One thing I realized that those who consume national politics from headlines will miss the mark very many times. This is because most of those headlines are paid for directly or the put there to sell newspapers. The real undercurrent happenings get drown out by the fake news.
DP Ruto is just fine but I bet he is bored to death. He has read all reports, replied them, and even gone through the previous ones again. For a workaholic it must be tough to just seat down at home. First thing is that due to the line of succession, this transmittable epidemic required that President Uhuru, DP Uncle Ruto must stay away physically as much as possible. Even when cabinet members go to state house to meet him, a strict clear 1.5 meters social distancing is kept from him. He is a smoker so he is a high risk to corona in my opinion. Same applies to Speaker of National Assembly Muturi and Speaker of Senate Lusaka. They can be briefed and brief each other through those various communication lines. You all saw that on Monday when after President Uhuru address, DP Uncle Ruto immediately reassured on the same and asked everyone to cooperate.
On political undercurrent, a lot is ongoing. RAT fallout with joho is jolting opposition. After Meru BBI rally odm realized that one shilling, one vote mantra from central is too strong to go against so they dropped the unpopular parliamentary system demand. Secondly its clear Kenyans wouldn’t support also third tier government which he sold to retired governors as their seats. That’s has been dropped. odm recommendation as presented to bbi has reverted back to Bomas bbi draft . The same current Presidential system voted directly by Kenyans only add a junior PM appointed by President from the majority party or coalition. That means a lot of governors hopes got crushed. Joho now asks nothing less that running mate position same as Oparanya. Coast, Western and Ukambani. Two regions are due for disappointment and infighting at former opposition zone. RAT further mistake is to take cash from Shabhil, joho rival in coast to endorse him for Mombasa governors seat. Joho expected to be consulted on all coast seats not RAT taking cash from various people for endorsement. Besides his family has given RAT a fortune since 2006.
In Jubilee the situation is a lot better. Corona has just killed BBI completely. In January, CS Treasury advised state house against Nairobi governor by election if they remove Sonko simply because he didn’t have money for any new political contest. Its was hard enough to maintain prudent budget spending against development projects and future needs. Sonko survived to remain a ceremonial governor. Now corona has hit Treasury finances hard. All projects funding halted. Even recurrent expenditure is been hit. Corona epidemic will end by June 2020. Parliament will be in recession long enough for state house to restructure the current budget uniliterally to meet current crisis needs. It will then take us 6 months (upto Dec 2020) just to normalize the economy to January numbers. This current budget is currently undergoing a massive plunge to reflect realities. 2021 will have no room for any new expenditure except paying for recurrent expenses, debts and ongoing development. No money for any grassroots political contest. Forget referendum or BBI, infact we will struggle to pay for general elections 2022.
On the political scene in Jubilee, corona has just shrunk political timeline between now and 2022. Handcheque team just realized they have hanging onto a retiring President who has now all but confirmed he will retire. The NIS briefing on corona action plan has been very sobering. He is an unpopular President and most don’t trust his government on any issue. He can’t force his will on them. He was warned that locking down the country or city risks revolts by poor people who have been broke since 2018 and already broken in spirit as things become bad while government was preoccupied with okoa retirement BBI meetings. Poor people are from all tribes, they revolt and government goes home. They will need food and water first before a lockdown can be even considered. In March someone instructed PSCU to blur DP Uncle Ruto pictures while in cabinet meeting. The outburst from Kenyans on that post and every other state house post what just love for DP Uncle Ruto. They nearly considered pausing that page. The end result was senior people got reprimanded for embarrassing the office and the President by their pettiness.
Meanwhile DP Uncle Ruto planted his support base in all 47 counties with Tanga Tanga projects in 2018. Those seeds germinated in 2019. In 2019 he reconfirmed the same with all those harambees and church functions. The germinated seeds are now young plants maturing this year. His rivals in Jubilee don’t know whether they will ran or not, have seeds or not or how to plant them. All these while time has passed them by as they clinched on President Uhuru for relevance. RAT who is the only visible challenger can’t run without President Uhuru on the ticket as he wished. However he has shown many times he only knows survival politics so well and will not mind contradictory shifts and back DP Uncle Ruto for handcheque 2. In fact its just a matter of when not if.
By the way nobody in Tanga Tanga is against CS Mutahi. He is a source of bright sunshine in an otherwise gloomy cabinet. He has everyone support except super CS and super PS who don’t like that the spotlight is now shifted away from them to him. They also fear that he has the President ears away from them. We are watching that rivalry and jostling taking place closely. One thing for sure President Uhuru is shifting his advisors from drinking buddies, family and relying mostly on KDF and NIS leadership. Case of point his surprise pick to head Nairobi county. OP Super’s, elachi, peter Kenneth, tuju, wamalwa na sakaja who were all pushing for it got surprised by that pick.