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Don’t celebrate but learn from Gachagua’s downfall
Impeached Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua. PHOTO/@rigathi/X
Impeached Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua. PHOTO/@rigathi/X

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Seems like the adage ‘regimes eat their own children’ is unfolding before our own eyes. But then the hustler revolution has taken this adage a notch higher by picking the choicest and the eldest of its own children to annihilate and politically decimate.

You see, Riggy G was the epitome of the hustler antiestablishment spokesperson. He was rugged, and combative and clearly dealt with any obstacles to the hustler nation juggernaut without holding back. It did not matter who was listening or on the other side, he did his job and emerged as the star boy of a very combative electioneering period.

We can’t fault him on that because our campaigns, especially the presidential ones, have been that fierce and acrimonious. In fact, political contests are battles to be won and the moral dimension has often been thrown out the window.

But as in the pre-election debate where our good old Riggy G had a script that probably did not have an exit clause, it appears he failed to discern the difference between the campaign period and the leadership demands that come with an election.

During campaigning, there is always the fierce, antagonistic us-vs-them tone to a contest. But after the victory, a lot more is expected of the victors.

The responsibility to bring the country together and effect the Kenya Kwanza manifesto appears to be a memo the DP was not given. He upped his us-vs-them rhetoric with the “shareholder” narrative that he espoused with sickening humour and went all-out with the mtego narrative that has left him utterly embarrassed and deposed.

A few critics opine that the very mtegos he had put everywhere around the proverbial corridors of power have tripped him. The end, as was predicted, has been politically catastrophic, so to speak. His quick rise from a no-nonsense combative first-time MP whose tongue knew no common decency to the position of DP has turned out to be the end of his political life.

It is finished for him. Finito. But he is not going without a fight. The conservatory orders from the courts after the impeachment by the National Assembly and conviction by the Senate throw us into a perpetual state of limbo where we have an unwanted DP and a DP who cannot assume office. Unchartered waters indeed.

Interestingly, we’ve seen a sense of urgency in our MPs like we’ve never seen before. Critics have argued that it is ODM that has sent the DP home. This claim can’t be far from the truth. The downfall started from within KK. They hit him hard from within and if ODM joined in with the last straw that dispatched the combative DP, then it is because of what had happened in the previous two years.

During the campaign, he hit all and sundry below the belt. He was a monument to degenerate, hateful and hurtful utterances that did not stop even when he assumed a position so high. It is not KK or ODM MPs, but the DP who called this onto himself.

But be it as it may, we cannot celebrate a man’s downfall. We can learn, though. Learn that our MPs can rise to the occasion and robustly debate issues of national interest. Why they cherry-pick what to break ranks and engage robustly on has been touted as a function of selfish economic gains, and there is little in the manner the DP was deposed that debunks this.

Why haven’t they discussed the Adani issue with such robustness and urgency? Isn’t it clear that a choice of any of the top consequential politicians would have yielded the same results if such a motion was about them? Can a society that has leaders accused of what the DP is accused of live with his exit without robust introspection of our political culture? Who else should this regime eat?

We know a few are lined up to take over consequential positions made vacant by the fall of Riggy G, but were we to put them on the same trial, would they be safe? Can the sovereign power of the people rise to save us from the guilty who are quick to throw many stones on the other guilty for their own expediency? 

— The writer is a PhD student in Political Communication

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