Deputy president Rigathi Gachagua addresses worshippers during a church service at PEFA Church Kiamariga, Nyeri County on July 7, 2024.
With hints of an impending impeachment motion amidst reports that close aides have been questioned by police over alleged financing of the Gen Z anti-tax revolt, which shook President William Ruto’s government over the past five weeks, Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua is clearly a man under siege.
While he can sit pretty in the knowledge that the President has no power to fire him, ongoing events indicate rising questions over whether he will survive the rest of his five-year term, or if he will be forced out prematurely whether impeachment or being pressured into resigning.
What cannot be in doubt is that the wagons are circling, with the push against Gachagua likely being driven from the most powerful office in the land. The dramatic development of key Gachagua aides and political allies being quizzed by detectives from Monday last week have come beside a very aggressive propaganda blitz orchestrated from DCI headquarters, using media contacts to publish stories of investigations into millions of shillings allegedly routed to the #ResistFinanceBill2024, #OccupyParliament and #RutoMustGo protests.
It also appears that similar disinformation tactics were applied earlier to influence media reports linking a number of civil society organisations and politicians to the protests. That was before the government, through Foreign Affairs PS Korir Sing’oei, formally accused the US-based Ford Foundation of funding a number of human rights NGOs allegedly involved in the protests. No evidence was provided that Ford Foundation grants, most of which go back many years and well before the Gen Z protests started some five weeks ago, were used in the protests.
Investigations by The Weekly Review indicate that investigation of possible foreign funding or local political links to the protests have largely hit a dead end, but the detectives on the squad assembled by Director of Criminal Investigations Mohammed Amin and National Intelligence Service Director-General Noordin Haji are under pressure to achieve pre-determined outcomes. Despite leaks to the media suggesting that three Gachagua aides and a number of Nairobi politicians were quizzed into the flow of some Sh50 million to fund the protests, it appears that the detectives on the case actually had no such information as they moved into the DP’s official residence in Karen last Monday.
Police sources indicate deep frustration on the part of detectives detailed by their bosses to pursue certain angles, but having to report no progress. That was the case when the team went to the Karen complex and questioned Gachagua’s long-serving personal assistant Munene Wamumbi, former Nyeri Town MP Ngunjiri Wambugu, who now serves as the DP’s political communications consultant, and former Embakasi West MP George Theuri who is an advisor on youth affairs. The detectives were looking into a series of meetings held at the Boulevard Hotel in Nairobi attended by key political allies of the DP, notably Embakasi MP James Gakuya, and Embakasi East MP Benjamin Gathiru, alias Major Donk, as well as Theuri.
As it turned out, however, the series of meetings had started long before the Gen Z protests, and were devoted solely to planning for the Nairobi UDA elections, where Gakuya has secured Gachagua’s support in his battle for the branch chairmanship against Nairobi Governor Johnson Sakaja.
The DP’s involvement in the Nairobi polls has raised eyebrows around conflict of interest as he is also in charge coordinating the governing party elections. There has also been concern of the DP running a deliberate campaign to ensure Kikuyu domination of Nairobi UDA politics, a quest that has drawn in some politicians from the neighbouring Mt Kenya region counties of Kiambu and Murang’a.
Sh50 million
The detectives reported back that they found no evidence of any suspicious cash disbursements approaching Sh50 million, limiting their probe to a Sh50,000 mobile money transfer by one of the DP’s aides, which turned out to be payment for family holiday in Mombasa. It seemed the detectives, who were also separately quizzed the two MPs, were groping in the dark, but the information they could not verify is it what made its way into the media, and also into the hands of a number of anti-Gachagua UDA MPs, who are reportedly planning the impeachment motion.
As the drama was in full swing, Laikipia East MP Mwangi Kiunjuri, one of Gachagua’s fiercest critics from the Mt Kenya region, came out with sensational allegations that four MPs from the region and a key government office had mobilised a group of some 25,000 to hijack the hitherto peaceful Gen Z protests in Nairobi and cause mayhem and looting in the city centre, as well as the June 25 invasion of Parliament, as part of a plot to overthrow President Ruto’s government.
“The office that funded the protests is known by the government,” he said in a TV interview, concluding that a “pig fries itself with its own fat”. He also noted that for the first time in memory, the anti-Finance Bill protests head spread in many towns across the Mt Kenya region, suggesting that local political forces were at play. Kiunjuri did not name the politicians or offices he was alluding to, and he remained coy when contacted by The Weekly Review. However, it is obvious to where he was pointing fingers, giving an indication of the allegations likely to face Gachagua if the impeachment Motion is actually moved.
It is, however, highly unlikely that that UDA MPs would move against the DP in Parliament without express approval of President Ruto. Such a move would be highly polarizing, exposing major divisions in UDA and the wider Kenya Kwanza coalition that would also portray the picture of a government riven by internal splits. What cannot be disputed now is that Gachagua is under a great deal of pressure from within his own party, mirroring exactly the tribulations Ruto faced in his final term of President Uhuru Kenyatta’s deputy. Complicating matters for Gachagua is that he is not in a very string bargaining position in terms of undisputed control of a solid ethnic or regional bloc.
Ever since riding to power as Ruto’s running mate in 2022, Gachagua has sought in vain to occupy the vacuum in Mt Kenya leadership left on Uhuru’s exit. He has switched from his assigned role as Ruto’s attack dog against Uhuru, to pleading for a truce that would see him inherit the mantle of kingpin of the populous region. Uhuru has largely ignored his entreaties. And, meanwhile, Ruto has taken a dim view of Gachagua’s attempts to project himself as the one who delivered the Mt Kenya vote which guaranteed the presidency. That vote was largely in the bag even before Gachagua was tapped as running mate.
However, the DP has adroitly moved to capitalise on the sympathy around the accusations he is facing. When it started becoming public earlier this year that Ruto was looking to prop up alternative Mt Kenya politicians such as Kiharu MP Ndindi Nyoro as possible replacements, the DP’s staunch supporters seemed to be limited to a handful of politician from his Nyeri county backyard, the most vocal being Governor Mutahi Kahiga,
Recent tours by the DP aimed at bolstering his support in Mt Kenya show a growing entourage of MPs from all parts of the region. Gachagua has been busy on road trips as well as regular appearances on Mt Kenya vernacular radio stations, inadvertently adding to accusations that he is reducing himself from DP to a village politician or aspiring ethnic kingpin. However, sources in his entourage now reveal that he is set to embark on a series of political tours across different parts of the country as part of the effort to shed the village politician tag, and also display his national political networks.
Political alliance
He will do so at a period when dynamics within the governing coalition have been turned upside down with the new political alliance between Ruto and opposition leader Raila Odinga. The latter has already been given a toehold in government with nomination of six slots to the reconstituted Cabinet. Already, Raila’s surrogates in Parliament are signaling that they would support an impeachment Motion against Gachagua.
There is also the impending merger of UDA and Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi’s Amani National Congress, a development that will almost certainly be used to dilute Gachagua’s clout in the both the governing party and the Executive. Even if Ruto might not at the moment be ready for an impeachment Motion that would put on full public display the dirty linen in his administration, chances are that moves to undermine and isolate his deputy will be ramped up in coming days.
The team assembled by Amin and Haji from DCI and NIS respectively, will continue to look for evidence tying him to the Gen Z protests, and more seriously to an attempt to overthrow the government, a most serious offense of treason which carries the death penalty. If the system cannot find anything to sustain either impeachment or criminal charges, it has at its service an extensive propaganda network that is already busy projecting the DP in bad light ahead of any decisive action.
Ruto is on the campaign trail with journeys across the country designed to regain lost political ground after bringing Raila into his orbit and presumably neutralising the Gen Z revolt.
It might be interesting spectacles in coming weeks and months as the President and his deputy hit the road on rival tours that could indicate early electioneering ahead of 2027 presidential polls.
