How Ruto has won unlikely respect for the minor office

Deputy President William Ruto (right) meets leaders from Marsabit County led by Governor Ukur Yatani (centre) over insecurity in the area in his Harambee Avenue office on January 16, 2014. Mr Ruto will most probably look at the ruling by the ICC judges excusing him from physically attending some trial sessions as a moment of personal triumph. PHOTO | FILE  NATION MEDIA GROUP

In Summary

• Even in their wildest dreams, none of these gentlemen would have imagined that the insignificant office they once held would be associated with ‘extraordinary public duties’
• In addition to being a breath away from State House, the Constitution mandates him to deputise for his boss while the latter is out of the country and to take up other delegated assignments

 

By Otieno Otieno
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Deputy President William Ruto will most probably look at last Wednesday’s ruling by the ICC judges excusing him from physically attending some trial sessions as a moment of personal triumph.

What is likely to be overlooked is that Mr Ruto also brought an unlikely honour to one of the most belittled public offices in the history of democracy.

John Adams, the American first vice-president, famously complained to his wife Abigail: “My country has in its wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.”

Our newsroom historian John Kamau reckons that the last Kenyan vice-president to have some meaningful job description was Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, who at independence was handed a powerful home affairs docket that included internal security, before he was put in his place.

Joseph Murumbi got bored too soon; Daniel arap Moi endured all his humiliations; Mwai Kibaki kept himself busy doing Nyeri politics; Josphat Karanja was hounded out of office for imagining he was acting president; George Saitoti was the man who invited the boss to speak at national holidays; few remember Musalia Mudavadi’s two-month cameo; and Kalonzo Musyoka was dismissed as a ‘flower girl’ by a newspaper columnist.

INSIGNIFICANT OFFICE

Even in their wildest dreams, none of these gentlemen would have imagined that the insignificant office they once held would be associated with ‘extraordinary public duties’.

The more honest ones might even share chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda’s view that “opening new roads or welcoming a foreign dignitary does not qualify to be extraordinary public duties”.

But Mr Ruto may also point to the enhanced roles for the holder of the second-highest office in the land in the 2010 Constitution and argue that he is not as underemployed as his predecessors.

In addition to being a breath away from State House, the Constitution mandates him to deputise for his boss while the latter is out of the country and to take up other delegated assignments.

That explains why Mr Ruto has discharged some fairly serious duties in the recent past, like meeting donors in Nairobi, representing his boss at a media conference in Ethiopia, accompanying the boss to public rallies in Uasin Gishu, and co-refereeing at the goat auction in Baringo.

Last month, the President said that his deputy also occasionally reads the newspapers for him.

There are those who would still question whether these assignments are exactly extraordinary, let alone warrant some of the privileges lavished on the Deputy President at the taxpayers’ expense – a humongous monthly pay cheque, a palace in the leafy Karen, a luxury jet to Central African Republic and security chase cars. 

But if the wise men say it is so it must be true.