KAKAMEGA — President William Ruto has launched his most scathing and personal attack yet against former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua, escalating a highly toxic political feud that has descended into open insults.
Speaking during a fiery public address in Western Kenya, Ruto directly mocked Gachagua’s credentials, calling him a “one-term MP” who failed to sponsor a single bill or motion during his time in the National Assembly. The gloves-off remarks follow a barrage of corruption and budget manipulation accusations traded between the two estranged leaders over the past 48 hours.
The political vitriol reached a boiling point after Gachagua, now leading the opposition Democracy for the Citizens (DCP) party, publicly accused Ruto of plotting to siphoning Sh6.2 billion in cash through state-backed “confidential expenditures” before the financial year closes.
Ruto used his tour to hit back aggressively, dismissing his former deputy and the broader united opposition as a clueless, planless syndicate whose sole ideological motivation is his removal from office.
Deviating sharply from traditional presidential restraint, Ruto accused Gachagua of advancing dangerous, retrogressive tribal politics designed to fragment the nation along ethnic lines. The president defended Gachagua’s historic 2024 impeachment, asserting that his ouster from the second-highest office in the land was entirely driven by incompetence, a profound lack of governance know-how, and systemic corruption.
“A one-term MP is running around trying to lecture me on governance,” Ruto told an animated crowd. “We gave them important national responsibilities, but because of sheer incompetence and an obsession with division, they failed completely. Kenya has absolutely no space for leaders who want to slice the country up into tribal shares.”
The reference to “shares” strikes directly at the core of the political fracture. Gachagua has consistently defended his controversial philosophy that state resources and development should be distributed like a corporate dividend, heavily favoring regions that voted overwhelmingly for the ruling Kenya Kwanza alliance.
Ruto explicitly rebuked this formula, stating that any political framework seeking to exclude or disenfranchise any community based on voting patterns is repugnant to the constitution.
The public confrontation marks the total breakdown of what was once the country’s most powerful political partnership. The verbal warfare has grown steadily more explicit over recent months, with Ruto previously accusing Gachagua of manipulating his late brother’s will to disenfranchise widows and orphans, while Gachagua counters by calling the president an insatiable, power-hungry autocrat who “trains” Members of Parliament to accept bribes.
The escalation has raised serious alarm bells among political oversight bodies, with analysts warning that the breakdown of decorum at the highest levels of government threatens to hyper-polarize the electorate ahead of the upcoming general election cycle.
The mathematical reality of the ongoing executive civil war highlights the rapid structural collapse of the ruling coalition:
- Senate Ouster Vote: 54 out of 67 senators voted to uphold Gachagua’s initial impeachment charges.
- Contested Billions: Sh6.2 billion in alleged confidential cash usage flagged by Gachagua.
- Remaining Countdown: 12 financial days left in the current fiscal cycle fueling the expenditure row.
- Legislative Record: 0 bills or substantive motions sponsored by Gachagua during his single parliamentary term, according to state tracking.
With Gachagua aggressively mobilizing his newly established DCP machinery across the critical Mt. Kenya voting bloc, the political landscape has shifted into an all-out turf war. Ruto’s fiery declaration makes it clear that the presidency will deploy its full political and rhetorical weight to isolate the former deputy before his alternative opposition movement can solidify its ground.
