Editor's Review

William Ruto will win the presidency early and easy

William Ruto will win the presidency early and easy. This is the assertion of US-based Kenyan Professor Makau Mutua on a man he has hitherto criticised as being unfit to hold public office.

In his weekly opinion piece 'Where Facts Matter', Sunday 4th July's article which was aptly titled ' William Ruto, the fifth president' Pressor Makau Mutua has labelled the race as almost won.

The SUNY distinguished admitted that his prediction was not made "with the warm cockles of my heart" but simply as an empirical analysis of the current political situation in the country.

Professor Makau Mutua with Raila Odinga/ Photo Courtesy

" Mr Ruto is surging while his opponents -declared or would be- are in a state of lethargy and catatonic schizophrenia. They've become the proverbial watermelon," read part of Professor Mutua's weekly column for the Sunday Nation.

The Professor who keeps a keen eye on Kenyan politics, a testament of which is his Twitter page which is a commentary of the political landscape, issued a caveat to go with his prognosis. 

" A year and some change is an eternity in politics, " Professor Mutua wrote. This is indeed true to Kenyan politics where loyalties shift to where a politician's interests are best served.

Mutua however remains unsupportive of Ruto's run for the top office.

" I have only one vote. That's why Mr Ruto might easily jog to State House if he bamboozled enough of compatriots to vote for him," Mutua wrote.

Professor Makau Mutua's article has been met with surprise by most Kenyans with the New York-based academic having been a staunch supporter of Raila Odinga.

"Prof says few obvious things known even to WANJIKU. But the value of the piece lies in the admission made by Prof. Coming from the pen of a revered legal scholar who is one of ODM's founding members and its chief ideologue this is simply startling!" Wrote Senior Counsel Ahmednasir Abdullahi, who is also an active commentator of the country's politics. 

"Prof Makau Mutua, the consummate law professor, columnist and Raila's dyed in wool fanatic finally abandons Raila and declares Ruto Tosha in his today's Sunday Nation spellbinding opinion article. This is what we mean when we say we have God the father," Senator Millicent Omanga wrote on her Twitter handle.