A
lot of misconceptions surround the new Rutos party, URP. According to registrar
of parties, URP stands for United Republican Party not ‘Ukiona Ruto Potea’.
Today a cartoon in the Daily nation depicted Ruto as a serpent. This does not shock me at all. Last week the
Nation media group gave a total blackout to William Ruto during the launch of
his new political vehicle, URP. If you asked me,
and it is a good thing you did not ask, Ruto is the most-maligned yet
well-meaning politician this country has ever produced. He is the best there
is, the best there was and the best there ever will be. But journalists and
commentators continue to ignore his numerous successes, which far outnumber the
few infractions he has that are always blown out of proportion. Often, they
deliberately fail to see Ruto’s brightest sides and are hell-bent on bringing
him down whenever he sets on, well, setting milestones, overcoming hurdles or
going over a cliff to meet other ‘hustlers’.
Had it not been for Ruto, we would not have known about coached
witnesses to the ICC and how they were housed in the lap of luxury that we were
probably paying for. Thus, apart from saving us some little money, he also
opened our eyes to the shenanigans of some human rights bodies and how their
commissioners were uprooting hard-working peasants from villages and setting
them up in highrise apartments in the city.
That done, Mr Ruto then set his sights on The Hague, where he
stood up for the rights of all Kenyans, young and old, hustlers, rustlers,
blushers, blusters et al.While his other colleagues at the ICC just sat there,
befuddled and mum while condescendingly being read what was left of their
rights, the Eldoret North MP became the voice of the voiceless millions of
Kenyans who wanted to tell the ICC a thing or two about jurisprudence. No politician has stopped other wayward politicians
in their tracks the way Ruto has.
Then there is KANU,
ODM and UDM, which were likely to grow into monolithic dictatorial behemoths
but Ruto nipped them in the bud, cut them down to size and made them pale
shadows of their former selves by decamping with millions of their members to
whichever political vehicle he chose. Who says he is not a man of the masses? You
cannot talk about Ruto without mentioning YK’92, a political outfit that
increased the rate of employment for the youth and gave us higher prices for
our agricultural produce in the ’90s. That is why, had he stayed on at the helm
of the Ministry of Agriculture, the food shortages we experienced last year
would have been a thing of the past.
But trust Ruto’s
detractors, who saw his success with the masses as a threat to their waning
political careers. They not only engineered his being dropped from the Kitchen
Cabinet, but also spread malicious lies about his dealings and made him a
sacrificial lamb at the altar of an over-zealous ICC prosecutor who wanted to
make Kenya an example, albeit a bad one. Also, Ruto was made the villain of Mau
and Ngong forests as his baiters tried to make the legal land owners homeless.
But the man was unstoppable in championing the rights of the downtrodden and
held fundraisers for the displaced, the homeless, the landless, the foodless
and other victims of GoK’s lethargy.
A self-made man who
undoubtedly admires his maker, Ruto’s achievements in just one day can fill
newspapers and news bulletins for years.
