DP Ruto: We owe Kibaki a peaceful election that does not require handshake

Deputy President William Ruto has now urged Kenyans, led by the political class, to maintain peace going into the August General Elections as a means of honouring the late former President Mwai Kibaki.

DP Ruto, who spoke at Kibaki’s funeral service in Othaya on Saturday, said the country owes the late Head of State an election that brings forth outcomes favourable to all parties involved.

This, he said, would serve to eliminate the need for a truce to be brokered between political rivals in the name of a “handshake” as has been witnessed in past elections in order to quell tension.

“I think a befitting send off to all of us, as we celebrate the third president, is for us to go into this election and make sure that election will be peaceful and that it won’t be necessary for us to have a handshake; I think we owe it to President Mwai Kibaki,” he said.

The DP termed Kibaki’s rise from humble beginnings in a small village in Othaya, Nyeri County, to the topmost office in the land as the most basic definition of “bottom-up”, a brand of politics that he has in recent times become associated with.

He commended the late Kibaki for developing the blueprint for the country’s infrastructure growth, which he said was then adopted and developed by the current President Uhuru Kenyatta.

“Mwai Kibaki, kutoka Thongori hapa Othaya, katika kijiji ambacho ni kama ile Bethlehemu ya Yesu ambayo haikuwa inajulikana sana, lakini he accomplished many things; from here he became a great scholar, economist, leader and a great President and father of the nation. If there is a demonstration of bottom-up, we can learn from Mwai Kibaki,” said the DP.

“We must be inspired by President Mwai Kibaki. We must keep the doors of opportunity for many more children in this village, and in other villages of Kenya, inspired by Mwai Kibaki that they too can be great in their nation if they work hard and if they pray.”

He added: “I agree that Mwai Kibaki is the father of modern-day Kenya. Mwai Kibaki planted the seeds of what has become the greatest transformation of our infrastructure; under him and under our fourth President Uhuru Kenyatta. He laid the foundation.”

However, according to Ruto, even as President Kibaki laid more focus on the mega-projects of his administration, he never really forgot the little man.

Ruto credited the late president with lifting up the boda boda industry, which he added now employs upto over one million Kenyans across the country.

He further thanked Kibaki for his fatherly words of wisdom when he and President Kenyatta faced the ghosts of the International Criminal Court (ICC) early on in their first term.

“Mwai Kibaki alikuwa Baba wa taifa, na alikuwa baba ya watu wengi mbali na familia yake. And in a very special way I want to thank the family of Mwai Kibaki for agreeing to share your father with the rest of us who came to know him,” he said.

“And even as he thought about big infrastructure projects, Mwai Kibaki did not forget the ordinary people. And that is why under Mwai Kibaki, he made sure that motorbikes were zero-rated, and that is when boda boda came into being, and today it is a sector that hires close to 1.4 million Kenyans. He was great, but he was also simple.”