Two interesting developments unfolded in quick succession last Tuesday. Opposition chief Raila Odinga lifted the lid on a tightly guarded secret – Tanzania President Samia Suluhu’s visit to Kenya two weeks earlier – and accused President William Ruto of snubbing his counterpart. In a quick rejoinder, the Kenyan Head of State responded through a tweet that he was available for a one-on-one meeting with “my friend”.
It turns out that on that very day, President Suluhu was playing host to the Kenyan leader at an African Union (AU) conference on human capital in Tanzania’s commercial capital, Dar es Salaam.
According to Odinga, the Tanzanian leader had jetted into the country to mediate between the two political rivals on the ongoing crisis in the country but had been kept waiting in an undisclosed hotel for two nights.
With the visit still surrounded in mystery, opinion is divided on whether or not the Ruto administration is interested in an externally-driven political resolution to the ongoing impasse. Politicians privy to the happenings within the Kenya Kwanza alliance opine that the ruling coalition is divided right down the middle on how to govern this country within the context of a well organised, resilient and popular opposition. Disagreements on how to relate with the opposition, and in particular how to bridge hostilities between President Ruto and Azimio leader Odinga, are even deeper.
On one side is a team led by the President and Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi that is ready to embrace dialogue with the opposition. On the other is a group led by Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua and National Assembly Majority Leader Kimani Ichung’wah, who have reportedly sworn that such talks will never happen.
The latter, according to the Senate’s deputy Minority Leader Enoch Wambua, seems to be the team in charge of the real levers of statecraft. “They hold a very minimalist view of any suggestions of talks between Ruto and Raila. For them this only means ‘outsiders’ would join the Executive ranks and dilute the ‘soup’. They would rather exit the Ruto administration than share the table with ‘non-stakeholders’.”
A member of the Parliamentary Bipartisan Committee whose talks to bridge differences between government and opposition recently collapsed, Wambua says divided attention and lack of uniformity in the Kenya Kwanza side was evident even at the talks. According to the Kitui Senator, the real impediment to resolving Kenya’s current crisis lies with Kenya Kwanza and not Azimio.
Wambua holds that the first and real handshake needs to happen between Ruto and Gachagua to set Kenya free. Only then can efforts to reconcile Ruto and Odinga by world leaders, including Suluhu, bear fruit.
Maintaining that Ruto was duly elected as Kenya’s fifth President, Mudavadi often reminds the opposition to stop wasting its time on the question of the current government’s legitimacy. Even former President Uhuru Kenyatta, he says, recognises Ruto’s regime.
Speaking at a funeral in Ikolomani Constituency in Kakamega County early this month, the Prime CS revealed that he had been with the former President in peacekeeping engagements in Abuja and Bujumbura, where Uhuru reportedly told him that he recognised Ruto’s presidency, having peacefully handed him power and all the legal instruments of leadership. Indeed, Kenyatta reinforced this fact last week at the Nairobi residence of his son, Jomo, following an alleged raid by police.
The Prime CS’s reconciliatory stance contradicts that of the DP and Ichung’wah, who have sustained attacks against Kenyatta. Right from the day he took his oath as Kenya’s second in command last September, Gachagua has been highly critical of the former President, publicly lambasting him over his association with Odinga and for allegedly funding street protests called by the opposition.
The DP and his close allies within Kenya Kwanza seem particularly uncomfortable with the notion of a truce between Ruto and Odinga. Speaking at an event in Murang’a County last Friday, where he shared a platform with the President, the DP castigated the clergy for pushing the President to dialogue with the opposition chief to end countrywide demos.
“If you ask the President to sit down with a blackmailer, you are asking the President of Kenya to commit a crime,” he asserted, adding that the former PM had consistently led demonstrations throughout his political life “aimed at blackmailing government to share power”.
Similarly, Ichung’wah on Wednesday poured cold water on the President’s gesture to meet the Azimio leader: “Now William Ruto, suddenly everyone wants to meet with you, even the one who 11 months ago didn’t even want to shake your hand nor talk to you now wants to and calls you ‘his President’,” he tweeted, a clear jibe at Odinga and Kenyatta.
Ichung’wah also posted a sarcastic comment on Mrs Suluhu’s reconciliation mission to Kenya as claimed by Odinga: “Happy that Baba has recovered from the flu, but when did he start working at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or as a state house spokesperson?”. The Weekly Review followed through this development with a set of questions to the Kikuyu MP, to which he did not respond.
The economies of neighbouring countries are intrinsically intertwined with the political economy and stability of Kenya, which explains why leaders from these nations are keen on happenings in the country and restoring political and economic stability within. In a way, as Senator Wambua aptly observes, the neighbours are also, and especially, acting in self-interest.
This explains why Tanzanian leaders have over the last 17 years dominated peace initiatives in the country. Following the botched 2007 polls that triggered post-election violence in Kenya, former Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa rushed to Kenya’s aid alongside former United Nations Secretary-General Dr Kofi Annan and Graca Machel, wife of former South Africa President Nelson Mandela, under the aegis of “Africa’s Team of Eminent Persons”.
Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete, who was the sitting President in Tanzania, also featured prominently in the consultations, which led to a pact between Mwai Kibaki and Odinga on creation of a Grand Coalition government.
Kikwete’s successor, John Pombe Magufuli, might not have played a publicly known reconciliatory role, but he hosted Odinga – his political buddy of many years – in Tanzania, after the highly emotive 2013 presidential polls, whose result Odinga’s Coalition for Reforms and Democracy contested in the Supreme Court. For a couple of years, though, there was a cold war between the two countries until the Tanzanian leader visited Kenya in 2016 and was hosted to a state banquet by then President Kenyatta. But Magufuli, nevertheless, still took a jibe at Kenyatta’s government for allegedly perpetuating tribalism and corruption. Suluhu, too, has been accused of mocking her neighbour.
Recently, the Executive Director of the Tanzania Investment Centre, Gilead Teri, reported a sharp increase in foreign investment in Tanzania, which Suluhu attributed to the fact that “a neighbour’s house is on fire” – a presumed reference to recent street protests in Kenya. A report in the Business Daily recently stated that traders from Central Africa and the East African hinterland were shifting from the port of Mombasa to Dar es Salaam because of delays caused by protests and damage to cargo and trucks.
It is, indeed, for the same reasons that, during the post-election violence in 2007, Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni, then the Chairman of the East African Community, offered Kenya a helping hand. He was particularly concerned about disruption of transport, and especially uprooting of sections of the railway line in Nairobi that had affected the supply of goods to his country.
The situation is no different this time round, as businessmen in Uganda and South Sudan decry transportation hitches on the Northern Corridor, which links Kenya to the rest of eastern Africa. Uganda is Kenya’s biggest trading partner, with US$800 million worth of exports to Uganda annually.
Back home, however, prospects of a Ruto-Odinga reconciliation are more politically driven than economical. The sustained attacks on Odinga’s and Kenyatta’s characters, for instance, are geared at neutralising them politically.
On paper, DP Gachagua is the new political kingpin in the Mt Kenya region, a position he has to guard strategically and firmly. He is probably afraid of being elbowed out from the centre of political power like Kalonzo and Ruto in 2007 and 2017 respectively.
Similarly, pundits believe Azimio is keen on (mis)using the street riots for political gain – directly by negotiating for slots in government or indirectly by pushing and driving on an anti-government campaign.
