THE MOUNTAIN HAS BECOME VERY SLIPPERY AND TREACHEROUS
From April 1–6, 2025, Ruto was up the Mountain again; for the fourth time – three of which were in 2024 alone – since being sworn-in on September 13, 2024. The trip came after five months of planning and replanning; after the calumnious event of October 17, 2024. It was actually meant to come shortly after the impeachment saga. Finally, Ruto told his cohorts he cannot wait any longer to scale the onerous Mountain – they had kept on warning him to delay the visit because the Mountain had since become very slippery. It is a testament to the fact that whichever way you look at it, Mt Kenya region still dictates the pace and rhythm of the country’s presidential elections, just like it has done in the past elections, since Kenya returned to multiparty politics in 1991. It’s on the last day of the trip on April 6 in Othaya, Nyeri County for example, that Ruto spoke of the voter deciding whether he will go home or not in 2027. Indeed, the determining vote of whether Ruto will hack it on August 10, 2027 to secure a second term, largely depends on the Mountain vote – all factors held constant.
The train left the station a long time ago
The President prefaced the Mt Kenya visit with an equally five-day Nairobi County tour, where Boda Boda riders, criminals, goons, hoodlums, layabouts, ne’er-do-wells, thieves and robbers trailed him wherever he went, curtain raising his meetings and going “gaga” about Ruto’s supposedly “development tour.” It was a time to cash-in onto state largesse, a precursor to the actual 2027 elections campaigns that promises to start early, and to be the most expensive yet, if they haven’t already started. In Dagoretti, a peri-urban Nairobi area and once a dominant ancestral Kikuyu area, but now a cosmopolitan region which was part of Ruto’s tour, my millennial and Gen Z friends told me their hands were greased by KSh1,000 each, just to make themselves present in his meetings. “We took the cash, but the train left the station a long time ago,” they said. To mean, they already are done with Ruto. “There’s no turning back. Ruto lies like a sieve. We are not his children.”
Ego trip
The Mt Kenya region visit, just like the Nairobi suburbs tour, was an ego trip for Ruto: To prove to himself and his allies that he is still the cockerel that crows above all other cockerels. To him, it was a popularity contest, a contest that he sought to prove to the former DP Gachagua that in Nairobi and indeed Mt Kenya counties, he is more popular than him and in control of the two adjoining counties. Nairobi County’s proximity to Central Kenya has meant that it is largely populated by Kikuyus. And even though it has yet to produce a governor from its ethnic enclave, the Kikuyu constitutes the single largest basket vote in the county and largely control its major businesses. The ego trip was also to announce to the rest of the country that I, William Ruto, still crows at the Mountain top, contrary to “enemies of development.”
Plugging a hole
The popularity contest that Ruto hoped to engage Wamunyoro – Gachagua’s latest moniker – was clearly misplaced, yet, one that had to be undertaken at any cost. A fact that was also not lost, I believe, on Ruto himself, a master of deceit and subterfuge. The Mt Kenya tour as indeed the Nairobi County tour exemplified Ruto’s populist brand of politics: The politics of amassing rented crowds, creating optics and building perceptions. Cognizant of the fact that the Mt Kenya vote that propelled him to presidency is gone for good, Ruto, nonetheless, needed to put up a roadshow and convince himself that he is still loved by the Mountain: The thought of completely losing a region that gave him 3.9 million votes out of slightly more than five million votes that were cast on a bad day is stomach wrenching. He has to plug that hole. He, no doubt, lives to rue the day he orchestrated the impeachment of Gachagua: He could have waited to secure a second term then hand his deputy the boot. But his cockiness was his biggest undoing. Surprisingly, Ruto believes that he can still penetrate the Mountain. Like his mentor Moi, he has mastered the politics of moneybags; shore up lots of cash to be distributed to the hapless poor voters who are usually manipulable and vulnerable. Ruto’s close associates have told me of his contempt for (Mt Kenya) voter: They love money more than they love their grandmothers. All you need to do is shower them with money and they will get confused and come calling. It is a gamble he is willing to repeat till the election day in 2027. As it is, the Mt Kenya trip turned out to the most expensive undertaking, all in the name of pumping up his ego.
Carrot and stick
Ruto’s script on the Mt Kenya tour was straight out of Moi’s strategy manual on how to deal with Mt Kenya region, during his tumultuous times in the 1990s. Moi used carrot and stick when dealing with the region that had rejected him in toto: He spent hoards of state cash to buy off support. The support he couldn’t buy or compromise, he intimidated, punished and ran out of town. A day after he concluded his Mt Kenya tour on April 6, the following day, Gachagua was attacked by hired hoodlums in a PCEA church in Mwiki parish, Nairobi County. The former DP didn’t mince his words – the goons were state sponsored and had been sent by Ruto through his surrogate, the Nairobi governor Johnson Kosgei Sakaja. This wasn’t the first of such attacks; since being ousted from government, Gachagua has been attacked a couple of times, a deadly one being an attack while attending a funeral in Limuru, Kiambu County, in November, 2024. The attacks no doubt, bear the hallmark of a well-orchestrated scheme by daring hired goons, enjoying state security, just like it used to happen in Moi’s dark days. After the impeachment, Gachagua was supposed to fade away in five weeks; five months later he has grown in stature and reputation: Ruto and his minders from Mt Kenya region grossly underestimated his capacity to bounce back and organise a fight back.
An incorrigible liar
The Kikuyu voter indeed may love his shilling, and because of that he has often made a deleterious judgment on the voting day. But just like in 2022, when he was resolute that he was voting Ruto, as opposed to Raila to the surprise of many Kenyans (who erroneously presumed they knew the Mountain’s voting pattern) and to the chagrin of Uhuru Kenyatta, the die is already cast; whatever Ruto does, the region has washed its hands off him. There is no turning back. The vast majority of the Mountain voters had, by October 17, 2024, made up their mind about Ruto going forward. It was a decisive decision finally arrived at after a series of signals which culminated in the signing of the controversial Finance Bill of 2024, which led to the Gen Z uprising, but whose climax was the impeachment of Rigathi Gachagua. These political signals included, the halting of the Mau Mau roads, whose budget had been secured even after Uhuru left office. The numerous punitive taxes that Ruto was every other time coming up with and which seemed to suggest rightly or wrongly, that they were targeting the Kikuyu farmer and his produce such as the avocado fruit. The failure to fix the coffee conundrum, the false promise of making good the issue of guaranteed minimum return (GMR) on milk produce. Add onto the fact that above everything else, today, the Mountain perceives Ruto as an incorrigible liar – anything Ruto says is unbelievable.
Used and useless
In Kikuyu culture, it’s taboo to refer to a grown-up as a liar – even if everybody in the village knows you are one, but in the Mountain, children are now being told that Ruto is an outright liar. The matter of Ruto being called a liar in the Mountain region is a such a grave matter that a section of the Anglican Church of Kenya (ACK) clergy, recently in one of the counties called all the church elders and pleaded for penance. Later they also appeared before their respective congregations and owned up to buying into the President’s ostensible lies. They apologized for campaigning for him and vowed not to do it again and asked the congregation to follow suit. “We as the clergy were lied to: All the promises that we had agreed upon with the President have been shunted side, we feel used and useless,” said the ACK priests.
Straw that broke the camel’s back
The well-choreographed Gachagua impeachment was the tipping point . . .the last straw that broke the camel’s back: The Mountain voter told Ruto – it was good while it lasted, bugger off. This stance led Gachagua to “retrieve” his steps and quickly embrace the simmering discontentment that was threatening to erupt from the seemingly dormant (volcanic) Mountain. Hence, Wamunyoro didn’t became popular because he was beloved by the Mountain people – rather he was embraced because he joined the people and not vice versa. Prior to Gachagua’s ouster, Mt Kenya attitude towards him was ambivalent and cautious: You must prove to us your leadership mettle, they seemed to tell him. Yet, the impeachment, which had all the imprint of Ruto, angered them. Why? Because they correctly interpreted his dismissal from his DP perch, the topmost Kikuyu position was not about whether they were in love with Gachagua, nor was it about his perceived individual differences with his Ruto, but as a betrayal and concerted effort to dismantle the spirit of the Kikuyu nation.
Ethnic manipulation
Even if Rigathi were to recant and rejoin Ruto, the Mountain people wouldn’t follow him: Which tells you Gachagua is a beneficiary of the Mt Kenya’s recalcitrant stance against Ruto and as a fast-learning politico, he has been riding on the crest of a popular wave of this real anger. Unbelievably, Ruto is steeped in ethnic calculations and machinations. He believed that if he replaced Gachagua with a Mt Kenya politician, albeit from an insignificant Meru sub-tribe, the Tharaka, he would placate the Kikuyu people’s anger: Remove Rigathi, replace him with (Kithure) Kindiki, ah, and the people will still be game. It was a monumental miscalculation. It is the same thinking that influenced the sacking of Justin Muturi as the Cabinet Secretary for Public Service and replace him with Geoffrey Ruku, the MP for Mbeere North. Why Ruku? Because Ruku is a Mbeere just like Muturi and his area MP. Add onto the fact that Muturi and Ruku are from the Democratic Party (DP). Ruto’s thinking is, the Mbeere people, a sub-tribe of the larger Embu people will be happy because anyway, I am replacing Muturi with one of the own. What does it matter? It’s a notion that hacks back to Moi’s days, himself a master of ethnic manipulation and politics of divide and rule and of course Ruto’s mentor and political godfather. A corollary question at this point would be; why would a first time sitting MP readily agree to quit his hard-fought parliamentary seat to be appointed a CS, a position that is easily expendable and oftentimes served at the pleasure of the president – all the attendant constitutional statutes regarding the appointing of a CS notwithstanding? My sense is that many of the current Mt Kenya MPs are sitting ducks; they will not be re-elected. Ruku, an emerging Ruto’s sycophant-in-chief must have realized that he won’t be re-elected in 2027, hence traded his MP seat with a CS position.
Rejection letters
I hate to say this, all the governors, MPs, senators and women reps that are aligned and accompanied Ruto in his Mt Kenya excursion, long ago signed their rejection letters to the electorate. All those who were seen with Ruto in the whirlwind tour buried even their remotest chances. Ruto helped them do that. That’s why Mathira MP, Eric Wamumbi insinuated on April 11, 2025 that he may not seek re-election, then in the same twist, seemed to recant what he had said, claiming he was misunderstood. It is the current state of many Ruto aligned politicians in Mt Kenya; they don’t know whether they are coming or going. Wamumbi, for example, who represents Gachagua in his rural constituency has been exasperated by the hostile crowds everywhere he appears. On several occasions, he has had to be ferreted away. Many of the Mountain MPs visited the region confidently during Ruto’s tour after a long sojourn, because there was assured security. Those who braved church and social gathering or public meeting earlier on, would be heckled until they left the scene.
A visitor is a river
The Kikuyus have a saying: A visitor is a river. He flows by. He doesn’t pitch a tent in your house. If a visitor comes along, let him be, he will come and go his way, just like a river. When Ruto came calling in Mt Kenya, he was neither booed nor refused entry. Instead, he spent between KSh8,000 and KSh1,000 per person, renting crowds to prove to the rest of Kenya that he was welcomed in the “perceived” hostile Mt Kenya. Then he left. The people remained the same, as he had found them: Hinged. They said, Ruto had engaged in a dialogue of the deaf and he had been speaking to himself. If he comes again, they will do the same, offer their services at a fee, conclude that business and move on. But on August 10, 2027, Ruto will know who is the real Kanyoni wa Ng’ethe.
