"He climbed down to oppose me": Ruto opens up on failed attempts to court Uhuru
This story has significance for readers across Kenya and beyond.
The newspapers on Sunday, August 23, covered an array of topics, with one of the dailies publishing an explosive interview with President William Ruto, who detailed his fallout with his predecessor, Uhuru Kenyatta.
1. Sunday Nation
The newspaper spared two pages for an interview with President William Ruto, who opened up about his repeated and ultimately unsuccessful attempts to bring former president Uhuru Kenyatta into a post-transition partnership, saying his predecessor declined every overture and instead threw his weight behind opposition forces.
Speaking in a rare exclusive interview with the Sunday Nation at State House, Nairobi, on Friday, August 21, Ruto described travelling to Uhuru's rural home in Ichaweri and receiving him at State House for private discussions, including talks involving the Democratic Republic of Congo peace process.
On each occasion, he says, he pushed the same message.
"I went to see him in Ichaweri and also at his office next door here and sought to persuade him that as a former head of state, the only one living now, please help us forge a new vision for the country, but he was reluctant. He wasn't sure he wanted to do that," Ruto said.
Ruto was careful to frame his request as a call to national duty rather than a political proposition.
He said what he sought was not an electoral alliance ahead of 2027 but a role for Uhuru as an elder statesman who could lend his experience to shaping Kenya's long-term direction.
What he got, in his telling, was the opposite.
"My predecessor had an option to become a statesman and rise above politics and become a unifying factor in our country. But he chose to climb down and become an opposition leader. He's the chairperson of Azimio up to now. He's busy organising the opposition against me," Ruto said.
Uhuru chairs the Azimio la Umoja One Kenya Coalition Council and continues to lead the Jubilee party.
Since the death of former prime minister Raila Odinga, he has positioned Wiper Patriotic Front leader Kalonzo Musyoka as coalition leader and is backing former Interior Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang'i as a presidential challenger for the 2027 general election.
The interview also surfaced a striking claim about what Ruto says Uhuru privately predicted. According to Ruto, his predecessor told Azimio allies that the new administration would buckle under economic pressure within three months of taking office.
"If you ask the Azimio people, they will tell you the former president, my predecessor, told them that it would only take three months and the economy would come down William Ruto was going to fail, within three months," Ruto said.
Ruto noted that Kenya did not default on its debt obligations and framed the administration's economic survival as a direct rebuke to those expectations.
On public debt, Ruto acknowledged that the figure has climbed towards KSh 13 trillion under his watch but argued that the rate of growth was slower than under his predecessor.
He claimed that had debt expanded at Uhuru's pace, Kenya would now be carrying a KSh 25 trillion burden.
The two men, who campaigned together under the Jubilee banner in 2013 and 2017, fell out during Uhuru's second term after the March 2018 handshake between Uhuru and Odinga left Ruto politically isolated.
Uhuru subsequently backed Odinga over his own deputy in the 2022 presidential race, a contest Ruto won.
Source: TUKO.co.ke
Reporting originally appeared via TUKO. Read the full source for additional context.