Deputy President joins a global list of seconds-in-command, who have fallen out with their bosses. People Daily’s Revise Editor Mukalo Kwayera, highlights how this affected their ambitions in the succession race

Deputy President William Ruto has four names— and two of them; Kipchirchir and Samoei—are telling in their meaning and inference on his persona and political life.

Loosely translated from Kalenjin dialect ‘Kipchirchir’ means one born during emergency labour pains while Samoei is a revered name in the ethnic community. 

Samoei was Nandi legend; chief-cum-warrior Orkoiyot Koitalel arap Samoei of the Talai clan, who led the community’s resistance to colonial occupation.

The warrior was assassinated by British Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen on Thursday October 19, 1905 after being tricked into a purported peace-signing meeting by the colonialists.

DP Ruto’s supporters fondly refer to him as Samoei hoping him to draw inspiration from the legend in his war to succeed President Uhuru Kenyatta in 2022. 

As the succession debate hots up, Ruto is at the heart of the wrangles that have split the ruling Jubilee Party right down the middle.  

Having been largely touted to succeed Uhuru, Ruto is now an increasingly isolated man painting a picture of a politician who has fallen out with his boss.

But this is not new in the country’s political history. 

Similar script

In early 1960s, a similar script played out between the country’s founding fathers—President Mzee Jomo Kenyatta and his deputy Jaramogi Oginga Odinga.

 And fast forward to 2020, Ruto is entangled in political tussle with Uhuru —ironically, the son of the country’s first president is working with Raila Odinga, the scion of his father’s political ‘enemy’.

Whereas it remains to be seen where the political dalliance between Uhru and Raila  will end, the Jomo-Jaramogi tiff exploded in 1966 at the infamous Kanu’s Limuru Conference walkout.

Here the “villain” who orchestrated Jaramogi’s political downfall was Tom Joseph Mboya, Kenyatta’s henchman and secretary-general of then ruling party, Kenya African National Union (Kanu).

Jaramogi left government and remained in the doldrums until after the death of Jomo whose successor, Daniel arap Moi, who died early this year, unsuccessfully tried to rehabilitate him.

Moi dropped Jaramogi, the doyen of Kenya’s opposition politics, like a hot cake for hurling some brickbats at Mzee Jomo. 

Coincidentally, Moi who served as Kenya’s third vice-president, a position he served in for 12 years, endured a short-lived and caustic onslaught unleashed by close associates of his boss in 1976 in the infamous Change-the-Constitution crusade spearheaded by the late Kihika Kimani and the late Njenga Karume.

The “stop Moi” drive, however, came a cropper when the then Attorney-General Charles Njonjo declared it treasonable, saying it amounted to imagining the death of a sitting President.

Others — late Joseph Murumbi, Mwai Kibaki, late Dr Josephat Karanja and late George Saitoti and Kalonzo Musyoka—who had held that principal assistant to the President position, had their fair share of headache.

Ruto is thus walking a beaten path.

In recent history, former Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, who died last year, is known to have had sharp differences with two of his vice-presidents Dr Joyce Mujuru and current president Emerson Mnangagwa.

Mujuru was removed from office for alleged insubordination and usage of witchcraft against her then elderly boss while Mnangagwa, who had been replaced while on a tour to South Africa, staged a successful military coup against Mugabe and replaced him in a bloodless transition.

 Relations were not any better for Paul Kagame of Rwanda when he served as Pasteur Bizimungu’s vice-president in the second half of the 1990s.  

In South Africa, President Cyril Ramaphosa suffered the same fate under his predecessor Jacob Zuma.

Italian Prime Minister Guissepe Conte and his former deputy Matteo Salvini, too, had a seamy working atmosphere that led to the breaking of their ruling coalition and call for a snap election in which the latter was edged out of the centre-stage.

Surmounted the odds

In all these cases, however, only Kagame, Ramaphosa and Mnangagwa have surmounted the odds to become heads of state in their respective countries, a footnote that Ruto may want to take a key interest in. 

The Kenyan case in particular, that of Jomo-Jaramogi, is a classic example for current and future politicians to learn from.

 The country’s first vice-president remained in the cold from where he vigorously pushed for a return to plural politics, a feat he achieved much later in life in conjunction with youthful professionals dubbed “Young Turks” in December 1991.

Ruto has a history of wading against political torrents. He was only 31 years old when he defied his mentor— former President and ultra-powerful Kanu chairman Daniel arap Moi— in 1997 to run for the Eldoret North parliamentary seat. Moi’s preferred choice was his long-time associate William Saina.

Pulled a first one

Ruto pulled a first one by securing the nomination and went ahead to win the seat with a landslide. 

He was at it again in 2002 when, against all odds, he threw his weight behind Uhuru, who was then the Kanu presidential candidate at a time when most of the luminaries had abandoned the party to join the Opposition spearheaded by eventual contest victor Mwai Kibaki.

In 2005 referendum, Ruto and his Kanu party closed ranks with the rebellious wing of the then ruling National Rainbow Coalition (Narc) to vote against the proposed constitution.

His notable comrades-in-arms at that time were, among others, Uhuru and Raila Odinga, whose side emerged victorious against their rivals led by then President Mwai Kibaki.

 Two years later, Ruto broke ranks with his Kanu colleagues to join Raila in the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) from where the then Lang’ata MP vied for the presidency against incumbent Kibaki whom Uhuru supported. Kibaki was declared the winner amid a contested poll outcome that led to post-election violence.

 In, 2010, Ruto was the notable face of the forces opposed to another referendum on the Constitution which Kibaki, Uhuru and Raila were all supporting. This time, his group lost.

Ruto was to later abandon Raila and thereafter revisit his political courtship with Uhuru in 2013 that led to successful quest for State House occupancy.

He and Uhuru had been inseparable since then until Raila came knocking on the President’s door on March 9, 2018, with the offer of a Handshake. The situation has rapidly been changing.

Ruto has, however, openly demonstrated that he is not among those to be derailed from his seemingly bumpy route to the House on the Hill.

 And not since the tiff between Mzee and Jaramogi, has a rift between the president and his principal assistant been so loudly pronounced in national limelight as is the case between the incumbents.

However, unlike all his predecessors, Ruto’s position is heavily protected by the Constitution. Before the 2010 Constitution, a President-elect had the luxury to appoint and sack his principal assistant at will and choice.

Today, once in office a deputy president cannot be fired by the boss even if they were to differ, say, on a matter of policy, principle or sabotage.

They can only be removed through death, sickness or legally proven gross misconduct.

Elsewhere, last year in Austria, Vice-Chancellor (equivalent of Deputy President) Heinz Christian-Strache, who had a frosty working relationship with his boss, Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, was forced to resign after videos taped two years earlier in Ibiza, Spain, emerged showing the then leader of far-right Freedom Party in a rendezvous with a Russian sex hawker and other vendors of crime discussing how to engage in corrupt deals worth billions of Euros.

In the Phillipines, President Rodrigo Duterte and his principal assistant Leni Robredo are at war.

In a dramatic move, last year, he appointed Robredo to head the anti-narcotics in the country after she criticised the killing of suspects in violation of their rights.

Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela has had tempestuous rapport with his three former vice-presidents Jorge Arreaza, Aristobulo Isturiz and Tareck El Aissami while former Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim had a series of tiffs with his boss, Mahathir Mohammed, in the late 1990s and early 2000s to a level that saw him land in jail over claims of corruption and sexual misconduct.