The Luo should back President Ruto in 2027 without PRE-CONDITIONS and without BINDING agreements.
Pre-conditions and pre-election agreements are a waste of time and fodder for post-election betrayals. There’s nothing binding in politics.
Presidential candidates should be allowed to pick whosoever they want.
Their hands shouldn’t be tied by ethnic or gender considerations.
Some of us believed Martha Karua was a wrong choice but once Baba made the choice, we lived with it.
Women can help one’s chances or extinguish those chances, same as men.
Martha was to bring the Kikuyu vote which she never brought — and some till today accuse her of doing so little.
Doing So little?
Didn’t she attend all Baba campaigns? Didn’t she appear for the debate — and wasn’t she thoroughly clobbered? Didn’t she give it her all? “Laila ni msalendo”, didn’t she cry out in the wilderness?
Till he passed, I don’t remember any day Baba blamed Karua for not ‘delivering’ Mt. Kenya. I also don’t remember Baba ever blaming Uhuru for not delivering Mt. Kenya either.
It was his loss. Baba’s loss. He took it in his stride; and responded in his manner, pushing the state to the wall, then giving nafuu…for the state to serve the people.
On the other hand, President William Ruto won Mt. Kenya vote by cobbling a broad coalition, and working with a wide section of Mt. Kenya leaders.
No politician from Mt. Kenya can claim he/she singlehandedly ‘delivered’ the region to President Ruto.
Against the advice of many, he picked Gachagua as his DP.
It is a decision he made alone.
Most in his party desired other leaders. But they did not make the picking of any of them a deal-breaker.
Gachagua, therefore, misjudged his importance once he was perched at no.2. And that’s why it was very easy for him to be removed. Easy come, easy go. Simple and quick. Very good for our democracy.
We need the President to pick an assistant he can fire.
Government paralysis is worse when infighting has no discernible solution. Put simply, the buck must stop somehere!
We need to abandon politics where leaders are insulated by their tribes; making them out of reach of any accountability mechanism — political or judicial.
The only insulator should be the constitution of the Republic of Kenya, and the confidence the President you’re serving and those charged to impeach you, have in you.
The only demand those of us in the KUMI BILA BREAK side of things need to make to President Ruto is to pick a deputy who is PATRIOTIC to the motherland, Kenya.
He must pick a candidate who has demonstrated his/her appreciation of this vast, multi-party, multi-ethnic society.
Someone who, if he (the president) were to drop dead; the country will still remain in ‘safe hands’.
We do not need deputy presidents who dangle their tribes on our faces — regardless of how big your tribe is. Maturity. Competence. Emotional intelligence. Nothing more. Your tribe must not be an added advantage.
Here, the only thread that binds us is the territorial idea of us being Kenyans.
Anyango, Moraa, Chebet, Njeri, Hanifa, Bhoke. All Kenyans, all equal before the law.
Here, nobody owns more “shares” than the other.
The point I’m making is that we must begin to move our national politics away from pairing tribes to pairing individuals.
Let us move the contest a notch higher, on VISIONS and IDEAS.
Whose vision best represents the Kenya we want to live in?
Whose ideas resonate with your own urgency?
Remember that you elect the President, not the President and his Deputy.
You elect the President.
The Deputy is SELECTED by the President.
THE MOST IMPORTANT SEAT IS THE PRESIDENT.
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