LIST OF PEOPLE WHO HAVE BETRAYED UHURU

When President Uhuru Kenyatta implored his Mt Kenya supporters in 2013 to embrace William Ruto as his potential successor, he had unwittingly officiated a covenant even he could not break.

So determined were Mt Kenya residents to see Dr Ruto take over power in 2022 that, when Mr Kenyatta tried in 2018 to persuade them to renege on the ‘kumi yangu, kumi ya William (my 10 years in power, then William’s 10)’ promise, the Mountain would hear none of it.

It did not help matters that the President was floating a hard sell in the region – in the name of Azimio leader Raila Odinga – as the alternative.

In his campaigns in the Mt Kenya region, Dr Ruto’s running mate Rigathi Gachagua was categorical that “of all the people we can wilfully surrender ourselves to as a region, Mr Odinga remains a political problem”.

Mr Odinga’s candidacy drove a wedge between Mr Kenyatta and his backyard. The last straw was last week’s elections, where the region emphatically rejected the Azimio leader at the ballot.

The Monday announcement by Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) that Dr Ruto had bagged the presidency confirmed the earlier perception that Mr Kenyatta had lost the Mountain and could not help Mr Odinga scale it.

But governance experts say Mr Kenyatta was duped by his handlers to go against the grain for the latter’s private gain. 

Mr Gachagua in his campaigns kept talking about “some of the President’s men who were paupers just the other day, some of whom had even been declared bankrupt but within a very short time of surrounding the ‘king’ their fortunes have grown astronomically”.

Mr Gachagua, who is now poised to take over the role of Mt Kenya Kingpin from Mr Kenyatta, further insisted the Head of State’s handlers, who included some close family members, had set Mr Kenyatta against his own people.

“A very nice person that is Mr Kenyatta…who I personally served as personal assistant for six years…a man I know very well and the love he has for us and we have for him…all of a sudden changed to a point he was treating us with raw distaste,” Mr Gachagua said on several occasions.

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