Constitution: Ruto’s lies haunt him

William Ruto is in a lot of trouble. He went round the country castigating the Proposed Constitution by the use of blatant lies and against the wishes of his party ODM. Now the party is not only threatening to discipline him, but is also recommending his dismissal from the Cabinet where he serves as the Minister for Higher Education. Whether Prime Minister Raila Odinga and President Mwai Kibaki will be influenced by ODM and show Ruto the door remains to be seen.

Whatever happens he cannot deny that he told the people of Kenya the Proposed Constitution will allow homosexuals to marry partners of the same sex. Yet the Proposed Constitution says in Article 45(2) that every person has the right to marry a person of the opposite sex based on the free consent of the parties. The question Raila Odinga and Mwai Kibaki should ask themselves before forgiving Ruto is how many people, particularly the Kalenjins who take every word spoken by Ruto as gospel truth, voted against the Proposed Constitution based on the lies on gay marriages?

Can a person who publicly lied against the Proposed Constitution to suit his own personal gains be trusted to work in a major parliamentary committee charged with the responsibility of implementing the New Constitution? If William Ruto truly believed every word he publicly said about the Proposed Constitution, he should be the last one to offer his services in the implementation committee.

Apart from the lies he told his own people about same sex marriages, Ruto told an even more serious lie to the Kalenjins, which must have made them reject the Proposed Constitution en masse. He publicly told his tribesmen and women that all the land they own would be confiscated by the Government if they accepted the Proposed Constitution.

Many Kalenjins voted “NO” believing the New Constitution would not respect the private land they individually own. Yet the New Constitution clearly describes private land in Article 64 (a) which say private land consist of registered land held by any person under any free hold tenure or land held by any person under leasehold tenure or any other land declared private land under and Act of Parliament.

The over a million Kalenjins who rejected the Proposed Constitution did so believing Kibaki and Raila’s Government was about to confiscate their private land and yet the truth of the matter the very opposite was the real situation because the New Constitution protects all the Kalenjin land owned individually or collectively as a community. The lies that Ruto told to the Kalenjins and made them reject the Proposed Constitution have angered his ODM party which has now closed all doors leading to implementation committees for William Ruto.

Ruto went round the country telling everyone to reject the Proposed Constitution because it would facilitate abortion on demand for pregnant mothers yet Article 26 (4) of the New Constitution also very clearly says abortion is not permitted unless, in the opinion of a trained health professional, there is need for emergency treatment, or the life or health of the mother is in danger, or if permitted by any other written law.

During the campaigns for and against the Proposed Constitution William Ruto deliberately misled the people of Kenya and managed to get well over two million people on his side. That was a very serious damage he made to the efforts of getting this nation a new constitution. Should he be rewarded for his efforts by being included into the Parliamentary committee that will oversee the implementation of the New Constitution?

ODM as a party to which William Ruto belongs says no. Yet there are others who believe he should be included in that vital committee for the sake of national unity during this time. But the big question is: Has William Ruto changed or is he still working against the New Constitution?

During the campaign for and against the Proposed Constitution William Ruto went to the Coast and up at North Eastern Province where there are a lot of Muslims and told them if they backed the Proposed Constitution there would be serious confrontation between Muslims and Christians. Fortunately the Muslims at the Coast and at the North Eastern provinces did not take Ruto seriously and that is why they overwhelmingly supported the Proposed Constitution backed by millions of Christians.

They knew William Ruto’s efforts to drive a wedge between Muslims and Christians was an extremely serious crime which would have led this country into a bloodbath that would have made the post 2007 election conflict look like a Christmas party. Should such a person be cajoled by being offered a lucrative position in an important committee meant to bring about love and peace through the implementation of the New Constitution?

Millions of Christians ignored William Ruto when he told them to reject the Proposed Constitution because of the inclusion of the Kadhi courts in it. His argument was that the Kadhi courts in the Constitution would make Islam superior to Christianity and would lead to the spread of Islam and Muslim fundamentalism throughout the country.

Ruto knew he was lying when he was spreading his anti Islam propaganda because, as an educated person, he knew the New Constitution has established Kadhi courts for purposes of only personal laws for Muslims and that as part of the Judiciary they are only subordinate courts that cannot be used for evangelistic purposes to spread either Islam or Muslim fundamentalism. Yet Ruto made many reject the Proposed Constitution through this misconception of the Kadhi courts.

When going round the country castigating the Proposed Constitution William Ruto, Cyrus Jirongo and Daniel arap Moi never told the people the truth about the real reasons for their vehement opposition to the Proposed Constitution. Now that it has been ratified by Kenyans some of the real reasons are beginning to come out in bits and pieces. Pushed against the wall, Moi, for instance, says he still hopes there will be an early effort to amend the New Constitution’s chapters dealing with land and counties. The question is why is Moi, strongly backed by Ruto, so concerned about these chapters to the extent of telling lies about a document which they know would do a lot of good to the people of Kenya?

The answer to that question lies in the ownership of huge tracts of land and how it was acquired. When Moi was the President he used to dish out land to his cronies and family members right left and centre. Among the beneficiaries were Ruto and Jirongo. The manner in which Moi distributed land was quite unjust to the ordinary people of Kenya. The New Constitution promises to correct that anomaly. Moi is also quite agitated by the new creation counties in the Rift Valley which he believes should remain as one unit belonging to the Kalenjins.

Now there are new counties there which will be in the hands of people other than Kalenjins including, for example, Kajiado and Narok which will be controlled by the Masai people, which does not disturb Mio so much; but Nakuru and Laikipia, which may end up in Kikuyu hands and disturbs the former President quite a lot. Deep inside, Moi is a Kalenjin nationalist who believes the Rift Valley belongs to the Kalenjins – an error which the New Constitution corrects with the consent of over six million Kenyans.