GEARING UP FOR A REMATCH BETWEEN UHURU AND RUTO IN 2027 ELECTIONS
A couple of weeks ago, I had guests from a neighbouring East African country, that had just gone through a bruising presidential electioneering campaign period. They couldn’t fail to notice that even though we are 17 months to the August 10, 2027 general election, the country has been gripped by a political campaign fever and looks like it’s going to an election in 17 weeks’ time. The heightened electoral campaigns especially over the weekends disguised as church services and consecrations have now become a matter of fact. The churches and burial services are the new sites of realpolitik. Nothing new. During Daniel arap Moi’s tyranny and the one-party monolithic Kanu rule, opposition politics was conducted at the church pulpits and funeral congregations. The difference today is that even incumbent Ruto has taken to the pulpit to admonish and engage in verbal attacks against real and perceived opposition to his gradually evolving tyrannical rule reminiscent of his political godfather Moi days. Is Ruto a reincarnation of brutal and dictator Moi?
Settling scores
Yet, the most interesting formation that is gradually taking shape is the assembling of troops by the protagonists ready to do battle in a presidential contest that all looks in shape and form to be a rematch between former President Uhuru and President Ruto, his deputy between 2013–2022. The question of the day among Kenya’s political observers is; are we gearing up for a second-round battle royal, disguised as a supposedly democratic contest among contending presidential contestants but in real sense, a repeat elite fight for settling scores between two power mongers; one a former president, the other a president clutching at straws as he navigates how to yet again, if luck allows, outmanoeuvre his opponents.
Elite squabbles
Soon after the March 9, 2018 handshake between Uhuru and Raila Odinga, his fiercest nemesis, it was evident as day follows night that Uhuru and Raila, who died on October 15, 2025, were going to work hand-in-glove, from then henceforth, to not only stabilize the country politically, but also possibly craft a working formula for Uhuru’s successor in 2022. Deputy President Ruto who was bitterly opposed to Raila being invited to the presidential table as it were, essentially become the outsider. The presidential elite squabbles had started. They culminated in an electoral battle, whose climax was that in the first round, Ruto beat his boss in the presidential elections of 2022.
For Azimio to resurrect, Raila had to die
On February 2, 2026, Uhuru, who is the chairman of Azimio la Umoja-One Kenya Coalition party breathed new life into what was slowly mutating into a moribund coalition after its defeat by Ruto’s Kenya Kwanza team, by appointing Wiper Patriotic Front (WPF) Stephen Kalonzo Musyoka as the new party leader, after chairing a joint meeting of Azimio’s council and national executive committee. Other keynote appointments were that of former Nairobi Town Clerk Philip Kisia as executive director and most significantly the appointment of Suba South ODM MP, Caroli Omondi as secretary general, replacing one Junet Mohammed, the ODM MP for Suba East. Junet until Raila’s death was his loyal handyman and protégé. With that clever move, Uhuru signalled his desire to deftly circumnavigate the country’s electoral politics indirectly as he sidesteps political landmines. He has begun aligning his troops in readiness for war in 2027. Why did Uhuru resuscitate a dying Azimio coalition? But before we ask that question, we must pose the question – Did Raila have to die for Azimio to live? Let’s put it in a different way: For Azimio to resurrect, Raila had to die.
Uhuru’s new pet project
The are several reasons why Uhuru revived Azimio: one, hopefully create a home for the United Opposition. As currently constituted, the United Opposition is an amalgam of disparate political parties, that doesn’t have a place to call home. Uhuru would very much like the United Opposition to come to Azimio. This way he would most certainly leverage his political influence and financial power. Two, hopefully provide a safe haven for the “renegade” Edwin Sifuna-led ODM faction that’s in contradiction with the Oburu Odinga/Glady Wanga-led faction that has decided to back the broad-based government (BBG). Three, subtly, tell all and sundry that Fred Matiang’i, his erstwhile super Cabinet Secretary is not really his preferred presidential candidate of choice. Matiang’i who has been branded Uhuru’s project, in my view, has always been a ruse used by Uhuru to blindside Ruto. Four, tame the impeached former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua, who has arrogated himself the role of Mt Kenya Muthamaki. Last but not least, install Kalonzo as the de facto opposition presidential flagbearer. By naming Kalonzo to take the position of the deceased Raila, who was the Azimio coalition party leader and the presidential flagbearer in 2022, he is effectively hoping to wrestle Kalonzo from the clutches of one Gachagua and plot to regain his pre-eminence position as the penultimate Mt Kenya Muthamaki (leader-patron). He still relishes with nostalgia the anointment of being the Central Kenya spokesman by the late John Njoroge Michuki in 2010. The reorganization means that effectively Kalonzo becomes Uhuru’s pet “project” as it were. The same way, Raila, who chose to work with Uhuru in 2022, to replace him, as opposed to being replaced by his deputy was perceived to have been Uhuru’s project. It was easy to install Kalonzo because he served as Raila’s running mate in 2013 and 2017 and although 2022 he was sidestepped as his running mate, Kalonzo still stuck with Raila.
The Ocampo Six
Two days after Uhuru was busy reorganizing his battalion, Ruto summoned all the UDA aspirants at State House Nairobi to equally “troop the colour” and signalled his readiness to consolidate his power come 2027. Both Ruto and Uhuru have a desire to control the levers of the state and in essence capture the state itself. Both the incumbent and his predecessor are engaged in elite political games that began in 2012 when they were jointly fingered as part of the “Ocampo Six” by the International Criminal Court (ICC). The Ocampo Six came to be after the country experienced the 2007-2008 post-election violence (PEV), one of Kenya’s darkest moments in post-independence Kenya. Particular names from the political divide had to be handed over to The Hague Court, by the government of national unity (GNU) of Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga who assumed the position of non-executive Prime Minister, in 2008.
Proxy war
The coming together of Uhuru and Ruto in the lead-up to 2013 election had nothing to do with the people, much less the country’s national interests, but their own selfish survival; survival from the ICC and political survival at home by engaging in politics of balkanization and ethnic mobilization. They captured power by defeating Raila’s Coalition for Reform and Democracy (CORD). For the first five years Uhuru delegated presidential powers to his Deputy Ruto instead of delegating duties. What happened is that Ruto took the chance to popularize himself and penetrate the state machinery. In the second half of their UhuRuto regime, it was obvious, the mantra kumi yangu, kumi ya Ruto; 10 for me, 10 for Ruto, was dead as a dodo and wasn’t going to be honoured. There’s no honour among quarrelling political elites, who are constantly engaged in power grab and mongering. Uhuru and Ruto are two sides of the same coin. Their elite quarrel is about absolute power capture and retention. And because Uhuru is barred by the Constitution from running again as a presidential candidate and from actively engaging in elective politics, his fight with Ruto for 2027 is through a proxy war. That’s why he’s apparently aligning his troops for a rematch in a year-and-a-half’s time.
Elite games
In 2022, Uhuru as the exiting incumbent entered into an elite pact with Raila, his political enemy-in-chief, who they had made peace in 2018 to succeed him, not so much because he loved the Kenyan people, but because he felt he was going to be lonely without presidential powers. So, he crafted a coalition unity with Raila’s Azimio and became the coalition’s chairman, as Raila become the presidential flagbearer for the fifth time. Uhuru hoped to retain power through Raila becoming president. The sudden bromance shift from UhuRuto to UhuRaila wasn’t because Uhuru had gone through a moment of reawakening; nor was Raila embracing Uhuru because he had also gone through a Damascus moment. They were engaging in the time-tested elite games that are about elite consolidation and survival, not about the uplifting of the standards of living of the electorate that they use as a stepping stone to grabbing power. Hence, Uhuru and Raila were not conspiring against Ruto because he apparently had a hideous agenda to monopolize state power (just like they were plotting to do), but engaging in politics of deception and subterfuge.
A wake-up call
The 64-million-dollar question is – as Uhuru and his nemesis Ruto plot for a replay in their elite political game, where is the voter? Where does their elite game leave the people of Kenya? By the end of 2022, Ruto was one up and Uhuru nil. Soon after the general election, the electorate realized it had been played; the political mandarins were not interested in their welfare, but in the furtherance of their nested elite games. Nothing seems to suggest 2027 will be any different. If anything, the nested games will be even more vicious, the people will be reduced to a cog in a wheel and a spectator in a game of thrones designed to make them choose their preferred elite of oppression. The time for a party that hopes to win the hearts and minds as it centres its program around the people is now. The people are thirsting for just such a party. The June 25, 2024 Gen Z protests were a wake-up call by an emerging demographic that said we’re tired of legacy politicians with their lies and never-ending deceptive games that have kept drowning the people’s aspirations and hope.
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