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William Ruto: From chicken hawker to Kenya’s president-elect

AFP

President-elect William Ruto is one of Kenya’s wealthiest men but has long portrayed himself as “hustler-in-chief” — the champion of the poor and downtrodden.

Defying corruption allegations going back years, the ambitious 55-year-old clawed his way to the centre of power by playing on his religious faith and humble beginnings selling chickens by the roadside.

His duel against former prime minister Raila Odinga in the August 9 elections was something that he painted in simple terms.

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It was, he said, a battle between ordinary “hustlers” struggling to put food on the table and the elite Kenyatta and Odinga “dynasties” that had dominated Kenyan politics for decades.

“We want everyone to feel the wealth of this country. Not just a few at the top,” Ruto had said as he criss-crossed the country promoting his “bottom-up” economic plan.

The shadowy rags-to-riches businessman had effectively run as a challenger after a very public and acrimonious falling out with outgoing president Uhuru Kenyatta, who backed Odinga for the top job.

Despite a race dominated by mudslinging, Ruto on Monday struck a conciliatory tone after his win, vowing to work with “all leaders” after the outcome split the election commission and sparked fears of violence.

“There is no room for vengeance,” Ruto said, adding: “I am acutely aware that our country is at a stage where we need all hands on deck.”

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– ‘Effective strategist’ –

Ruto had served as deputy president under Kenyatta since 2013, supporting him in two elections with a promise that he would have the backing of his boss in this year’s vote.

It was a political marriage of convenience forged in the aftermath of deadly post-poll violence in 2007-2008 that largely pitted the Kikuyu — Kenyatta’s tribe — against the Kalenjin, Ruto’s ethnic group.

Both men were hauled before the International Criminal Court (ICC), accused of stoking the ethnic unrest.

The cases were eventually dropped, with the prosecution complaining of a relentless campaign of witness intimidation.

But Ruto was left out in the cold after Kenyatta shook hands with longtime foe Odinga in a dramatic switch of political allegiance in 2018.

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He bounced back with a campaign that was directed as much at Kenyatta as his rival at the ballot box, blaming the government for Kenya’s economic woes and even accusing the president of threatening him and his family.

“Ruto is seen by many people to be one of the most effective strategists in Kenyan politics,”  Nic Cheeseman, a political scientist at the University of Birmingham in Britain, said before the poll.

– ‘Perfect storm’ –

Clad in the bright yellow of his United Democratic Alliance, whose symbol is the humble wheelbarrow, Ruto sought to reach out to those suffering most from the Covid-induced cost of living crisis that has been aggravated by the war in Ukraine.

Ruto “picked the perfect storm,” Kenyan political analyst Nerima Wako-Ojiwa said before the election.

Observers attribute Ruto’s aggressiveness to the fact he has had to struggle to get everything he has achieved in life from his lowly start in Kenya’s Rift Valley, the Kalenjin heartland.

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“I sold chicken at a railway crossing near my home as a child… I paid (school) fees for my siblings,” he once said. 

“God has been kind to me and through hard work and determination, I have something.”

His fortune is now said to run into many millions of dollars, with interests spanning hotels, real estate and insurance as well as a vast chicken farm. 

A teetotal father of six who describes himself as a born-again Christian, Ruto seldom lets a speech go by without thanking or praising God or reciting from the Bible.

He first got a foot on the political ladder — and detractors claim, access to funds — in 1992. After completing studies in botany, he headed the YK’92 youth movement tasked with drumming up support for the autocratic then-president Daniel arap Moi, also a Kalenjin.

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In 1997, when he tried to launch his parliamentary career by contesting a seat on his home turf of Eldoret North, Moi told him he was a disrespectful son of a pauper.

Undeterred, Ruto went on to clinch the seat, which he retained in subsequent elections.

His detractors say he siphoned money from the YK’92 project and used it to go into business, and allegations of corruption and land grabs still hang over him.

But he has long dismissed such claims, once telling local media: “I can account for every coin that I have.”

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International

Venezuelan opponent María Corina Machado ratifies that she will continue on the electoral route

Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado ratified on Tuesday that she will remain on the electoral route for the presidential elections of July 28, without explaining how she will do so, given the impossibility of the Platform of Democratic Unity (PUD) to register the historian Corina Yoris within the deadline established by the National Electoral Council (CNE).

“No one here takes us off the electoral route, it is they (Chavism) who want to close it, those who want to take us out and they are not going to make it,” said Machado, who ceded the candidacy to Yoris in the face of the disqualification that prevents him from competing for public positions in these and other elections until 2036.

The PUD denounced on Monday that it could not apply for Yoris’ candidacy, and rejected that the CNE did not explain the reasons.

On the candidacy of the governor of the state Zulia, Manuel Rosales, Machado avoided responding at the press conference and insisted on various occasions that his candidate and that of the PUD is still Corina Yoris, despite the fact that he could not register in the CNE system.

“At this moment, the country is processing a huge disappointment, people feel violated in all the effort (of the primaries) of October 22 and what I want to say is that our struggle continues, we are not going to leave an electoral route where Venezuelans can choose freely, for whoever they want, not for whoever the regime imposes,” he said.

The former deputy said that what happened on the last day of candidate registration, in which Rosales and former opposition electoral rector Enrique Márquez were nominated, “accelerates the transition” in the country.

The opposition party Un Nuevo Tiempo (UNT), led by Rosales, said on Tuesday that it is committed to the electoral route, “still in the worst conditions,” and rejected the option of abstention.

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International

Putin asks the Prosecutor’s Office that the jihadist terrorists of the Moscow attack receive a “fair punishment”

Russian President Vladimir Putin today asked the Prosecutor’s Office to impose a “fair punishment” on the terrorists who perpetrated on Friday the attack on the Crocus City Hall concert hall on the outskirts of Moscow, in which 139 people were killed.

“I am confident that prosecutors within the framework of their powers, including when presenting state accusations during the judicial process, will do everything necessary for criminals to receive a fair punishment as required by Russian legislation,” Putin said when addressing members of the Russian Prosecutor’s Office.

Putin reminded those present that, “as a result of the bloody attack in the Moscow region,” “children, adolescents and women” died, among others.

“The criminals who committed that massacre have been arrested. Investigators are scrupulously establishing the circumstances surrounding this barbaric crime,” he stressed.

For his part, the Attorney General, Igor Krasnov, admitted that the attack committed in the Crocus City Hall “is a new challenge for the entire system of security services” and called on the prosecutors present to take “all measures to prevent the repetition of the tragedy.”

In addition, he also urged to activate the work to minimize the extremist and terrorist threat, and recalled the recent explosions of violence in the Muslim-majority republics of Dagestan and Bashkiria.

Putin suggested on Monday the existence of a black Ukrainian hand in the attack, despite the fact that the attack was immediately claimed by the Islamic State.

“And the Nazis, as is well known, have never had reservations about using the dirtiest and most inhumane means to achieve their objectives,” he said during a meeting with members of the Government and the security forces that was broadcast live on television.

Putin refused to accept the hypothesis presented by Western intelligence services that the attack is the work of the Islamic State of the Province of the Province of Khorasan (ISPK).

“We know through whom that crime was committed against Russia and its people. We are interested in who commissioned it,” he said.

The Basmanni Court of Moscow today decreed two-month preventive detention for an eighth suspect involved in the terrorist attack.

This is Alisher Kasimov, 32, a Russian citizen of Kyrgysy origin who, according to the investigation, rented his apartment to the alleged perpetrators of the massacre.

According to the latest official data, the attack in the city of Krasnogorsk, about 20 kilometers northwest of the center of Moscow, has left at least 139 dead and 182 injured.

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International

Petro threatens to break relations with Israel if it does not comply with the UN resolution

The president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, threatened on Tuesday to break diplomatic relations with Israel if that country does not comply with the resolution to cease-fire in Gaza requested on Monday by the UN Security Council.

“If Israel does not comply with the United Nations resolution of a ceasefire, we will break diplomatic relations with Israel,” the president, a defender of the cause of Palestine, said in his account of X.

This message comes a day after the president called on the international community to break off relations with Israel if the truce that, for the first time, demanded by the UN Security Council for the Gaza war, in which more than 32,000 people have already died in almost six months, is not established.

“A ceasefire resolution in Gaza is finally coming out of the United Nations Council unanimously (sic)” – despite the abstention of the United States in the vote on the resolution -, Petro said on Monday.

It is not the first time that the president has spoken of freezing Colombia’s relations with Israel since the outst of the war, about which the head of state regularly opines publicly. Already in October of last year he threatened to suspend them although for the moment these warnings have not materialized.

These threats have raised the tension between the two countries, which have even summoned their diplomatic representatives and led several disagreements over the position of President Petro who has accused the Israeli State of “genocide.”

In fact, last February Petro announced that Colombia suspended “all purchases of weapons from Israel” in response to the attack it launched during the distribution of food and humanitarian aid in Gaza City, where more than a hundred people died and another 700 were injured.

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