Kalonzo calls Ruto to order over Uhuru attacks

The Wiper leader’s public rebuke of the President signals that the opposition’s ranks are hardening — and that the rules of political decorum still matter to someone in Nairobi.

By Anne Mwikali

Wiper Patriotic Front leader Kalonzo Musyoka has publicly rebuked President William Ruto over his sustained attacks on former President Uhuru Kenyatta, demanding that the head of state respect the constitutional tradition of honouring retired presidents.

Kalonzo’s intervention, delivered at the Mashuuru Grounds revival prayer festival in Kajiado County on Friday, came on the same day that Kenyatta was playfully embracing the “sponyo” — sponsor — label that Ruto has spent weeks wielding as a political weapon. The timing made it doubly pointed. While Kenyatta chose wit, Kalonzo chose the harder edge of direct rebuke. Together, the two responses framed a coordinated, if stylistically distinct, opposition pushback against a president who has made his predecessor the centrepiece of his pre-election political offensive.

Ruto’s attacks have been relentless. During his five-day tour of Nyanza this week, he labelled Kenyatta a “rebel leader” for refusing to act as a statesman, accused him of sponsoring opposition figures including Nairobi Senator Edwin Sifuna, and urged the former president to step back from active political mobilisation. The language has grown harsher with each rally, and critics have begun describing it as the behaviour of a leader more preoccupied with a predecessor than with the voters he needs to win over.

Kalonzo did not mince words. “President Ruto, I call you to order,” he said, invoking the language of parliamentary procedure in a political context — a deliberate signal that this was not casual commentary but a formal challenge to the President’s conduct. He cited the peaceful transitions from Jomo Kenyatta to Daniel arap Moi, and later from Moi to Mwai Kibaki, as the model Ruto was failing to observe. He recalled that Kibaki had refused to allow ministers to strip Moi of the house he occupied near Kibera after leaving office, directing instead that Moi be given the title deed. “That is what Kibaki did,” Kalonzo said, “showing respect to his predecessor.”

The rebuke carries political weight beyond the personal. Kenyamba constituency MP Muchangi Mbae had already told Ruto bluntly on Thursday that his opponent in 2027 was not Uhuru Kenyatta. “The President of the Republic of Kenya, the Honourable William Samoei Ruto, please — your opponent is not Uhuru Kenyatta,” Mbae said in a local radio interview, arguing that the sustained targeting of a retired head of state revealed uncertainty about who would ultimately emerge as the opposition’s standard-bearer. Critics have further characterised Ruto’s tone during his Nyanza tour as those of a leader unsettled by the pace of opposition consolidation.

Kalonzo, who now leads the Azimio la Umoja One Kenya Coalition following the death of Raila Odinga, has pledged to work with other opposition leaders — including Gachagua, Martha Karua and Eugene Wamalwa — to produce a single candidate for the August 2027 general election. In that context, his defence of Kenyatta is not merely about dignity. It is about drawing a boundary: that the opposition will not be intimidated into silence, and that whoever leads Kenya’s government owes its former presidents a minimum standard of courtesy.

Ruto appears to have miscalculated. By turning Kenyatta into the defining villain of his re-election narrative, he has handed the opposition a unifying cause — and given Kalonzo, a man who has run for president three times without winning, the most dignified stage he has occupied in years.

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