By Alex Kamau-London
It is embarrassing to see our deputy president increasingly making utterances akin to those one would expect from the vegetatively semi illiterate spokesman of the Dandora/Kayole Matatu Touts Association. The holder of the deputy president’s office needs to be a thoughtful and judicious safe pair of hands that Kenyans can depend on should President William Ruto be run over by the proverbial bus. But make no mistake.
The person happiest with Rigathi’s foolish indiscretion is William Ruto. He knows that so long as his deputy continues to behave like the DO of Mathira, there will be zero challenge to his presidency, and he will not endure the disruption and disloyalty he ruthlessly and publicly visited on Uhuru as his deputy.
Few people doubt that the person President Ruto actually trusts, respects and takes seriously is Mudavadi. Rigathi has needlessly weakened and reduced his position into a charlatan comedian and Sonko like character unlikely to be taken seriously beyond Githurai and his native Mathira. This has not escaped the notice of others both in Mt Kenya and beyond. Word has it that Ndindi Nyoro has President Ruto’s explicit encouragement and blessings to contrast himself from Rigathi and package himself as an alternative running mate come 2027, and a possible presidential candidate in 2032.
I suspect that Ruto’s choice of Rigathi as running mate was not a mistake. It was a carefully crafted Machiavellian calculation to ensure Ruto continued looking saintly better and preferable to his hapless deputy who repels many by the poverty of his limited reasoning and the poisonous tongue he just cannot control.
Ruto can rely on Rigathi to attack his nemesis such as Uhuru, Matiangi, Kibicho and Raila. Meanwhile Ruto is tightening his grip on power and placing people he and Mudavadi can trust in strategic state jobs to ensure Rigathi’s decimation as an inconsequential deputy. Rigathi at present mirrors the frog that continues to foolishly enjoy the warmth of gradually heating up water oblivious of the fact that every marginal rise in temperature is constraining its escape capabilities. It is a well-known fact that majority of Ruto and UDA allied politicians from Kiambu, Muranga, Kirinyaga and crucially the vote rich Meru have only lukewarm regard for Rigathi.
Ruto and his kitchen cabinet understands this and know a weak Rigathi eliminates the risk of a Mt Kenya mutiny. Rigathi was one of William Ruto’s answered prayers. As Saint Rigathi who obviously has never stolen any public resources reminds us of the billions Uhuru’s acolytes stole before leaving power, Kenyans are forgetting that our beloved president was himself associated with multiple cases of corruption and theft.
Rigathi’s acerbic mouth has sanitized President Ruto of the corruption noose that dogged him over many years. Sadly, it seems Rigathi fits the description of one the gods have made mad to prepare for annihilation. Appearance in politics is important and Rigathi’s lamentable dress manner often makes him look like a poorly paid funeral undertaker for a municipal authority, rather than the Deputy President of Kenya.
Rigathi needs to appoint or have appointed for him by the state an expert in public communication and a fashion stylist to socialize him into the sartorial decency the holder of his office rightly commands. It is painfully sore to have our poorly clad deputy president increasingly making ill-thought, reckless, daft, sectarian and divisive statements devoid of any emotional awareness, judgment and the candor essential for his high office.
