Ruto the fifth

A cover headline by Kenya’s The Standard newspaper wittily summed the verdict: ‘William Ruto the 5th,’ it simply stated. Vice-President William Samoei Ruto has been returned as winner of that country’s 9th August presidential election and, barring an upset from post-election litigation, will be installed its fifth president. Kenya’s Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) Chairman Wafula Chebukati announced early last week after six days of vote counting that Ruto emerged with 50.5 percent of votes cast to narrowly defeat veteran contender Raila Odinga, who got 48.8 percent of the votes.

It was 55-year-old Ruto’s first shot at the presidency, and he was lucky to hit home, unlike 77-year-old Odinga who ran unsuccessfully for the fifth time. Ruto faced down daunting odds to breast the electoral tape. He’s been vice-president for the past 10 years under outgoing President Uhuru Kenyatta and should have been the default establishment candidate, but he ran as an outsider against the power of incumbency that was pitched in Odinga’s favour. He ran on the platform of United Democratic Alliance against Odinga’s Azimio la Umoja that had rallied ruling Jubilee Party of Kenyatta, among others, into a coalition. Ruto framed the contest as between “hustlers” – poor Kenyans (his party’s symbol is a wheelbarrow) – and “dynasties” – influential families like the Kenyattas and Odingas who have been big players in Kenyan politics since independence. “I may be the son of a nobody but I promise to make Kenya the country of everybody,” he had said in his pitch to voters. Besides, ethnicity wasn’t his forte, being from neither of the two major ethnic groups and historically the largest voting blocs in Kenya, namely Kenyatta’s Kikuyu stock and Odinga’s Luo.

The 2022 election might have passed as the most transparent of Kenyan polls, because raw results from the country’s more than 46,000 polling centres were posted on IEBC’s website shortly after the close of voting so anyone could do their own tallying and check the electoral body’s math. But before Chebukati came up to announce the outcome after tension soaked days of computation, the impending result’s credibility and that of IEBC tailspinned. Four of the electoral board’s seven members walked out on the process and refused to endorse the outcome. “We cannot take ownership of the result that is going to be announced because of the opaque nature of this last phase of the general election,” IEBC Vice-Chairperson Juliana Cherera mouthpieced for others. Chebukati went on stage anyway, and before he could announce the result, chaos ensued at the national collation centre. He was physically assaulted by a senior politician. Other partisans jumped on the stage, ripped up the banners, tipped over the lectern and attacked the remaining electoral commissioners, leaving two of them injured. The electoral chief, however, took the stage once again to return a winner of the poll. “We have a constitutional duty to perform. That is why I stand before you today despite the intimidation and harassment. I took an oath of office to serve this country and I have done my duty in accordance with the constitution and the laws of the land,” he stated.  

In his acceptance speech, Ruto said sovereign power belonged to the people of Kenya, described Chebukati as a “hero” and dismissed the other commissioners’ dissent as “a side show.” He promised to be a president of all, adding: “To those who have done many things against us, I want to tell them there’s nothing to fear. There will be no vengeance. We do not have the luxury to look back.” Going by the results that Chebukati announced, Ruto outsmarted his principal, President Kenyatta, and perennial aspirant Odinga whom Kenyatta had preferred as a successor to sway over voters’ support. He niched himself as a protest candidate, inflamed emotions against government ‘system’ as well as the political and economic elite, and skillfully exploited public discontent with economic hardships that is generally blamed on Kenyatta’s government. Although he’s been second-in-command to Kenyatta for two terms, he successfully repackaged himself as a ‘change’ agent running an insurrection against the establishment.

In a departure from historical character, the 2022 Kenyan poll was marked by political maturity as gladiators focused on economic issues rather than tribe mobilisation that had been a major factor in Kenyan politics since 1963 independence. Public debt is reported to have bloated under Kenyatta as his administration relied on loans for infrastructure projects. Unemployment is high, leaving many Kenyans, of whom about two-thirds are under 35years, angry and frustrated. Matters were compounded by after-effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s war with Ukraine that have disrupted food supply chains and drove up living costs. Ruto weaponised these adversities to get Kenyans to vote to protect their bellies and not blood ties. Results announced by Chebukati showed him winning in Kenyatta’s native community, and that of Odinga’s running mate who is also a Kikuyu. Put in other words: the largest voting group in Kenya and historically the swing voting bloc voted against their own in Ruto’s favour.

“Nigerian political actors must know that the key to cross-cutting appeal is issue-based campaign, as opposed to personality attacks or ethnic-baiting.”

Odinga has vowed to tackle the outcome of the poll in court. And going by the radical courage for which the Kenyan judiciary is reputed, nothing is settled until the court says the last word. In 2017, the Kenyan Supreme Court voided the country’s presidential poll held on 08th August that year – and with incumbent President Kenyatta already returned by IEBC for a second term – at the instance of a challenge by same Raila Odinga. The apex court ordered a rerun election within 60 days after invalidating the earlier poll – not because there were proven violations in the voting process or ballot counting, but on account of infringement of procedure in results transmission by the electoral commission. Against that backdrop, no one in Kenya right now, including Ruto, can breathe easy yet until the court adjudicates Raila’s challenge in the coming weeks.

But there are yet lessons to learn by other African democracies, especially Nigeria, from the just-concluded Kenyan election. For one, the poll and the aftermath has been remarkably peaceful, contrary to historical notoriety of Kenyan politics for wildcat violence. The vicious animus that trailed the country’s 2007 election, resulting in more than 1,000 people being killed and hundreds of thousands getting displaced from their homes, rankles still in memory. Even the 2017 poll was hobbled by pockets of violence, including the brutal murder of IEBC’s head of Information, Communication and Technology, Christopher Msando. In this year’s election, however, political gladiators were upfront in urging their supporters to keep the peace no matter what, and submit to the rule of law. That must have contributed in no small measure to the overall peace that characterised the Kenyan poll. The moral here is that the violence that often characterises African – nay, Nigerian – elections is a function of unbridled desperation of political actors; this can be tamed if they commit to the rule of law and cue their supporters to do same.

Next is that electioneering in Kenya for the just-concluded poll was issue-based and decidedly weaned off ethnic baiting, which historically was the standard tack. It must be due to issue-based campaign that much of Ruto’s votes came from 10 counties in the Mount Kenya region mostly inhabited by Kikuyus, even more than from among his own Kalenjin stock. That is to say, his victory was made possible by votes from his opponent’s tribal group more than from his own people. Nigerian political actors must know that the key to cross-cutting appeal is issue-based campaign, as opposed to personality attacks or ethnic-baiting.

On the other hand, IEBC’s ‘civil war’ over the poll outcome is a way for electoral commissions not to go. The credibility of elections is more a function of perception than anything else, and it is tantamount to reputational suicide when election managers, for whatever reason, in-fight over verdicts that they should rather invest their collective integrity on - first to perfect, and thereafter uphold.