Ruto’s blunder of fighting Raila

William Ruto has made a terrible miscalculation in fighting Raila Odinga. The Agriculture Minister is trying to make the Prime Minister take the blame for the post election murders of more than 1,000 Kikuyus. Ruto claims the Kalenjins who committed the murders did so to get Raila elected and they were only performing an ODM duty to win the elections. Raila, on the other hand, firmly believes those who committed murders before, during and after the 2007 elections should face the law either locally or at The Hague. Both the law and justice are on Raila’s side so Ruto is bound to lose this battle in the final analysis. He only seems to have tribal and xenophobic nationalism on his side.

Memories cannot be so short as to forget the manner in which the Kalenjins have always tried to eliminate the Kikuyus from the Rift Valley which they claim to be their ancestral home. Soon after the bloodbath that saw more than 300,000 made homeless at the end of 2007 and the beginning of 2008 everyone who visited the pathetic internally displaced refugees at their camp in Eldoret concluded that what took place came very close to tribal cleansing of the Kikuyu people. This view was at one time shared with Kofi Annan who was among the first people to visit the homeless victims.

Long before Kenyans went to the polls Kalenjins were undergoing secret military training sponsored by very important politicians and conducted by highly qualified ex-military men in the community. The Kalenjins were ready to get rid of the Kikuyus whatever the outcome of the elections. As a matter of fact the elections were used as a mere excuse to chase the Kikuyus from what was perceived as Kalenjin land. The bitter feelings against the Kikuyus started soon after independence when Jomo Kenyatta’s Government was more concerned about settling the Kikuyus in former White Highlands of Rift Valley.

The manner in which Kalenjin warriors attacked Kikuyu homes and set them on fire proved clearly they were trained people. Every time security personnel appeared on the scene the Kalenjins simply vanished in thin air only to systematically reappear when the police moved out of the scene. Kikuyus were caught totally unaware as the civil war moved up to Nakuru as it was spreading towards Nairobi. At Naivasha the Kikuyus organized themselves under Mungiki to hit back at the spreading Kalenjins and other ethnic groups in the ODM particularly the Luos and Luhyas.

Until today many of the settled Kikuyus in the Rift Valley have established what are seen as Kikuyu villages in Kalenjin land. Indeed the people who were burnt alive by Kalenjin warriors in a Kikuyu church near Eldoret during the post election clashes were in a village of Kiambaa which is a duplication of another village of the same name in the Central Province. When the victims of the Kiambaa massacre were laid to rest the President and other Kikuyu politicians attended the ceremony which was boycotted by Kalenjin leaders. Attempts to build a permanent monument at the Rift Valley Kiambaa in memory of the murdered Kikuyus have met with vehement opposition from the Kalenjins leaders who see the monument as an attempt to make people always remember their post election crimes.

According to Ruto the murders that were committed after the 2007 elections should be forgotten. He believes the killers of 2007-2008 should be regarded as freedom fighters who were “liberating” the country from “Kikuyu domination”. He has tried in vain to sell this idea to the ODM. Indeed the bone of contention that is causing serious cracks in the ODM is based on how to treat Kalenjin killers of post election conflict. Are they murderers or war heroes? To the Kalenjin people the killers of Kikuyus were heroes trying to get back their land from “foreigners”. The only trouble is that a good number of the killed Kikuyus and a very big majority of the IDPs actually bough their land from the very same Kalenjins who turned against them. Most of the land went into the Kikuyu hands through willing Kalenjin sellers to willing Kikuyu buyers. This makes the Kalenjin killers even guiltier.

Ruto is of the opinion that the animosity between the Kalenjins and the Kikuyus should be solved through the Truth Justice Reconciliation Commission (TJRC) which will be established soon to deal with Kenya’s various political and socioeconomic problems. In this Ruto is backed by Uhuru Kenyatta who is alleged to have organized the Kikuyus at Naivasha to hit back at the Kalenjin. Among the politicians who are said to be heading for The Hague to face justice are Ruto and Kenyatta. No wonder many see them getting together to form a political alliance before 2012 as they happen to be birds of the same feather when it comes to facing the law as post election criminals.

As a decent politician who believes in the power of the ballot Raila cannot be forced to join this camp. This does not mean however that ODM does not have people who believe, very much like Ruto, in letting the whole matter be handled by the TJRC. Indeed there are some, like Anyang Nyong’o, who would rather the post election violence issue was swept under the carpet. Nyong’o believes his “mass action” call before, during and after the 2007 election could see him accompany Uhuru and Ruto to The Hague.

On matters of law and justice Raila has a name to protect both locally and internationally. He is respected everywhere in the world as a shrewd politician who champions the course of the rule of law. For that matter he is willing to sacrifice Anyang Nyong’o as the ODM secretary general and throw Ruto into the dustbin of history for the sake of his own national and international integrity. It is not beyond Raila to reorganize ODM without a section of Kalenjins, particularly Ruto’s own Nandis, and other leaders who want to implicate him with the post election murders. The new ODM could see a marriage with Martha Karua’s Narc Kenya. The fight in 2012 will therefore be between Raila, Karua and Mudavadi in one camp and Uhuru, Ruto and Kalonzo on the other camp. It will be such a tough fight whose results will be extremely difficult to predict.

Whatever the outcome, Kenya will have a very well established democracy that the people can truly be proud of. At that time the Executive will be efficient, the Legislature supreme and the Judiciary independent. The media as the fourth estate will have an uphill task of proving to be truly free. That will depend entirely on how professional they decide to become from now onwards when they report important political history as it continues to be made in this country.

Posted by I am a at 2:43 AM