Why the Tangatanga Train is Sure to Receive More Kitaeleweka 'Rats' From Mt Kenya Ahead of Decisive BBI Vote

DP William Ruto. (Photo/RFI)

Renowned columnist and former Daily Nation Managing Editor for Special Projects, Macharia Gaitho, has warned Deputy President William Ruto to beware of what he has termed as 'rats fleeing the sinking ship'.

Gaitho, in a point blank opinion piece published on the Nation on Tuesday while acknowledging that DP Ruto's '#HustlerNation is on a roll', sounded an alarm bell over recent high-profile defections from President Uhuru Kenyatta's Kitaeleweka faction to Ruto's Tangatanga. 

The defectors in question include among others, nominated Senator Isaac Mwaura and Murang'a Senator Irungu Kang'ata whose decamping to Tangatanga is no longer a matter of if, but when. This is after the Senate Majority whip wrote a scathing letter to Uhuru last week warning him that selling BBI in Mt Kenya region, will be equivalent to hawking pork in Mecca.

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It is such Kitaeleweka defectors that Gaitho is advising Ruto to be wary of lest they infect him with 'Jubilee plague'.

"Dr Ruto need not celebrate his apparent gains too much. He would be foolish not to see that many of those running to his side are no more worthwhile than rats fleeing a sinking ship, and a Jubilee plague they helped create in the first place," Gaitho writes. 

He adds: "Characters like Mr Mwaura are serial defectors, who in just a few years, have hoped from the arms of one senior politician to another, depending on who is on the ascendancy. The DP may hold out a welcoming embrace, but ought to be cautious of fellows who will be ready to jump ship the moment a more enticing offer comes along."

As Gaitho rightly observes, Ruto's #HustlerNation is on a roll and there is no turning back. You're either on or under the 'wheelbarrow' which Gaitho has termed as "powerful symbol of the Ruto insurrection, which exploits underclass resentment against the privileged political dynasties represented by the Kenyattas and Odingas and others in their orbit such as Kanu leader Senator Gideon Moi."

Senators Mwaura and Kang'ata have undoubtedly come to the realization that Mt Kenya electorates, no matter what, are not going to be cajoled into joining their regional kingpin in his outright betrayal of his deputy.

These defectors have also come to terms with the reality that Uhuru lost his grip of Mt Kenya region to Ruto a long time ago and, therefore, sticking with the lame duck President to drum support for his frivolous BBI project that is bound to boomerang, will be taking coal to Newcastle while putting their political careers on a knife-edge.

Pro-BBI minions from Mt Kenya pretentious or not alive to the reality of the region's current political landscape, are glaring at a catastrophic tsunami that will render them irrelevant politically after the BBI vote later in the  year, and the run-up to 2022 political whirlwind, both in which Ruto has an upper hand in the region.

As such, the Mt Kenya omnibus of defectors set in motion by Kang'ata and Mwaura is sure to get more passengers by day as we edge closer to the BBI referendum. This is because after that the region's leadership which will still be sitted on the right-hand side of the naked King, will be swept to obscurity not to be heard of again. I need not say that they will all have become early casualties of the impending wheelbarrow revolution!