Deputy President William Ruto has been trying to make inroads into the vote-rich Western Kenya region lately, in line with his 2022 presidential bid, a mission, however, set to fail.
Ruto is very wrong to think that he can eat into the region which has been very passionate towards the opposition in the last several elections and will have to either stop the attempt or get another avenue, which is also likely to fail.
To succeed, Ruto will need to use opposition leader Raila Odinga whom he is known to attack, and will not achieve anything via his new attempt to drag Amani National Congress (ANC) party leader Musalia Mudavadi to his side.
In the real sense, Raila remains the biggest figure in the entire Western Kenya region, and proved it when he beat Mudavadi when they both vied for Presidency in 2013, going ahead to even beat the former Vice President in Luhyaland.
In the 2017 presidential race, Odinga survived the heavy Jubilee offensive to again garner most of the votes in the region.
This is set to worsen on Ruto's side in 2022 and he is set to get even fewer votes as a result of the government's failure to intervene in the sugar woes affecting the region.
This is with the consideration that the region directly depends on the product and is affected by among others the mass importation of contraband sugar in 2017.
Therefore, he won't make any changes basing on how many area politicians and popular figures he manages to pull to his side, or how many seats his side of the political divide he gets in the region.
He will, therefore, need to sweet talk Odinga and stop his allies from attacking him as otherwise, the former Premier might back someone else in retaliation should he not vie in the race.
#hivisasaoriginal