THE GENIE IS OUT OF THE BOTTLE
The genie is out of the bottle. And there’s no more pretence; Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua has formally sued for separation, before commencing divorce proceedings in the coming months. When on September 15, 2024 Gachagua skipped a church service in his Nyeri County home turf, graced by President William Ruto, he openly expressed his jitters towards the marriage of convenience: He couldn’t hide any longer the fact that indeed, it had been strained for some time now. The empty red seat next to President Ruto was publicised for all and sundry. What was the loud message being relayed? That the seat was vacant and ready to be filled?
As Ruto waxed lyrical at the African Independent Pentecostal Church of Africa (AIPCA) in Ngangarithi village, about engaging in early electioneering (What chutzpah coming from him), Gachagua was in the neighbouring Kirinyaga County, for a Catholic Church mass at Baricho parish, with his supporters in tow, to celebrate its centenary. At the function held at the Baricho Primary School, Gachagua cautioned against perpetual campaigns. The doublespeak was all too obvious for anyone to miss, yet, between Ruto and Rigathi, who’s fooling who? On that same day, the Deputy President had failed to receive Ruto as he returned from Germany when he landed at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) at 6am.
Three days later on September 18, Gachagua kept off a meeting Ruto had called for all Nyeri MPs at State House, Nairobi. The following day, he also missed the inauguration of the new Inspector General of Police, David Kanja. All this, in less than a week. His loyalists explained the empty seat as a conflict of time management between Gachagua and his boss. They have yet to come up with explanations for the two subsequent State Houses misses. Whatever it is that’s going on, between the DP and the President, must be going down very fast.
Yet, Gachagua seems to have thrown caution to the wind and has publicly rebuffed his boss, after some Mt Kenya MPs came out to state that they didn’t recognise him as the de facto leader (by virtue of his DP position) of the larger Mt Kenya region. Instead, they named Cabinet Secretary, Interior, Kithure Kindiki as their new Ruto cheerleader. It was the latest smack on the face for the DP, who’s body language in recent months, when with President, has been anything but convivial. “A meeting was even held in a Cabinet Secretary’s house in Kitsuru (a posh Nairobi suburb) to plot my downfall,” said Gachagua, in an exclusive interview on September 20, 2024. Before the interview that was held in his DP’s residence, he had visited the famous Marigiti Market, downtown Nairobi, where a week ago, some of the traders were forcibly evicted, but equally resisted forcibly. “I’ve begun my countrywide tours to explain to the people what’s happening to me,” said Gachagua.
On September 12, 2024, 48 MPs from Mt Kenya East (Embu, Meru, Tharaka Nithi) met in a hotel, Nyahururu town for eight hours, from 8pm – 2am and then, from 8am to 10am, the following day. They had arrived the previous day. They had been telephoned to show up in Nyahururu. “I was called and asked to travel to Nyahururu,” said an MP who attended the meeting. “When I asked the details of the meeting, there was a subtle blackmail.” The meeting had been held hot-on-the-heels of another one in Embu town on September 9, 2024. The Embu meeting which had 21 MPs had decreed that Kindiki now was their link to the president: No one goes to the “father” except through Kindiki. They were led by Mbeere North MP, Geoffrey Ruku. When they held a press conference on the morning of September 13, 2024, only 28 MPs were present.
Primrose path
From his traps “set” at State House to catch Raila Odinga – with the tacit approval of Ruto – when apparently sneaking in and out without his (Gachagua’s) knowledge that were disabled, to finding out that some of his erstwhile comrades from the Mountain, had been hatching a plot to impeach him; to learning that one of the broad-based government agendas was to remove him; it dawned on Gachagua that his boss had been leading him down the primrose path. Not even the pretence by Ruto that he had saved him from the intended impeachment would assuage Gachagua. Ruto’s ruse to delay Gachagua’s impeachment was meant to blindside him. The impeachment talk was rife shortly after the Gen Zs uprising in June through to the first week of August. Gachagua’s nonchalant attitude towards the passing of the controversial Finance Bill, 2024, didn’t go well with the powers that be. The Mbeere North was allegedly fingered as one of the sponsors of the motion. Hence, Gachagua’s volte face in snubbing Ruto’s Nyeri County and State House visits. Not surprising, the impeachment talk is back, and its being spearheaded by the group of 48.
In the interview, Gachagua revealed that “people are being offered money to impeach me. The real issue at the Nyahururu meeting, which took place the whole night was how to impeach me.” Said the Deputy President: “The President authorises these meetings. The people in those meetings quote him. There is no motion of impeachment that can through without the approval of the president.”
Hippy on the highway
Gachagua’s charges are being led by one, Mwangi Kiunjuri, the Laikipia East MP, a master of Kikuyu-speak: When speaking to Kikuyu vernacular stations, he never fails to impress his interlocutors with his grasp of Kikuyu idioms, which he uses to mask his invectives towards the deputy president. Kiunjuri is sore with Gachagua for two reasons: He was side-stepped for the running mate position that went to Gachagua. Although five years younger than Gachagua, Kiunjuri is the DP’s senior politically. Kiunjuri was first elected to parliament in 1997, during Daniel arap Moi’s time when he was 27-years-old. In 1997, Gachagua never dreamt of vying for a parliamentary seat, leave alone being the country’s deputy president: He was working as a personal assistant to the hippy-on-the-highway, happy-go-lucky Uhuru Kenyatta. Kiunjuri had also hoped that Gachagua would join his briefcase outfit, The Service Party (TSP) as Kenya Kwanza coalition was being crafted. These are the same reasons the demoted and then rehabilitated Moses Kuria had against Gachagua; I am your senior in politics, I was first elected to parliament in 2014. You’re not my equal. The cantankerous Kuria, who’s infamous for his caustic tongue had a briefcase party just like that of Kiunjuri, called People’s Empowerment Party (PEP), before morphing it into Chama Cha Kazi, then dissolving it. The ambitious Kuria scheme was to get on board Gachagua and other Central Kenya politicians to join his party and use it to negotiate with Ruto on behalf of Central Kenya.
Proxy war
Before becoming the deputy president, Gachagua had just served as a one-term MP (2017–2022) for Mathira constituency in Nyeri County. Kiunjuri and Kuria who are contemporaries, had these fantastic notions that since they were senior Mt Kenya politicians, they deserved and qualified to be Ruto’s running mate. When that didn’t happen, they turned their anger and bile towards Gachagua. The other Gachagua opponent is the Parliamentary Majority leader Anthony Kimani Ichung’wah, the MP for Kikuyu constituency, Kiambu County. Kimani campaigned against Gachagua’s endorsement as Ruto running mate. Then, as now, he has total disdain for Gachagua. Now, as an elevated lackey, excited with raw power and sudden flow of endless cash, he has resorted to waging a proxy war. Kimani, 46, was first elected to parliament in 2013. As a third time parliamentarian and a ranked MP, he sees Gachagua as his junior.
Kindiki, whose proxy war is being fought on his behalf, is also a Gachagua basher – by-passed for the running mate position, Kindiki was so piqued, he nearly quit politics altogether. He had to be persuaded to stay on, by Ruto, with the promise of a powerful CS position if Kenya Kwanza coalition captured power. Kindiki hails from the small sub-tribe of Tharaka, as opposed to Gachagua, who is from the majority Kikuyu community; and politics being a game of numbers, Kindiki was apparently punching above his weight. Of the eight Mt Kenya candidates who were vying for the DP position, Kindiki was the MPs favourite, but the rustic Gachagua took the prize. The scholarly, urbane mien of smart Kindiki was hurt, kept his cool, but never forgave Gachagua.
Tearing down DP
When did the proxy war really begin? On August 21, 2024 a meeting was held in Eldoret town, now a city, hosted by Joseph Wainaina, an influential wealthy businessman. Wainaina is also a nominated UDA MP, but more fundamentally a Ruto ally for the longest time. The businessman was tasked with hosting a meeting of MPs from Central Kenya, North Rift, and key opinion shapers from Mt Kenya. It was a well-choreographed jamboree; whose sole mission was to tear down the Deputy President. Who tasked Wainaina with summoning such a meeting? A little bird that attended the meeting whispered to me that the order came from above. In Kenya, there’s only one above and it’s not heaven.
Wainaina was also told who should be the meeting’s spokesperson: Festus Mwangi Kiunjuri. The businessman, who’s a hotelier, hosted about 300 people. “We cannot afford to be in the opposition,” warned Wainaina. He meant it. In February 2020, Wainaina told me the Kikuyus of the Central and North Rift were gearing to vote en masse for Ruto in 2022, because they “couldn’t afford to be in the opposition.” My Eldoret visit and its environs, just before the commencement of Covid-19, the following month, was to measure the region’s prevailing political temperature, two years to the general election. Wainaina, had two months ago in December 2019, in Eldoret, assembled about 1000 Kikuyus of all shades of life – from Central Rift, that is, Nakuru County and its environs, all the way to Endebess, in Trans Nzoia County. “I told them our presidential candidate was William Ruto and wherever he goes we follow. Our survival (as Kikuyus) is pegged on the currency of local politics, and it is Ruto who’s driving that currency. Period.”
Hidden plot
Therefore, the fight to undermine the deputy president is a sub-plot of a wider plot; to split the Mountain: Use Mt Kenya politicians who have a born to pick with Gachagua to accuse him of working behind the President. It’s a time-tested classic strategy of divide and rule. It hacks back to when Moi used it so effectively, it never failed to work. Barely two years into the Ruto regime, the Mountain has turned its back on his rule and Ruto knows it. The Mountain knows he knows it. As he gears for a second term in 2027, and with a united Mountain against him, the president knows he has a battle on his hands. The Mountain has the single biggest basket vote in the country. It is the only formidable region, if it votes as a united bloc, has the capacity of making and unmaking a president. It is the vote that sealed Ruto’s razor thin win against Raila’s Azimio coalition.
The strategy to divide the Mountain into the “leeward” and “windward” sides must be a well-thought out plan to ostensibly split the Mountain into Mt Kenya West and Mt Kenya East. Mt Kenya West representing the populous Kikuyus and the Mt Kenya East representing the minority communities of Chuka, Embu, Mbeere, Meru and Tharaka. Already, there is a concerted effort to introduce “Mt Kenya West” and “Mt Kenya East” terminologies into the political lexicon of Kenya’s national politics. This is the hidden major plot: Sow seeds of discord among the electorate and create the benefit of doubt in Mt Kenya East to view their compatriots in the west as hideous. Then lead them to accuse Mt Kenya West of hogging all the development at the expense of the “less developed” Mt Kenya East. Also, remind Mt Kenya East people that they have always been taken advantage of by Kikuyus, who only seem to remember them as being part of the Gikuyu, Embu, Meru Association (Gema) community during election time.
Political beauty contest
This is not the first attempt to dismember the Mountain: A few weeks into the 2024, Murang’a senator Joseph Nyutu made a startling, strange, unsolicited and unprovoked remark, which I paraphrase: Ndindi Nyoro, the MP for Kiharu should be President William Ruto’s running mate in 2027. It was an absurd statement made just 17 months into the Ruto regime. The statement’s subtle undertones were obvious to the discerning disciples of Central Kenya’s tumultuous politics. By throwing a spanner into the works, what the senator rhetorically was asking the mugikuyu is; if a political beauty contest were to be held today, who between Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua and the MP for Kiharu, Ndindi Nyoro would be the fairest?”
The senator, who is a teacher-preneur and garnered by far, the largest votes in Murang’a – 314K votes – more votes than the governor and even the president, described Ndindi, who is also the chairman of the Parliamentary Budget Committee as having social skills, as most likeable and above all, has favour, possibly from the electorate, religious undertones notwithstanding. Gatanga MP Edward Muriu echoed the senator’s sentiments and added a rider: “The women of Murang’a also give birth to leaders. . .Ndindi is qualified to be a leader”.
It has never been lost within the Kikuyu nation, that for the longest time, there has been an unsettled disquiet among the mugikuyu from Murang’a over what they consider to be a raw deal in matters presidential politics. Although the Mountain comprises largely Kikuyus from Central Kenya, Embu, Mbeere and Meru people from Mt Kenya East, the Kirinyaga people also from Central Kenya, Kikuyus in the diaspora mainly from Kajiado, Laikipia, Lamu, Nyandarua counties and the Rift Valley region, it is Kiambu and Nyeri political barons who have dominated the tempestuous state house politics. So, for a while, Ndindi perambulated the country in a government chopper – he was ostensibly the Mountain’s new kid on the block. The visits then suddenly died. His minders realised that their plan to prop him up and elevate his stature as a kingpin wasn’t flying.
Unsophisticated rustic
Although Gachagua hails from Mathira ya githomo (the Mathira constituency of the educated), he comes off as an unsophisticated rustic; much like the privileged peasants of Ihwagi village. A year into DP’s office, he would still poke fun at himself by stating he’s the same old Gachagua from rural Mathira. But he has come a long way: In a year’s time, he had transformed from a rustic to a polished interlocutor. Yet, he struggles to be liked and before he got a wardrobe stylist, he used to a wear a dishevelled, frazzled look, which made him look much older than his real age, his riches notwithstanding. The biggest difference between him and the greenhorn MPs who are being used to fight him is that he understands statecraft a lot better. By the time he was getting into elective politics, he had risen through the ranks of the defunct provincial administration system – starting as a District Officer I (DO) in Kiambaa, Kiambu county, in 1989 and ending in Ng’arua, Laikipia, where he served for two years. After that, he was seconded by Moi to be Uhuru Kenyatta’s PA in 1995. He would work for Uhuru for the next 17 years.
