Sunday, January 8, 2012

Ruto’s undoing is that he’s a rebel without a cause



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By MAKAU MUTUA
Posted  Saturday, January 7  2012 at  20:15
Eldoret North MP William Samoei arap Ruto is a man without a “home”. Supporters are leaving his side in droves.
Finally, the man’s chickens appear to be coming home to roost.
Like a deer caught in the headlights, Mr Ruto seems clueless which way to turn. His fulminations ring hollow. His options have narrowed to zero.
That’s called a political cul de sac. How could a man with such a gift of the gab — and a brilliant strategic mind — bring himself uncoerced to the edge of the political precipice? Methinks I know why — Mr Ruto is a rebel without a cause.
His elephantine ego — and unbridled hubris — will be his demise. That’s what my crystal ball tells me.
A sycophant at a UDM rally in December wore a T-shirt emblazoned “Ruto the Hustler”.
I don’t know whether that knucklehead meant the caption as a compliment. I agree that “to hustle” may mean the virtuous “to strive”.
But on a T-shirt, the word is likely to be given its popular seedier dictionary meaning. In slang — which is common parlance — a “hustler” is one who “obtains money dishonestly” or a “prostitute”.
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I am not making this up — check it out yourself. Was the T-shirt meant to be a true irony, a compliment, or give a double meaning?
This is precisely Mr Ruto’s problem — he says one thing, but does and means another. What you see isn’t what you get.
Since the early 1990s, when he was a pivotal player in YK’92, Mr Ruto has built his political career on a falsely manufactured siege mentality among the Kalenjin.
He’s cordoned off “his people” and bamboozled them. He portrayed himself as the “defender of the Kalenjin”.
That’s how he used his tribal cunning to slay former president Daniel arap Moi’s towering legacy among the Kalenjin.
He’s the reason the Kalenjin were the only community to vote against the Constitution. But I have news for Mr Ruto.
The Kalenjin are finally seeing through his charade. Multitudes are increasingly calling his bluff. You can take this to the local bank — Mr Ruto has lost his iron grip among the Kalenjin.
Those who have eyes can see. General John Koech— a retired but respected military leader — recently trashed Mr Ruto.
In a scathing attack that would have been unthinkable several months ago, Gen Koech all but called Mr Ruto a “charlatan”.
The good general “called out” Mr Ruto and pointedly told him he didn’t have the backing of Kalenjin elders, youth and senior professionals.
Gen Koech has said what many Kalenjins have wanted to say, but couldn’t or wouldn’t.
My crystal ball tells me that the general speaks for the vast majority of the Kalenjin who don’t want to be isolated from other Kenyans to feed Mr Ruto’s gargantuan ego and ambitions. Mr Ruto’s days atop the Kalenjin are gone.
His tactics are classic ethnic-baiting. He can’t thrive without stoking ethnic divisions and tensions. That’s the blueprint of every ethnic baron.
Take, for example, Mr Ruto’s “grievances” against Prime Minister Raila Odinga. In all of them, Mr Ruto projected himself as the “saviour” of the Kalenjin.
He opposed Mr Odinga’s move to save the Mau Complex, Kenya’s critical water tower. It’s not in dispute that squatters within Mau Complex were illegal, and had to be evicted.
This was baloney meant to undermine Mr Odinga’s overwhelming support among the Kalenjin. Mr Ruto couldn’t stand to lose his lone grip among the Kalenjin.But Mr Ruto spun the conservation of the Mau Complex as an assault on the Kalenjin.
False yarn
The MP also spun the false yarn that Mr Odinga had “engineered” the charges for crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court.
It’s true the PM is an “engineer” by training, but only a paranoid mind can believe he has the power to “orchestrate” the ICC.
Not even ICC Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo can tell the court’s judges what to do.
The ICC isn’t like the Kenyan courts of yesteryear. It’s an independent court driven by nothing but the evidence.
The ICC has no interest in protecting Mr Odinga. I suggest that Mr Ruto looks in the mirror first before accusing others of plotting his downfall.
Gen Koech put it perfectly when he said that Mr Ruto has no genuine grievances against Mr Odinga.
He accused Mr Ruto of using the Mau Complex and the ICC to “justify” his rebellion against Mr Odinga for the anti-reform forces keen on stopping the PM from ascending to State House.
Gen Koech added a zinger to underscore just how Mr Ruto’s fortunes have plummeted among the Kalenjin.
He said that Mr Ruto’s “campaign is based on propaganda against Mr Odinga but the lies have started evaporating”. That’s a dagger to the heart.
Mr Ruto should know this – you can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all the people all the time.
There’s a moral lesson in Mr Ruto’s changing fortunes. The lesson is that Kenya is changing from primarily an agrarian tribal society to a modern political democracy.
My view is that the new Constitution is the linchpin for this epochal transformation. The centre of politics will move from tribal barons to issues.
We will still have some tribal demigods but, like Mr Ruto, they will become irrelevant dinosaurs.Ethnic groups will still mean a lot, but they’ll be trumped by individual rights and matters that affect the public commons.
Makau Mutua is Dean and SUNY Distinguished Professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo Law School and Chair of the KHRC.

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