The race to succeed President Uhuru Kenyatta is gathering momentum after the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) cleared candidates for the August 9 election.

Aware that strategy matters in this crucial election, leading contenders Deputy President William Ruto and Azimio la Umoja One Kenya Alliance flag-bearer Raila Odinga, hit the ground running after IEBC Chairman Wafula Chebukati endorsed their candidature.

With 60 days before electing their new leader, voters are mulling choices in a dramatically transformed political landscape punctuated by the bitter fallout of the President and his deputy ahead of the most fiercely contested presidential election in Kenya’s history.

The scenario is spiced by the former opposition leader snugly occupying the space the DP had for long assumed was his to last, only to be displaced following the famous Handshake of March 2018.

The seismic political chasm played out during the Madaraka Day celebrations when President Kenyatta shut out Ruto from the protocols of his last public State address function.

In inviting the President’s subtle admonition, Ruto may have disregarded the cardinal principle in the abattoir of African political folklore – that if you want to slaughter a bull, don’t show it the knife!

By mounting early campaigns for the top office while still his principal executive assistant and publicly disparaging his boss accompanied by raucous allies, he lost all hope of milking any opportunity from their once flourishing relationship.

Whether the estrangement was a boost or a deficit to his lofty presidential ambitions will only be determined on polling day. But it has certainly enhanced the political fortunes of the astute strategist now taking the fifth stab at the seat that narrowly eluded him in the past.

The DP’s strategy of cockiness and swagger, mastery of the political gift of the gab, couched with an amount of self-driven piety, has won him droves of followers, the so-called disillusioned “hustlers” swayed by yet to be determined promises of economic salvation.

However, it is his obsession with underrating and lambasting his adversaries and the government he is still serving that could turn out to be his Achilles heel. The sleekness of the tongue and bitterness can be akin to the roar of a lion baulked at its prey.

His ability to talk glibly and persuasively before the gullible masses often laced with contemptuous innuendos and deceptive statements such as “wale wangwana hawana sera” (our opponents do not have any agenda), has opened a Pandora’s Box.

After unveiling their manifesto yesterday with their strategy anchored on the pillars of national cohesion, social protection, poverty eradication, job creation and food security, “wangwana” could have just stolen the thunder from the boisterous “hustlers”.

Unending attacks instead of promoting a still hazy political and economic platform at this stage can be a distraction. It also invites unsavoury counter-attacks from politically savvy opponents.

Azimio’s behind the scenes strategy of politically uniting all the regions of the country, with President Kenyatta’s approval, seems to be paying off, more so with the nomination of Martha Karua as Raila’s running mate and the return of Kalonzo Musyoka to the fold.

Independent observers are also faulting the DP for an unwarranted accusation of bias against him by the local media. In a truly liberalised environment of freedom of the press and opinion, they assert, the media has accorded him his fair share of print space, TV airtime…and criticism. 

—The writer is a veteran journalist who comments on political and justice affairs — [email protected]