Law professor and academician Prof Makau Mutua has rejected a reported job offer from Deputy President William Ruto.
On his weekly column in the Sunday Nation, Prof Mutua claimed he ‘recently’ received an offer to work in Ruto’s campaign team from one of the DP’s emissaries.
“Several weeks ago, I was bamboozled when a top commander in Deputy President William Ruto’s campaign locomotive begged me to work with them to get the man from Sugoi to State House in 2022,” penned Prof Mutua.
The chair of the Kenya Human Rights Commission went on to categorically rebuff the offer. “Today, I give the answer. Mr Ruto and his campaign should read my lips – or rather the words from the tip of my pen. The answer is nyet(No). I can’t – and won’t – work with Mr Ruto. Never. Ever. Case closed,” he wrote in the op-ed article titled, “Somebody thinks I can work for Ruto (excuse me while I laugh)”.
Adding: “Mr Ruto and his brigand can take this to the nearest bank – no bona fide civil society organisation, or any of their self-respecting members, will touch Mr Ruto with a 10-foot pole. None. Whenever I hear the mention of Mr Ruto, or sense his proximity, I head in the opposite direction. It’s been so since his emergence in Youth for Kanu ’92.”
Explaining his decision, Prof Mutua cited Ruto’s brand of politics and “anti-democratic legacy” which go against his(Mutua) own ethos. Other reasons include corruption links to the DP and allegations of crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court (ICC).
“Given Ruto’s anti-democratic legacy and the allegations of corruption, it stretches credulity that any legitimate civil society organisation – let alone the Kenya Human Rights Commission (KHRC), which I co-founded three decades ago, with rights champion Maina Kiai, former Chief Justice Willy Mutunga, Governor Kiraitu Murungi, and journalist Peter Kareithi – would ever have anything to do with Mr Ruto,” he declared.
“It is an open secret Mr Ruto and his brain-trust have targeted civil society groups like the KHRC to penetrate, convert, and instrumentalise them into witting, or unwitting, allies. It is in this context that they’ve approached me and others. This can only happen over my dead body. Mr Ruto can forget civil society.”
