IT IS EASIER TO MICRO-MANAGE LOYALISTS
The new cabinet formation was supposed to infuse a fresh start and rekindle faith in a shaken government, ruffled up by two weeks of youthquake, barely 24 months in power won on the back of populism, Kenya Kwanza ruling coalition slim margin notwithstanding. Instead, what President William Ruto has done, is to cobble up a mishmash of ethnic juggling, regional patronage, loyalty games, optics, politics of accommodation and acceptability and realpolitik.
It is a continuum of his first cabinet that he formed on September 27, 2022, soon after he took the reign of office on September 13, 2022. When Ruto announced his cabinet, I quickly wrote that it was a “campaign cabinet” with its eyes already on 2027. Pundits in Washington DC like to remind Americans that the first order of business a newly inaugurated president on January 20 does on his second day at the White House, is to begin plotting his comeback, four years away.
The cabinet the president fired on July 11, 2024 was packed with campaign managers, ethnic and regional kingpins, loyalists and outright incompetent and inexperienced staff. All this was by design: President Ruto desired a cabinet that was less competent but more loyal. He had no intentions whatsoever of being advised by his “board of governors”, then as now, because it is easier to micro-manage loyalists, inept staff and friends who owe you a favour. “President Ruto has been advising his advisers and when he’s not, he ignores their counsel,” a state mandarin whispered to me. “You only need to ask Justin Muturi,” the presumptive Public Service Cabinet Secretary.
Rewarding acolytes
In this second cabinet attempt, President Ruto has hardly deviated from the script: His eyes are still trained on August 10, 2027, when he seeks re-election. He has again rewarded his cohorts and regurgitated his old-time pals, despite sprinkling the cabinet with some newcomers and members of the Opposition in the hope of appeasing the naysayers. In the garbage collection lingo what he has done is to recycle, regurgitate, reshuffle and repackage the cabinet. Campaign managers are back, ethnic jingoists are back and personal friends have been let in again. Ruto didn’t fire the cabinet because he suddenly found it unfit, but because he was pushed to the wall and needed to release steam, as he bought time and cool down the embers.
On the radar of Kenyans, especially Gen Zs, who, in Nollywood jargon, have made Ruto see “pepper” these last several weeks, the President first presented the “first 11” as he awaited Raila to “consult” with his ODM gang. On the day the first 11 were taken to Parliament, Ruto, last minute, swapped Aden Duale, who he had retained at his former Defence docket with Soipan Tuya, CS Environment. The pendulum-like swings by Ruto as he walked the tight rope balancing cabinet names, tells you even him wasn’t sitting pretty in his corner.
Yet, in such an endeavour, a president still in the throes of consolidating his power must also sacrifice some of his lieutenants. So, Ruto let off the foul-mouthed and foreskin basher Moses Kuria, the lacklustre Zachary Njeru, the incompetent Health CS, Susan Nakhumicha, sleazy Mithika Linturi, flamboyant Ababu Namwamba, the clueless Aisha Jumwa and academic-leaning Prof Njuguna Ndung’u, among others.
Raila, a “grifter”
But the biggest casualty of the recyclized cabinet must be Prof Ndung’u, sacked CS National Treasury. A member of the “shareholders” group – it is Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua, who first spoke of Mt Kenya’s decisive vote in propelling Ruto to State House as being a major shareholder in the government. With the exit of Ndung’u, the shareholders’ ego has been punctured. The “shareholders” had sworn that unlike the Mwai Kibaki and Uhuru Kenyatta governments, Ruto’s government wouldn’t entertain a handshake or whatever you would want to call it, leave alone a government of national unity.
Ndungu’s docket has been awarded to Raila’s crony John Mbadi. And with that and three other CS positions that also went to members of Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), Raila has lived up to expectations – ensuring that he’s part of the incumbency through his loyalists. He canvassed for Ugunja MP, Opiyo Wandayi to bag the Energy portfolio, a sector that Raila has been interested in for many years, his mega business in distribution of gas cylinders notwithstanding. His other two followers that were rewarded for the unwavering support are former Kakamega governor, Wycliffe Oparanya and the “Sultan” of Mombasa Hassan Joho, also a past Mombasa governor. Joho has been a big Raila financier. Oparanya is the new Cooperative CS presumptive, while Joho has been given Mining and Blue Economy docket. Even as one Raila watcher described him as a “grifter,” Raila’s move could as well have sealed the fate of the fragile Azimio coalition and announced its death knell.
Blood on his hands
Kipchumba Murkomen, the newest nouveau riche in town, who is now the Sports CS, was replaced by Ruto’s long-time buddy and right-hand man Davis Chirchir at the lucrative Roads docket. Chirchir in the lead-up to the election ran the Kenya Kwanza coalition strategic communications centre at Soin Arcade, located in Westlands, Nairobi. Ruto also retained Aden Duale, his critical key point man in the Somali community. Duale, mobilised the Somali entrepreneurial elite to crowd fund for Ruto’s campaign kitty. Duale, an Ogaden, is married into the most powerful Ogaden family from Garissa County. Duale betrothed the daughter of the former Chief of General Staff of the Kenya Defence Forces (KDF), retired General Mohamoud Mohammed. Gen. Mohamoud rescued President Moi from the Kenya Airforce coup plotters in 1982 and Moi rewarded him by promoting him to be the KDF Chief of Staff. Mohamoud’s family is considered royalty, not only by the Ogadens, one of the largest Somali clans, but by the larger Somali community. Its political capital cannot be gainsaid.
He also brought back Alice Muthoni Wahome, an acolyte, and one of his chief campaigners in Central Kenya. Muthoni, a lawyer, married to a gynaecologist first tried her hand in elective politics in the controversial December 2007 general election, failed, but elected in 2013 on The National Alliance (TNA) ticket. In 2022, she was third time lucky as the Kandara MP. Ruto also dissuaded her from assuming her parliamentary seat to join his inaugural cabinet.
Ruto also gave back Kithure Kindiki his job as Interior CS. Kindiki a law professor is President Ruto’s cohort, who was one of the president’s team of lawyers at the International Criminal Court (ICC). In 2022, Kindiki emerged as hot favourite to deputise Ruto, but it was never to be – Ruto picked Gachagua instead, but promised Kindiki to reward him as a CS if he took office. He was, but three weeks of demos that saw scores of youth killed indiscriminately, has tainted Kindiki’s CV apparently with blood on his hands.
Optical illusions
Amid reappointing his cronies, Ruto’s Agriculture appointee Dr Andrew Muhia Karanja is new and unknown to many Kenyans. An agricultural economist, Karanja started his illustrious career at the Coffee Research Foundation (CRF) at Ruiru station, Kiambu County. Afterward he was poached by the World Bank (WB), from where he retired to join the Coffee Sub-Sector Reforms Standing Committee headed by Prof Joseph Kieyah. Whatever else can be said of Dr Karanja, he certainly fits the agriculture docket. Whoever suggested his name has his pulse on the coffee reforms – a pillar of Mt Kenya’s agricultural take-off. At the World Bank, one of Karanja’s docket was the management of the coffee industry.
Ruto loves the optics: His replacing former AG Muturi first with Rebecca Miano, immediate former Trade CS, was supposed to excite and endear himself to the womenfolk and feminists alike because of making Miano the first woman AG in Kenya. But Miano, sensing she was being led to the guillotine at Parliament, was given a soft-landing, the Tourism docket. Still, Ruto excited the womenfolk and Maasai ethno-nationalists by appointing Soipan the first Maasai woman into the cabinet. Soipan is to Ruto what Rachel Omamo was to Uhuru Kenyatta.
Communing with the gods of nature
The last time we had a cabinet dismissal was on November 23, 2005 when President Kibaki sacked all his ministers and their assistants, after he lost the constitutional referendum after Kenyans rejected the proposed draft constitution. His Minister of Roads and Public Works, Raila Odinga, had mobilised Kenyans to rebuff Kibaki’s push for the draft constitution. Although Kibaki promised to constitute another cabinet in a fortnight, it wasn’t until 60 days later that he formed his new cabinet. In the two months that the country didn’t have a cabinet, Kibaki every day at his State House office Nairobi, would look out of the window into the garden and the trees and ponder the weighty matters of the state.
Unlike Kibaki, Ruto, didn’t have the luxury of waiting out and standing at the window to commune with the gods of nature. Kibaki wasn’t faced with a street revolt, Ruto is. The urgency to deal with demonstrations powered by a daring and fearless – not formless – youth formation that is not going anywhere anytime soon, has scared the living daylights out of President Ruto.
