Ahmednasir Abdullahi, Makau Mutua clash over Uhuru’s endorsement of Raila

Senior Counsel Ahmednasir Abdullahi has downplayed the effect that President Uhuru Kenyatta’s public endorsement of Raila Odinga will have on Deputy President William Ruto’s prospects of clinching the presidency at the August polls.

This comes after President Kenyatta, during a meeting with Mt. Kenya leaders in Sagana on Wednesday, publicly endorsed Raila’s bid and urged area residents to do the same.

According to Abdullahi, it is public knowledge that President Kenyatta and DP Ruto have not been seeing eye-to-eye in recent years, with the Head of State publicly slamming his deputy on multiple occasions.

As such, he said, the president’s Wednesday utterances are obsolete and will not in any way swing the balance in Odinga’s favour.

The lawyer was speaking on the JKLive show alongside distinguished New York State University Professor Makau Mutua.

“An angry president putting down his deputy means nothing. There is no love lost between the two. We know that Uhuru has had no time for his deputy for the last 4 to 5 years," Abdullahi said.

“He said a lot of things about the DP, some of them fair, some of them not, but you know it is not the first time we have heard him talk. We give certain value and premiums to his speeches but nobody gives much credence on what he says.”

His sentiments were however countered by Mutua, who labeled President Kenyatta’s move as game-changing, citing that the remarks made in Sagana were indispensable since it was allegedly the first time, in Kenya's history, that a sitting president has publicly discredited his deputy.

“What Ahmednasir is not recognizing is what happened today was historic, it is the first time in the history of Kenya that a sitting Head of State has gone out and publicly lambasted his deputy saying that the deputy was not fit for office for a number of reasons,” he explained.

Abdullahi however dismissed Mutua’s remarks stating that the late former president Daniel arap Moi had, at one point in his reign, stated that his then Vice President, the late George Saitoti, was not the best candidate to replace him as president.

He continued on to say that one of the major shortcomings of President Kenyatta is him believing that his words alone can change the future of the country, confidently underscoring that it is the people of Kenya who will elect the country's next president.

“The president is entitled to express his views. Like all Kenyans, he has the right to elect a person of his choice but I think there is a fallacy he believes that he can decide the destiny of this country, he can’t,” the Senior Counsel explained.

“We know when he ran for the presidency in 2013, we know how hard he struggled to become president and it is the people who decided that he will be president. It is the people of Kenya who decided so many times that Raila will not become president.”

Mutua however correspondingly stated that President Kenyatta’s words have a swaying influence on Kenya’s voting community owing to the fact that he has been in charge of the country for the better part of a decade and has worked with DP Ruto on a more personal level.

“The reason why he (Abdullahi) is disparaging Kenyatta is that the President has decided that the DP does not have the goods to lead the country. If Mr. Kenyatta has worked for 10 years and has decided that Ruto is an empty suit for whatever reasons, he is entitled to that but Kenyans ought to take that into account because this is a person who knows the other person well,” he said.