With a handshake, Kenya leaves behind divisive poll

– Opposition instability –

He said the opposition is now facing a period of great instability.

“People complain in the opposition about Raila… they say he doesn’t have any ideas, he doesn’t have the stamina. But the biggest challenge for the opposition is going to come when they replace Raila.”

Cheeseman said that the veteran opposition leader had an ability to appeal to Kenyans across some ethnic lines — in a country where community and politics are inseparable — in a way that no other opposition politician has proven to do.

“The real risk for the opposition is that in the absence of Raila, these leaders go back to their own ethnic groups, they become smaller, they become more parochial, they become harder to build into an effective national alliance,” he said.

A key player in the race for 2022 is vice president William Ruto, an ethnic Kalenjin who allied with Kenyatta — a Kikuyu — in 2013 despite historically tense relations between their communities.

In exchange for his community’s support of Kenyatta, Ruto has been promised the Kikuyu will support him come 2022, a vow easily broken in Kenya’s fickle political landscape.

Cheeseman said that while Kenyatta will be “quite careful not to betray Ruto”, he might not be able to marshall his supporters to back the vice-president, which could see further political gymnastics in the coming years.

“Maybe we’ll actually see Ruto on the opposition side. If the ruling party doesn’t come through with a good deal for him to succeed Kenyatta, he’s actually gonna be the opposition candidate.”