Deputy President Willam Ruto revealed the cause of his rift with President Uhuru Kenyatta after the 2017 general election in his speech at the UDA NDC.
DP Ruto, in his speech to delegates at the United Democratic Alliance (UDA)’s National Delegates Conference (NDC) at Kasarani Stadium Tuesday March 15 2022, said tension rocked the UhuRuto boat after their re-election in 2017.
The President, Ruto said, told him that he needed some space ‘to work on his personal legacy’, to which he agreed, and which would become the beginning of a rift between the two leaders.
“To his credit, my friend, the president, did inform me that he needed space to work on his personal legacy as the fourth president,” said Ruto.
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“I obliged and this led to my eventual retreat to the margins of a government that I had participated in forming,” he added.
The DP told supporters that he is proud of his and President Kenyatta’s first term in office, saying that they “made exceptional progress in setting the stage for national transformation”.
Dr. Ruto decried what he termed as intimidation and harassment of those “perceived not to worship those in power” by State institutions during their second term.
“We witnessed accelerated regression into the tyranny of personality politics and the weaponization of public offices to intimidate, harass and persecute Kenyans perceived not to worship those in power,” he stated.
Added Ruto: “…in undemocratic and and in terms which rationalized grounding and swallowing the whole opposition and the vandalization of the constitution to accommodate corrupt and dangerous ethnic arrangements.”
In not-so-subtle jabs at the March 2018 handshake between his boss and then-opposition chief Raila Odinga, DP Ruto said the pact is to blame for ‘abandonment’ of the Big 4 agenda, on which the pair had anchored their presidential campaign.
“The Big 4 agenda was abandoned, pushed into the back banner as execution of its flagship projects was left at the mercy of emergent state capture,” Ruto said, adding: “Those who remained loyal to our founding vision were shunned, hounded and persecuted.”
“This is how we lost 4 years that could have gifted us with the blossoming of a beautiful dream which inspired Kenyans.”
Tuesday’s NDC marked the formal end of DP Ruto’s tenure at the Jubilee Party where he served as deputy party leader before being replaced at its NDC last month.
The convention also saw Ruto endorsed as UDA’s presidential flag-bearer in the upcoming August General Election.
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