Ruto's leadership questionable after Gachagua, Muturi claims

The foul public exchanges between President William Ruto and his two former allies-turned-foes speak to a major constitutional question that needs formal investigation and conclusion. Is the country in the right hands? 

Recent outbursts by two senior political leaders in lengthy television interviews paint the picture of a president in breach of office, the law and the Constitution, and basic common decency. Apart from intentional breaches, they raise the question of the president’s mental suitability to lead. They point to the need for State House to come clean on allegations of abuse of office. But, perhaps more significant, is the question of the president’s physical and mental fitness to hold that office, weighed against Article 144 of the Constitution of Kenya (2010).

The former Deputy President, Rigathi Gachagua, and former Attorney General and Public Service CS, Justin Muturi, have raised issues that need formal substantiation. In the alternative, the two may have to eat their words and apologise for misleading Kenyans. Would a quasi-judicial process be necessary, to look into the serious allegations against the president, in the face of these public accusations? Is Ruto misusing authority and abusing the power of Kenya’s highest public office, for illicit personal gain? Is he mentally fit to hold office? Civilised society does not allow such questions to vaporise without formal investigation and conclusion. 

Muturi has, especially, made very heavy charges against President Ruto. In a no-holds-barred TV interview, Muturi describes Ruto in appalling idiom. Ruto is “irredeemably corrupt”. He is “a compulsive liar”. Then comes the clincher,  “William Ruto is a double personality.” This is to say that the Ruto you see in one environment is not the same person you see in other environments. Muturi has told the nation that its foremost leader suffers from a terrible psychological disorder. That many personalities are hosted in the individual called William Ruto, the President of Kenya. 

Split personality

If this should indeed be true, then should this individual be allowed to continue in office? Is there risk of the ship of State hurtling down the cliff, with untold disastrous consequences? A split personality, or unsound mind, is contemplated in the Constitution of Kenya as one of the grounds for removal of the president from office. Kenyans have a constitutional right to hold this discussion. Article 144 of the Constitution provides for removal of the president “on grounds of physical or mental capacity.”

The mother law of the land recognises that the president could one day be either physically or mentally unable to hold office, or even both. The Constitution then defines the way out. It is a fairly straightforward process, less sophisticated than Article 145, which provides for presidential removal through an arduous impeachment process. 

The Cleveland Clinic website defines double personality disorder as “a mental health condition characterized by the presence of two or more distinct personality states or ‘alters.’ These two people living in one person control the patient’s feeling, thinking and behaviour. “This disorder is often characterised by childhood trauma.” 

The disorder is also known as dissociative identity disorder (DID). Each personality in the individual has his or her own distinct identities and traits. They think in very distinct ways about everything in the environment and about themselves, too. Hence, a leader may, for example, make certain proclamations today, and do quite the opposite the following morning. The only consistent characteristic in such an individual is inconsistency. Each of the inconsistencies is determined by one or the other of the numerous people who live in the individual.

Muturi, a seasoned lawyer, has been categorical, “William Ruto is a person with two personalities. The William Ruto that presents himself to the public is a completely different character from the one who sits behind the office and crafts stuff . . . That kind of person is quite a dangerous character. I think William Ruto is actually unfit for the position of President of Kenya . . . ”

Two serious charges are embedded in this remark. One is of a mentally unstable individual, while the other one is of a corrupt character. While Muturi’s concern about what he sees as Ruto’s unfitness to be the President of Kenya would seem to touch on both perceptions of corruption and mental incapacity, emphasis seems to be more on perceived mental disorder as the driver. For, he states bluntly, “William Ruto is a person with two personalities.” He goes on to add, “I think William Ruto is actually unfit for the position of President of Kenya.”

Ancient Greece

Philosophers have, of course, told us that there is a bit of split personality in every individual. Plato of ancient Greece, for example, famously compared the human soul to a man who rides a chariot drawn by two horses. Each horse pulls in a different direction, making it difficult for the chariot to move in either way. In effect, the charioteer represents the rational person in every soul. The two horses, for their part, represent the competing appetites in the soul. This Platonic split personality is not what Muturi is talking about with regard to Ruto. He is reflecting on something more sinister.

For, Muturi paints the portrait of a panicky and money hungry paranoid schizophrenic. President Ruto impatiently goads him towards signing up a multi-billion dollar contract unlawfully, in breach of the Public Finance Act (2012). What’s more, the contract is supposed to be casually executed at a foreign airport, with Russian oligarchs, who have a terrible buccaneer reputation. Muturi is only at this airport, in Dubai, in transit to Nairobi. But he suddenly runs into a document signing directive from his boss. He has not even understood what the documents are about. Allegedly, the objective is that humongous amounts of money should end up in Ruto’s private hands. Over the subsequent weeks, Kenyans hear their president excitedly talking about planting 15 billion trees. Cabinet secretaries cut across the country, helter-skelter in choppers, “to lead in tree planning.” Then, suddenly, all is quiet, the excitement about 15 billion trees gone. 

Muturi says that what Kenyans  do not know is that this whole drama of 15 billion trees is a presidential scam. But it is not just a scam by “a corrupt president,” it is a scam by “a split personality” president. 

This is a serious charge, even an egregious charge. Civilised people do not allow this kind of charge to rest at the level of allegation. The accusation invites into extreme opprobrium both the person making the allegation and the one alleged against. It, therefore, needs a formal resolution process to establish who is telling the truth. The culprit pays the price. In this case Muturi needs a formal forum to prove his allegations. If he is proven right, President Ruto should leave office. But if he is wrong, he should hide his head forever. It boils down to a formal tribunal, under Article 144 of the Constitution. 

Unlike impeachment, under Article 145, removal of the president under Article 144 is very fairly simple. Article 144(1) states that “A member of the National Assembly supported by at least a quarter of  all the members may move a motion for the investigation of the President’s physical or mental capacity to perform the functions of office.” That is to say that only 73 of the 290 members of the National Assembly can kickstart the investigation. If the motion is supported by a majority of the Assembly (145 members) the matter passes on to the Judiciary, within two days. 

While the president continues serving, the Chief Justice is expected to appoint three doctors to a tribunal to investigate the matter. The law society will also appoint one lawyer, and the president, or his family, shall appoint one individual. A report to the Chief Justice and the Speaker of the National Assembly is expected within 14 days. 

The Constitution says the report of the tribunal shall be “final and not subject to appeal.” If the report finds the president capable of performing the functions of his office, the Speaker shall announce so to the House.  That shall rest the matter. But what if the report finds him incapable? The House shall vote on the report. Article 144 (10) reads, “If a majority of all the members of the National Assembly vote in favour of ratifying the report, the president shall cease to hold office.” 

It is that simple, 145 MPs can send President Ruto packing, in the event that a tribunal establishes Muturi’s claim that the president has a dissociative identity disorder. In this age and day of ubiquitous calls of “Ruto must go,” the temptation to raise 145 MPs against him can be more than tantalising. 

Impeachment

The rest of the accusations against the president belong to Article 145 of the Constitution, in one word, impeachment. Is the president unable to manage his appetite for wealth and allied desires through rational thinking? Humongous sums of money have been cited in a manner that makes a normal head dizzy. The former deputy president states that he was offered anywhere up to Sh. 2 billion to resign. He says that he refused. “I told him to go to hell.”

The question many will be asking pertains to the ownership of the 2 billion. Were they Ruto’s personal funds made over the years, or were they funds from the public coffers? If they were personal funds, then he must have so much more where these ones were coming from. How has he made that monstrous fortune; so huge that he could give away 2 billions without batting an eyelid? But if on the other hand they were to come from the national coffers, how were they to be accounted for? 

Another front that the Gachagua resignation moneys point to is how often, and where else, those kinds of huge money deals are made and executed among Kenya’s power barons. Apocryphal narratives have it that Kenya’s ruling broad-based government was born out of deals of this kind. Could this explain why a section of  the political Opposition has become so lukewarm?  The piper was sorted out, they say. The rest is for the paymaster to keep calling the tune. 

Accordingly, is it even possible to raise 73 members to move a removal motion under Article 144? Parliament has become captive and frigid. Both the National Assembly and the Senate are  in their element only when praising President Ruto, and  Opposition MPs are promising him a second term. 

Yet, there have been many more damaging allegations that would lead to impeachment under the more complicated Article 145. Muturi puts it starkly. Ruto’s “State House is a scene of crime.” The president wakes up every morning thinking about deals. That not a single project exists in which the president has no personal financial interest. The government e-Citizen platform is a money minting machine. The fake fertilizer scam of last year, which almost cost the CS then, Mithika Linturi, his job, has also been placed at the doorstep of the head of State. Besides, Kenya is supposed to have received a fertilizer donation from Russia, worth multiple billions of shillings. Muturi and Gachagua, both, allege that this bounty was passed on to one of the president’s cronies, for repackaging. It was then sold to Kenyans at prevailing market rates. The spoils were shared between the president and his cronies.

Adani scam

The Adani scam has also been back in the conversation, as well as dummy  companies that are said to have been used as conduits for siphoning public funds. Abductions by State agents, disappearances and vaporizations of youthful citizens, too, have been placed at the president’s doorstep.  

Ordinarily, it should be the business of Parliament to address these concerns. Yet Parliament behaves as if none of the members lives in the country.

Hardly a word of these damaging concerns has featured in the two houses. When ascending to office, MPs, just like the Kenyan president, take the oath of office. They vow to  protect and defend the Constitution. The protection is especially against themselves; their whims, appetites and vulnerabilities. 

When he takes this oath, the president essentially tells the world that he will defend the Constitution against himself, his family and friends. Having done so, he can now trust himself to defend it from other marauders and invaders. We have heard that Ruto has failed this test. Muturi and Gachagua are saying that the president is in breach of his oath of office. So what will they do about it, beyond lamentation?

However, more profound than an insatiable appetite for wealth is the question of whether the president is, in fact,  fit for office. His unfulfilled monstrous promises are likely to return to hound him, as instruments of measuring his fitness to rule. When he promises to build within twelve months a stadium with the capacity to host English premier league matches, what exactly is going on in his mind? When he says that a contract has already been signed with leading English Premier League clubs to play in Kenya, what should the citizens think? Or what drives him to pledge to turn the Mathare Valley slum into an ultra-modern city within months? It gets worse when he claims that the place is already beginning to look like the city of London. Is everything well?

Shadow projects

Elsewhere, the president is perpetually launching and relaunching programmes and projects that never get off the ground. His obsession with these stillborn assignments is reminiscent of Miguel Cervantes’ Don Quixote, who is perpetually fighting windmills, in the belief that he is engaging malevolent giants. Accordingly, even when he should know that he has no budgetary allocations, leave alone availability of funds, Ruto will be perpetually on the roll, announcing to Kenyans how many billions of shillings he has set aside for one project, or the other. 

The promises are simply plenty; from a million chapati making machines, to millions of digital jobs for Kenyan youth; and from there to hundreds of thousands of jobs that he has signed up with the German government for Kenyan youth in Germany. Then there are social faux pas, like jocularly and suggestively pinching, in public, the cheeks of a woman MP.

Are the stillborn assignments failed projects, or are they the moonshine flights of a troubled mind? Such is the question Muturi and Gachagua have invited Kenyans to reflect about. Is their country in safe hands? Muturi has belled the cat, by going into the dreaded space of mental health and personality disorders.

Would he go a step farther, by seeking  a pathway for the National Assembly to test Article 144 of the Constitution? For, it is not enough for him to join the huge army of lamenting Kenyans on what many interpret as Ruto’s woolly, wobbly and limping leadership. Does Ruto just make safe social blunders, or is Kenya dealing with a deeper problem?  

Will someone blink, or will these accusations end at the level of political outburst and diatribe? Interior CS, Kipchumba Murkomen, says that in a different country, Muturi would be arrested for carting away government secrets and holding State documents. It is a limp expression of helplessness. The government will most certainly do nothing, lest the manure should hit the fan. So, will Muturi and Gachagua make the next move? 

-Dr Muluka is a political commentator and Secretary General of Democratic National Alliance (DNA)