Ruto’s war of words with Kinoti has made the DP look desperate

All along, Deputy President William Ruto’s admirers have been assuring us of how shrewd and clever their man is. But the last fortnight or so has laid bare a different, and no doubt the real, persona.

Of a man out of his depth, thin-skinned, desperate, uncoordinated, shrill. He has been throwing wild punches willy-nilly – against DCI George Kinoti (“fake”) and Raila Odinga (“conman”). Ruto’s political choir from the North Rift led by Senator Kipchumba Murkomen has been equally clueless. They have been singing an out-of-tune song of threats and intimidation that went out of fashion with the Nyayo era’s demise. Even the choristers remind you of that era. Oscar Sudi? Oh, that dude!

NOISY CREW

As this squad rants at village rallies, its real target – not Kinoti, not Raila, but President Uhuru Kenyatta – has shown a different kind of style: Calculating, stealthy, deliberate. He has not uttered a word. He has chosen to act. Recently, he sacked Sports CS Rashid Echesa, an ally of the DP. Of course, the President has ignored the angry calls to fire Kinoti emanating from the DP’s corner. The DCI has continued with his work uninterrupted, including the intensive interrogations of Treasury CS Henry Rotich and others over the controversial Kimwarer and Arror dams.

And whereas Raila was initially quick to trade insults with Ruto, it appears he has since been advised to go silent and leave the DP to whine alone. As for Kinoti, when he ominously warned last week that he would be taking “some big fish” to Kamiti prison, Ruto’s noisy Rift Valley crew noticeably toned down.

Cheering from the sidelines in the manner of a man witnessing a neighbour he despises being pummelled to the ground, was Kanu’s William Kamket, the Tiaty MP. Why, he posed tongue-in-cheek to the DP’s crowd, don’t you just leave Jubilee? Are you waiting to be told you no longer belong? Prior to making an official visit to Namibia, Uhuru personally detailed Devolution CS Eugene Wamalwa to accompany Kamket’s party boss, Senator Gideon Moi, to Baringo County to oversee emergency food distribution there.

PACK A PUNCH

It is instructive that the DP’s anger exploded into the open only when the DCI waded into the murky saga of the Kimwarer and Arror dams. That’s when the DP truly lost it. Revealingly, Murkomen and company were all over the place accusing Kinoti of being “used” in the anti-corruption war to specifically target Ruto. They demanded the particular investigation be moved to the EACC, arguing – falsely – that this was the only body with the constitutional mandate to investigate corruption. Kinoti, so said Ruto and his friends, should be left to deal with pickpockets as he presumably lacked the competence to handle complex financial investigations. Does the arrogant language sound familiar?

Pray, how does investigating the two dams amount to targeting the DP? Who has mentioned him? The DCI has never done so, to the best of my knowledge. Why the hysteria? Or is the DCI on to something big that we don’t know, but those who are in the cross-hairs know only too well? I am a boxing fan, a sport which loves displays of bravado. Yet the victors are not always those boxers who grandstand the most, but the Mike Tyson types who know the real punch they pack and who make mincemeat of opponents who forget the real fight is inside the ring.

POLL FLARE-UPS

I found it extraordinary that Ruto chose to challenge Kinoti’s figure of Sh21 billion (being the money the DCI says was lost on those Kimwarer-Arror projects) at a Judiciary function at the Supreme Court grounds. He had joined Uhuru who had come as the chief guest. That was when the DP – completely unprompted – came up with his own figure of Sh7 billion. (The expression on Uhuru’s face as Ruto spoke was to die for). It was a strange venue to ventilate such matters. When he rose to speak, the President confined himself to issues of government relations with the judiciary and never once alluded to what was bothering his deputy.

I want to believe there will be no flare-up of post-election violence in 2022 in the Rift Valley owing to the full-blown security arrangements that will be in place. There is an additional safeguard: The ICC.

As one of the accredited counsels of the ICC in Kenya, Kangema MP and lawyer Muturi Kigano says the organisation will be watching closely. ICC prosecutors were not satisfied with how the post-2007 Kenyan cases were terminated. Remember, some of those files were never closed. They remain open. They can be revisited.

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As if phantom dams were not enough of a headache, DP Ruto got himself into another public firestorm after he dismissed reports of deaths in hunger-stricken Turkana as “fake news”. Poor guy.

CSs Fred Matiang’i and Eugene Wamalwa had said more or less the same thing, but they got a pass.

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