The Ruto Revolution

 It is now definitive. Kenyan Deputy President William Samoei Ruto will in a matter of days, maybe hours, be installed the country’s fifth president. He was returned winner of the 9th August presidential election by Kenya’s Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) Chairman Wafula Chebukati, who said he came off with 50.5 percent of votes cast. That verdict was challenged in court by runner-up opposition veteran Raila Odinga, said to have polled 48.8 percent of the votes. Now the Supreme Court has affirmed Ruto as duly elected, clearing all hurdles to his being sworn into office as president.

Until the supreme court gave its verdict early last week, the international community and all Kenyans – not the least, Ruto himself – could only wait with bated breath.  That mode was dictated by experience with radical courage for which the Kenyan apex court is reputed. In 2017, the court upturned the presidential poll held on 8th August of that year, and of which incumbent President Uhuru Kenyatta who was seeking a second term had been declared winner by unanimous decision of the electoral commission. To be clear, the supreme court tossed the purported victory of a sitting president seeking re-election in the bin and ordered a return to starting blocks on account of infractions in IEBC’s electronic results transmission system. In 2022, there wasn’t even unanimity within the electoral body over the poll verdict. Just before Chebukati came up to announce the outcome after six tension soaked days of collation, four of the seven-member IEBC including the vice-chairperson walked out on the process, saying they could not own the imminent verdict due to alleged “opaque nature of this last phase of the general election.” Chebukati went on stage anyway to announce the outcome that gave Ruto a narrow edge over Odinga but sufficient to avoid a run-off, saying he was defying intimidation to perform his constitutional duty.

Odinga had pleaded IEBC’s disunity as a strong plank of his case against the poll outcome. He succeeded with persuading the court in 2017 when there was no disunity in the electoral body over the poll verdict, and it is conceivable he might have thought he would do same this time around especially with the IEBC meltdown. But the supreme court, while taking note of the electoral body’s dysfunction in managing its internal affairs, said it was not convinced that the claim the chairman ran a one-man show was enough to undermine the election. Chief Justice Martha Koome, who delivered a unanimous verdict on behalf of the seven justices of the apex court, said:  “Are we to nullify an election on the basis of a last-minute boardroom rupture, the details of which remain scanty and contradictory?” She herself provided the answer: “This we cannot do.” Among other things, the justices reprimanded lawyers and petitioners who filed falsified documents in court – a rebuke apparently meant to deter spurious petitions in the future. Odinga had argued that the election was characterised by massive fraud, but their Lordships lambasted claims by his legal team as “just another red herring” and “hearsay.” Chief Justice Koome said the court found no evidence the poll results were tampered with through hacking IEBC servers as alleged by Odinga’s camp. All eight petitions plied against the poll were dismissed.

With the court verdict, 55-year-old Ruto has successfully staged a paradigm shift in Kenyan political landscape. For one, he has all but retired Odinga who with the 2022 poll made his fifth botched bid for the presidency from active politics. At 77 years, it’s hard to see how Odinga will run again or indeed remain active in opposition politics, although his statement hitting at the supreme court verdict said he would continue with the “struggle for transparency, accountability and democracy.” Not that he can be easily written off: he was a political prisoner in the 1980s and helped to usher in Kenya’s multiparty system. “This judgment is by no means the end of our movement,” he said, but only time will tell. 

“The forthrightness of Kenyan supreme court is exemplary of how the judiciary should firmly hold excesses of political actors in check.”

By the same token, outgoing President Kenyatta is being seen off into political cold. Typically in Africa, perhaps in other places too, outgoing presidents like to retain some influence on their successors, especially when they are from the same political camp. But even though Ruto was elected in 2013 and 2017 alongside Kenyatta as his deputy, the duo fell out in 2018 after an unexpected truce between the president and his erstwhile archrival Odinga. Despite being his deputy, Ruto was not backed by President Kenyatta who campaigned instead for Odinga. Following the supreme court verdict, Ruto said he would be speaking shortly to both men and promised that his government would look after them in retirement. “We are not enemies, we are Kenyans. Let us unite to make Kenya a nation of which everyone shall be proud to call home,” he said. In a recorded message, Kenyatta congratulated leaders who had been elected in the general election but didn’t mention Ruto by name.

A more significant import of Ruto’s win is that it effectively upends a long chokehold on Kenyan presidency by the Kenyatta and Odinga dynasties. Uhuru’s father, Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, was founding president of Kenya at the 1963 independence and the longest serving in that country’s history – he held office for 14 years before term limit was placed on Kenyan presidency. Raila’s father, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, was founding deputy president. Although the two pioneer leaders parted ways subsequently, power in Kenya has over the years revolved around the two families. Raila was prime minister in a coalition government from 2008 to 2013, just before Uhuru assumed the presidency that he’s run for 10 years. But whereas the families had dominated power in opposing camps, even their rare alliance for the 2022 poll wasn’t sufficient to stop ‘dark horse’ Ruto from emerging. 

During electioneering, Ruto framed the contest as between “hustlers” – poor Kenyans – and “dynasties” – the influential Kenyatta and Odinga families. “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. And indeed, it was the Kenyan downtrodden who tided Ruto into power. Against the historical pattern of tribal determination of political advantage in that country, Ruto weaponised economic adversities being currently experienced by Kenyans to get them to vote to protect their bellies and not for blood ties. Even though he is not their own, he won among the largest tribal group in the country and historically the swing voting bloc – the Kikuyus – over and above the counter-influence of native son Uhuru Kenyatta. With the Ruto victory, power is newly ‘democratised’ in Kenya. But make no mistake: dynasties don’t die, they only hibernate.

Are there lessons for Nigeria to learn from all these? Certainly! The forthrightness of Kenyan supreme court is exemplary of how the judiciary should firmly hold excesses of political actors in check. It is better, of course, that politicians imbibe the spirit of sportsmanship and accept electoral verdicts when the umpire has discharged the onus of transparency and dispassion. But if it comes to judicial adjudication, it is helpful when the courts pose a bulwark against shenanigans and desperation of political gladiators. Another lesson is the sovereignty of the people in determining who leads them. Neither tribal, religious nor economic affiliations should impair that sovereignty if leaders would be held accountable for political power entrusted to them. Ruto owes much to ordinary Kenyans who voted him in and will be assessed by how he meets their expectations. When people ‘appoint’ leaders into office, they would have genuine leverage to ‘disappoint’ as the need arises. That is the beauty of true democracy.