, however, we have no choice but to wait and see what happens after the appointment of the new Cabinet,” he said.
The fierce defender of the DP said: We are back to that position we were in when former president Uhuru Kenyatta surprised us with a handshake between him and Mr Odinga in 2018.”
The governor said that although it is the prerogative of the President to pick the people he believes will help him deliver his legacy, “the political implications are deep, since 87 percent of people from Mt Kenya region voted for the government, and cannot be ignored.”
“More effort needs to be made to explain to the people of Mt Kenya why they woke up on August 9, 2022 to vote (for Ruto),” Mr Kahiga said.
“I believe Mr Odinga is on his way into the government, and soon, he will break away, as he usually does, to form competition against us during the 2027 elections,” he added.
Mbeere North Member of Parliament Geoffrey Ruku in an interview on Inooro TV on Monday said: “The President giving out 30 percent of the government to those who were fighting him elicited negative feelings in Mt Kenya region.”
“We are not amused, certainly we are not. If a little more pressure is exerted on him, he might increase the percentage to 50, or perhaps more,” Mr Ruku said.
PNU leader Munya said: “The decision to incorporate opposition politicians in the Cabinet does not promote ethics of good democracy.”
Political casebook
Jubilee Party Secretary-General Jeremiah Kioni said that the inclusion of the opposition in the Cabinet is evidence that President Ruto has lost his political casebook and is on a free fall — a position which former Gatanga MP Nduati Ngugi agrees with.
Mr Ngugi said the allies of the President’s support of the broad-based government is akin to “dressing a septic wound without sterilisation, and the bad smell will surely come out”.
“We, the Jubilee party wing that is loyal to former President Uhuru Kenyatta, are disturbed that the so-called broad-based Cabinet is underlining the notion that ‘it’s time to eat for those who win power’,” Mr Ngugi argued.
He said that the development has frayed relations within Azimio since "all political parties in the coalition from Mt Kenya region have broken ranks with Mr Odinga's ODM party.”
Former Kiambu governor Ferdinand Waititu protested that "the President gave us Cabinet slots that have no clout and influence.”
“Prime positions were given to people who did not believe in his ability to lead the nation, and he has confirmed to them that they were right,” Mr Waititu claimed.
"The ODM Cabinet appointees are political heavyweights who can mobilise political programmes ahead of 2027,” he argued.
The new Cabinet picks from ODM are former National Assembly Minority Leader Opiyo Wandayi (Energy), immediate former ODM chairman John Mbadi (National Treasury), as well as former governors Hassan Joho (Mining) and Wycliffe Oparanya (Cooperatives).
Kahumbu Member of County Assembly in Murang'a County Isaac Njoroge also said that “the people on the ground are not amused”.
"If there are people who have let the President down, then they are his allies in Mt Kenya region. They have been fighting and plotting against each other at the expense of the development agenda," Mr Njoroge argued.
However, Kiharu MP Ndindi Nyoro said: “The politics of hurling abuses at each other will take us nowhere. Personally, I don't want to be party to those kinds of debates since voters will use our development agendas as the marking scheme when next we return to them to seek elective positions,” Mr Nyoro told Nation.Africa on Monday.
“We are supposed to stop bickering and concentrate on delivering the promises we made to the people while campaigning for office.”
Naivasha MP Jayne Kihara and former Bahati MP Kimani Ngunjiri said that Mt Kenya “must not sleep with both eyes closed.”
Mr Ngunjiri said: “The point at which Mr Odinga will depart from this government will leave us groping in the dark because he will spoil our calculations and that is the reason why we should play safe and prepare our plan “B” well in advance".
"It will not come as a surprise to me if his (Ruto) reunion with Mr Odinga, through handing him prime Cabinet slots, is an advance announcement that ‘he might seek reelection as their candidate’," Mr Ngunjiri said.
He argued that the formation of President Ruto's new Cabinet, in addition to his declared intention of dissolving Kenya Kwanza Alliance affiliate parties to form one behemoth party, is scaring news to Mt Kenya.
"What if he uses the party exclusively for his own directives? Where will that leave us in the Mountain? He knows how collapsing his own United Republican Party (URP) to form Jubilee Party in 2016 destabilised him. That is where we in Mt Kenya risk finding ourselves," he said.
The former MP said that the alternative is to form a political party in Mt Kenya, build it and place it in the political market ahead of 2027 General Election.
