Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi.
President William Ruto’s appointment of Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi as acting Cabinet Secretary in all vacant ministries following the purge appears to signal the growing political importance of the former ANC party leader in the Kenya Kwanza fold.
On Friday, President Ruto named 11 nominees for different Cabinet portfolios. With the political relationship between the President and his deputy Rigathi Gachagua shaky, Mudavadi’s growing stature has fueled talks of the Foreign and Diaspora Affairs minister being his trump card in his re-election bid.
While many political party leaders were reluctant to relinquish their party leadership posts after appointment to various State positions, Mudavadi left his position as ANC party boss to devote his time to serve the President. Further, it is only ANC which has been keen on folding up to join hands with President Ruto’s UDA party, in a merger that is aimed at forming a giant party to drive the latter’s re-election bid.
Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi.
Political commentator Mark Bichachi said that Mudavadi’s new role is a major political statement and a sure sign that he could be a possible running mate should Ruto’s relationship with Gachagua become untenable.
Although President Ruto inherited the Mt Kenya and Rift Valley bastions that were crucial to their victory with President Kenyatta in 2013 and 2017, it is eating into his rival’s strongholds in Nyanza, Western and Coast that tilted the scale. He beat Azimio leader Raila Odinga by a paltry 200,000 votes and it is the inroads he made in opposition strongholds of Coast and Western that cemented his victory.
In Western, Dr Ruto garnered 629,552 votes, close to three times the 242,000 votes UhuRuto had in 2017. The President beat Mr Odinga in Ford Kenya leader Moses Wetang’ula’s, another Kenya Kwanza co-principal, Bungoma County, polling 255,907 against the Azimio boss’s 145,240.
Since joining Kenya Kwanza Alliance after ditching One Kenya Alliance late in 2022, Mudavadi’s star has continued to blossom. In October last year, President Ruto handed Mudavadi the powerful Foreign and Diaspora Affairs docket, an influential docket that guarantees him a position in the National Security Council. The National Security Council is the President’s principal forum for national security and foreign policy decision-making.
The council brings together the President, the DP, the CS for Defence, Foreign Affairs and Internal security, among others. As the most experienced member of President Ruto’s Executive, the PCS was given additional responsibilities by the President as a way of trying to live up to his 30 per cent promise of government share to Western during last year’s campaigns.
The PCS has been driving Kenya Kwanza’s foreign policy representing the President in several international assignments. Mudavadi has taken a keen interest in President Ruto’s bid to have his political nemesis, Odinga, capture the chairmanship of the African Union Commission, and has been the face of his campaigns to win the top regional post.
He has also been dispatched by President Ruto to represent him in key events including the swearing-in of elected presidents as well as attending trade and investment forums.
At some point, Gachagua had to come out to clarify that he left the role to Mudavadi in order to remain in the country to focus on the development agenda of their government and can only make foreign trips if they are about resource mobilisation.
“I have heard people saying that Musalia is doing my job. That he is the one going to Nigeria while I have been handed the ordinary jobs of fighting alcohol and drug abuse,” said the DP. “I told the President to leave me here in Kenya to fight alcoholism and drug abuse. Let me tell you, the only foreign trip I will attend is one which will bring development…” he added.
Macharia Munene, History and International Relations professor at the United States International University in Nairobi, says that retaining Mudavadi could be two-fold.
The first reason appears to be a sign that he could be a potential contender for a higher office come 2027 while on the other hand, being a Foreign Affairs minister, stability and a clean image had to be sent to foreign countries that the holder of the position is neither corrupt nor incompetent.
“There is nothing the President could have done with Gachagua because he is not appointed but retaining Mudavadi can be seen as trying to keep peace with other regions as well as signaling that he is a potential contender for a higher office,” said Prof Munene. “The President was firing his ministers either because of corruption allegations or incompetence. Having Mudavadi there would have given a wrong impression to foreign countries he has been dealing with as Kenya’s representative,” he added.
But in a recent interview with the Nation, the former deputy premier was cagey on whether he is keen on being Dr Ruto’s running mate in 2027.
He said it is far too early to discuss strategies for elections that are more than three years away as he is focused on supporting the President’s agenda through greater coordination of government programmes to improve service delivery to the people.
“There is simply too much on my plate to be fantasizing about hypothetical roles in the future,” Mudavadi said. “Speculating about future elections is a distraction from the critical work we must do today. The time for such discussions will come much later and when it does, Kenyans will have the chance to choose their leaders based on performance and their vision for the future,” he added.
