Grounded for one month; President Ruto maintains local tours

Ruto, who had barely stayed in the country for three consecutive weeks, has been in a month-long 'lockdown' and has even spent most of his time at State House in Nairobi.

Since June 18, when Kenya began to witness unrest, President Ruto has only made few local travels aimed at assessing government projects. The other times he has left State House is on Sundays, when attending prayer services in selected churches. 

However, Ruto’s handlers have equally exercised caution in his local tours. Lately, Ruto’s communication team does not share details of his local tours nor the Sunday church service he will attend. 

The constant trips made by Ruto were also part of the grievances floated by the protesting youths who lamented the mass wastage of public resources during the travels.

Ruto last jetted out of the nation on June 13 to Southern Italy for the G7 Summit.

He was one of the five African leaders invited to the Summit and he highlighted Africa’s potential for green industrialisation, digital revolution and innovation and cited the huge renewable energy reserves in the continent.

During his Italy trip, he also visited Switzerland on June 15 for a high-level meeting to forge peace in Ukraine.

Before that, he had travelled to South Korea on June 4 for the South Korea-Africa summit taking place in Seoul.

This trip was regarded as the eating of a diplomatic humble pie, having gone against his own words since he had vowed not to attend such summits.

Nine months after he was sworn into office, President Ruto took what sounded like a radical departure in global diplomacy, and declared that he will take a different approach when it comes to engagements between African leaders and certain developed nations.

“We have decided, that it is not going to be business as usual. We have these meetings, US-Africa, Europe-Africa, Africa-Turkey and now there is another one, Russia-Africa. We have made the decision, it is not intelligent for 54 of us, to go and sit before one gentleman from another place... and sometimes we are mistreated, we are loaded into buses like school kids, and it is not right,” Ruto said during the Mo Ibrahim Governance Weekend at KICC in April 2023.

He had previously made a maiden state visit to the United States on May 20, a trip said to have potentially surpassed the Ksh.200 million mark.

Ruto's return to Kenya was met with heaping public rage, forcing him to delve into a scattered defence of his travel expenses asserting that he is a frugal leader and cannot afford to expend the public purse.

Ruto confidently stated that he only spent Ksh.10 million to charter the luxurious jet, a price he says was even a bargain from his initial offer of Ksh.20 million to his Arabian "friends".

"I am a very responsible steward believe you me. There is no way I can spend Ksh.200 million in fact it cost the republic of Kenya less than Ksh.10 million because I am not a madman," noted Ruto.

Ruto is not the only one forced to abandon the major runways as his now-fired Cabinet Secretaries also halted their trips to other nations.

While responding to the call for austerity measures by vexed Kenyans, President Ruto asserted that he will cut public expenditure and even reduce budgets for some state offices.