KANGARI, Kenya – The helicopter flew over the lush tea and coffee fields flanking Mount Kenya, Africa’s second highest peak, and landed outside a small highland town where William Ruto, the self-proclaimed leader of Kenya’s ‘hustler nation’, is out.
Mr Ruto, the frontrunner in next Tuesday’s presidential election, is pinning his hopes on what he calls Kenya’s ‘scammers’ – the masses of frustrated, mostly poor young people who just want to get ahead. He delights fans with his tale of how he was once so poor he sold chickens on the side of the road, and with his fiery attacks on rivals he describes as elitist and out of touch.
“I grew up wearing second-hand clothes,” he boasted to a roaring crowd in Kangari, where farmers and shopkeepers gathered around his election vehicle, a canary-yellow, gleaming SUV “Every Hustle Matters,” read the slogan on his door.
What is strange is that Mr. Ruto has already been in power for nine years, as vice-president of Kenya. And he became a very wealthy man, with land interests, luxury hotels and, perhaps rightly so, a major chicken processing plant.
Contradictions abound in this Kenyan election, a torrid and unpredictable contest between Mr Ruto, 55, and Raila Odinga, a 77-year-old opposition veteran who is making his fifth presidential bid, after failing in the first four . But the eternal outsider is now seen as the insider after striking an alliance with the man who for years was his bitter enemy – incumbent President Uhuru Kenyatta.
With the vote just days away, the race is a headache – a stark contrast to many other African countries, like Uganda and Mali, where once-high democratic hopes have given way to sham votes and blows military states. For its Western allies, it shows why Kenya matters more than ever. Since its first competitive multi-party elections 20 years ago, the East African nation has become a booming technology hub, a key partner in the fight against terrorism, a source of world-class athletes and a anchor of stability in a region shaken by famine and conflict.
Kenyans are enthusiastic voters, with an 80% turnout in the 2017 elections (compared to 52% for the US presidential race a year earlier); On Tuesday, 22.1 million registered voters will choose candidates for six races, including president, parliament and local bodies.
The vote comes at an anxious time for weary Kenyans. The pandemic and war in Ukraine have battered their economy, which is saddled with billions of dollars in debt for Chinese-built road and rail projects. In the north, a devastating four-year drought threatens 4 million people with starvation.
But this race is less about stakes than a titanic clash of personality, age versus ambition – peppered with a steady stream of custom attacks.
Mr. Ruto, a charismatic and ambitious leader with a ruthless side, derides Mr. Odinga as the “riddle man”, a dig at his tendency to quote folk proverbs and riddles, and as a “project of his ally, Mr. Kenyatta.
Mr Odinga, a veteran left-winger who believes corruption costs Kenya millions every day, has another word for his opponent. “Is it the thief?” he asked the crowd at a rally in Machakos, 40 miles from Nairobi, on a recent afternoon.
“Ruto! replied his supporters.
Accusations that Mr Ruto’s team are prone to corruption (or, at least, more prone than their opponents) were bolstered by the courts last week when the High Court ordered his running mate, Rigathi Gachagua, to forfeit $1.7 million in illegally acquired public funds. . Mr Gachagua, whose bank accounts were frozen by a government anti-corruption agency in 2020, is appealing the judgment, which he dismissed as politically motivated.
Mr Odinga also faces accusations of unsavory compromise. Son of the first vice-president of Kenya, he spent most of his career on the benches of the opposition. He personalizes a sense of grievance among his fellow Luo, Kenya’s fourth largest ethnic group, who have never had a president.
After weeks of neck and neck polls, the latest figures give Mr Odinga a clear lead. He is buoyed by the buzz around his running mate, Martha Karua, seen as a principled politician with a long history of activism who, if elected, would become Kenya’s first female vice-president.
A wild card is a third candidate, George Wajackoyah, who won a small but loud protest vote on the back of his proposals to legalize marijuana and, more bizarrely, export hyena testicles to China (where it is said that they have medicinal value).
If Mr Wajackoyah can keep his vote share, up to 3% in the polls, he could deny Mr Ruto or Mr Raila the 50% majority needed to win, and trigger a runoff 30 days later. late. .
One of the greatest strengths of racing isn’t on the ticket. The current president, Mr Kenyatta, shook up politics in 2018 when he struck a political deal known as ‘the handshake’ with Mr Odinga.
The alliance ended an enmity between Kenya’s two great political dynasties that dated back to 1969, when the father of Mr. Kenyatta, then president, jailed the father of Mr. Odinga, an opposition leader, for a period of 18 months.
But for many Kenyans, the handshake was little more than “children of kings” making a deal for their own gain, said Njoki Wamai, assistant professor of international relations at U.S. International University- Africa in Nairobi.
Mr Ruto, stung by a perceived betrayal, built his own base in Mr Kenyatta’s political backyard in Mount Kenya, the region dominated by the Kikuyu ethnic group who make up around a quarter of Kenya’s electorate.
The vitriol between the two men is never far from the surface. “You have enough money, security and cars,” Mr Ruto recently told a rally, addressing the president. “Now go home.”
“Don’t vote for thieves,” Mr. Kenyatta told his supporters a few days later. “Or you will regret it.”
One obstacle facing both candidates is apathy. Young Kenyans in particular say they are discouraged by the Byzantine squabbles, alliances and backroom deals that preoccupy their leaders.
Evans Atika, a barber in Nairobi’s South C ward, fits the profile of a typical ‘scammer’. But having voted in 2017, he intends to stay at home this time. “They’re all the same,” he said. “They lie. They made promises they can’t keep.
Elections in Kenya are among the most elaborate and costly in the world. This is expected to cost $370 million, using ballots with more security features than the country’s banknotes. But elections here have a habit of going badly.
Widespread violence following a disputed 2007 result left more than 1,200 dead, displaced 600,000 and sparked an International Criminal Court investigation into politicians accused of funding death squads and fomenting hatred ethnic. Mr. Kenyatta and Mr. Ruto have been charged with crimes against humanity.
But by 2016 both cases had collapsed, following what one judge called “a disturbing incidence of witness interference and intolerable political interference”.
Other Kenyan elections have resulted in courtroom disputes that have resulted in the results being overturned by judges. And days before the last poll in 2017, a senior electoral commission official was found brutally murdered in a remote woods outside Nairobi.
The case was never solved.
This time around, concerns about widespread election-related violence are lessened, say human rights observers. But in recent weeks, some residents of ethnically mixed areas, particularly in the Rift Valley which has seen the worst unrest in previous polls, have voluntarily moved to the safety of major cities.
Much, however, will depend on the end result. Kenya’s electoral commission has a week to declare a winner, although analysts expect the losing side to file a legal challenge, prolonging the competition.
One silver lining, amid the vilification, is the potential for a sea change in the corrosive ethnic politics that has dominated Kenya for decades. The shifting alliances mean that, for the first time, millions of voters are expected to cross ethnic lines, particularly around Mount Kenya where, for the first time, Kikuyus will have to vote for a candidate from another group.
“I love this man,” said self-identified “scammer” Michael Muigai after the rally for Mr Ruto in Kangari.
Mr. Muigai, who is 22, is working on a road construction project in China to pay for his college deferred placement fees. He said he didn’t care that Mr. Ruto was an ethnic Kalenjin, and ignored media reports linking him to corruption.
“The past is the past,” he said.
Declan Walsh reported from Kangari, Kenya, and Abdi Latif Dahir from Machakos, Kenya.
nytimes Gt