It is said that when life gives you lemons, make lemonade from them. In other words, you should always seek to turn around a bad situation into something worthwhile.
By Ndung'u Wa Gathua
To paraphrase even further, one ought to be like that donkey which was being buried alive inside a well, but used the very soil that was supposed to kill it to step out of death. Yes, taking on your detractors head on and making them relish on the sh*t they had prepared for you.
Deputy President William Ruto is seemingly not only aware of the two analogies above, but is also keen to actualize them amid his noisy and messy fallout with President Uhuru Kenyatta.
DP Ruto, if what we have witnessed in the past one week is anything to go by, is not going to wear a black suit, sit back and mourn forever over spilt milk.
Ruto has already accepted the fact that his political marriage with Uhuru is unsalvageable and the best thing to do is, quit. What a choice!
Good riddance to Uhuru! Ruto must have told himself before hitting the road running. And indeed, it is the best thing that Ruto chose as opposed to bootlicking a tyrannical lame duck President who insists that it is either his way or no one's way!
As 2022 edges closer, Ruto is better of being outside government than being inside. What public goodwill is there to gain by being associated with an endemically scandalous regime that even steals donour funds meant to mitigate the effects of a deadly pandemic without an iota of shame?
UhuRuto fallout, might seem to some like it has derailed Ruto's 2022 presidential ambitions but in real sense, it catapults him right on the Highway to State House. Before then, he was stuck in a messy and muddy footpath leading to no man's land.
The divorce is a blessing in disguise for Ruto and it could not have come at a better time for the following reasons. And of course, the opposite applies for Raila.
1. Demagoguery & Empty Rhetoric
It would have been very hard for Ruto to utilize these two cunning political gimmicks of wooing the masses if he continued to stay in government. In Kenyan politics, the tools are widely associated with Raila and his late father.
But Raila having swapped roles with Ruto, the latter has the two tools at his disposal as the former struggles to find relevance in a corrupt regime at its sunset.
2. Vague Government Policies
Ruto as the de facto Opposition leader, can now contradict vague regime policies without any fear for ramifications. For instance, he has criticized the running of the overpriced SGR that has left Kenya riding on a colossal Chinese debt with little to show for it.
Going forward, the DP is sure to exploit dissent on key national projects and policy decisions regardless of whether they were formulated and implemented while he was in government.
3. Filling the Void
The big vacuum left when Raila decided to go to bed with Uhuru, now has a worthwhile and charismatic replacement in Ruto. For example, as Raila tows Uhuru's divisive line on county revenue share formula keen not to risk the collapse of the frivolous handshake and BBI, Ruto has taken a neutral position rooting for a win-win formula.
4. Jubilee Epic Failures
By being sidelined in running of government, Ruto has effectively and widely been saved the baggage of shouldering Jubilee's 10-year epic failures. As we head to 2022, Raila will bear the burden of Jubilee runaway thuggery, foreign debts and any other regime missteps that you can come up with.
It won't make sense to anyone for Raila to argue that he was not in government when some of them took place. He will be held culpable for his association with the rogue administration.
5. Time
Ruto has now got ample time to strategize for 2022 as Raila tows Uhuru like that hyena that follows a passerby hoping that he will drop his pendulous hands so that it can eat, but ends up going home hungry.
WORLDLY WISDOM
"If you cannot find the good in a thing, hide your incapacity and do not damn it straightway. As a general rule bad taste springs from want of knowledge," ~ Baltasar Gracian.