After months of speculations in the media, the public and the political circles of a deteriorating relationship between President William Ruto and the now former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua, an impeachment motion on October 16, 2024, led to Gachagua’s ouster two days later. Impeachment being a political process further confirmed a purge by the executive. In fact, Gachagua himself alleged the impeachment had the President’s blessings. What he meant, in political terms, was that only the President had the ability to initiate the impeachment knowing he had the wherewithal to mobilise parliamentary votes in favour of the impeachment. He was right, but not entirely. Ordinarily, politicians of Gachagua’s rank in Kenya, have the solid backing of their strongholds and regions, which serves as a bulwark against such purges but not even his Mt Kenya backyard wanted to save him. The political opposition did not want to save him and neither did the ruling party, United Democratic Alliance [UDA] where he is the deputy party leader. The public could not sympathise with Gachagua either. He seemed to have made too many enemies and inadvertently united them at his most vulnerable political moment, to hound him out of office. But how did Gachagua unite the country against him after barely two and half years in office?
Divisive Rhetoric and Tribal Vanguard
Immediately after assuming office in September 2022, the new government embarked on selecting the cabinet, and top civil servants in ministries, departments and agencies [MDAs]. Gachagua was heard on national media quelling his Mt Kenya backyard by assuring them of more “shares’ in government. By “shares” he implied share of government positions; he explicitly pledged more positions to his ethnic group in the pending appointments. Gachagua’s statements struck a wrong chord across the nation and evoked memories of exclusion and marginalization which had driven the country to ethnic power struggles and clashes in nearly every election cycle since 1988. Despite palpable opprobrium from all and sundry, Gachagua maintained his position, defending his ethnic community and backyard’s entitlements of power and resources based on their overwhelming support for the President’s 2022 election bid. The rhetoric divided the country and risked the legitimacy of the presidency as a symbol of national unity. In fact, it appeared the ambers of ethnic mobilization and tribalism had been fanned by an element within the presidency.
In what perhaps set Gachagua and the President on collision, he moved from mere rhetoric to fiercely advancing the Kikuyu ethno-nationalist interests, agenda and ideologies. He quickly became the main apologist for the “one man one vote one shilling” resource sharing ideology based on demographic size of each region, and presupposed a Kikuyu majority. The ideology rattled the largest sections of the country and drew criticism from the political opposition, which faulted Gachagua of in-dignifying the office of the Deputy President and betraying his oath of office. Gachagua cast the presidency as attempting to remarginalize the larger sections of the country, which he presumed was “all land, no people” and trivialized the collective agency of these regions and political constituencies.
Sheer Abrasiveness
Buoyed by his newly acquired stature as the “regional kingpin” of Mt Kenya region by virtue of political seniority, Rigathi Gachagua stacked his pretensions abrasively. He wore an upfront and exorbitant nag whenever he would publicly demand Mt Kenya government “shares” from the president on the basis of the region’s 2022 electoral support. The shares included government positions and the lion’s share of development projects and budget. The president was not the only hostage in Gachagua’s kingpinship. In hopes to consolidate his regional base, Gachagua humiliatingly patronised regional politicians who criticized him as rough, non-persuasive and domineering and abandoned him during the impeachment. Unlike other regional kingpins, he lacked charisma and ruined any hope to build organic support when he appeared to domineer junior politicians in the region. Nearly all of them later fell out with him, isolated and denied him the political capital to forestall the impeachment. In fact, they cast votes in favour of his impeachment.
Gachagua had also demonstrated on many occasions, a disappointing lack of wit for a state officer of his cadre. He expressed pedestrian views on government policies and recklessly divulged official secrets in moments of emotional outbursts. The lowest of such moments was when youth-led protests dubbed “Gen-Z Protests” against the Finance Bill 2024 drove the country to the brink. Gachagua ended up detailing the dysfunction in the National Intelligence Service (NIS). His lack of wit was even worse, when it became clear, that his impeachment was in the offing. Instead of issuing timely resignation to save his political future and striking a conciliatory tone, he retreated to Mt Kenya to rouse the rubble and openly defy and blackmail the president to drop the impeachment. As he clutched on weak straws, his impeachment was fast-falling beyond recall. He had made a compelling case that to impeach him, would stabilize the executive, salvage national unity and give the president the opportunity to select a decent replacement.
Renewed National Unity?
The Deputy President is constitutionally the principal assistant to the President and by default a co-symbol of national unity. If Rigathi Gachagua had failed in this solemn duty, the newly appointed Deputy President Kithure Kindiki, who is also from Mt Kenya region, now knows the expectations the constitution and the republic have on. The President has asked him to be a better communicator of government agenda, which might redeem the government’s standing before the public.
Kindiki should avoid the regional kingpin temptations and carefully manage fall-outs in his Mt Kenya backyard to not drain his focus on curating national stature. Kindiki should be steadfast in upholding the constitution and its ideals on equity, patriotism and equality. He should project more the policy persona of the government as opposed to the political one captured by its base. He should further project maturity into national politics and guard objective differences if any, by the ideals of democratic centrality and deference to the head of state. He should not let proximity to power delude his political ambitions but turn it into an instrument for serving public interest. To be a successful principal assistant, Kindiki must always and smartly pursue the success of the president and the unity of the country.
Photo Credits: Senate Media
Edmond Pamba is a Researcher at the HORN Institute
The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and they do not necessarily reflect the position of the HORN Institute.
