The Retired President Who Won’t Retire: Uhuru’s 2032 Gambit and the Addis Ababa Photo-Op

By Patrick Iraki

The picture from Addis Ababa tells you everything and nothing. It is the most DISHONEST photograph in Kenyan political history since the Handshake. And I will tell you why.

Last week, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed stood between two Kenyan men and smiled for the camera. On his left, the sitting President. On his right, the retired one. The photograph was circulated by Uhuru’s people. Ruto’s side did NOT post it. That single asymmetry is the entire story.

Let me decode it.

When a retired president insists on being photographed with a sitting one at an international summit, he is not seeking reconciliation. He is SIGNALLING RELEVANCE. He is telling the continent: I am still here. I still matter. The AU corridors still know my name. This was not a peace overture. It was a power advertisement.

And Abiy Ahmed? He was not mediating. He was being USED as a prop in a Kenyan domestic chess game. Uhuru needed the optics of a foreign head of state treating him as an equal to Ruto. The mediation framing was a convenient wrapper. Inside that closed-door meeting, by all credible accounts, the two men quarrelled. Ruto confronted Uhuru with evidence of political sabotage. Uhuru denied everything, then complained about disrespect. This is the theatre of a man who wants all the privileges of power with none of its accountability.

But here is what everyone is MISSING. Uhuru is not focused on 2027. He is laying in wait for 2032. Read that again. Let it settle. Because once you understand this, everything else falls into place like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

Consider: why would a man of Uhuru Kenyatta’s immense wealth, his continental connections, his dynastic pedigree, waste his powder on Fred Matiang’i? With all respect to the former Interior CS, Matiang’i is not presidential timber. He is a competent administrator perhaps the best Kenya has produced but he has no ethnic base, no party machinery of consequence, and no grassroots mobilisation capacity. Uhuru knows this. He built the system. He knows what it takes.

So why endorse him?

Because Matiang’i is not meant to WIN. He is meant to PARTICIPATE. His candidacy is a PLACEHOLDER a seat at the negotiating table that keeps Jubilee relevant, that keeps Uhuru’s hand on the tiller, and most importantly, that DIVIDES the opposition so thoroughly that no single candidate can mount a credible challenge to Ruto in 2027. The more candidates crowding the opposition lane Kalonzo, Gachagua, Matiang’i, Wamalwa, Karua, Omtatah  the wider Ruto’s margin. Uhuru is not stupid. He can count.

This is the fundamental dishonesty of Uhuru Kenyatta’s post-retirement politics. He demands the respect of a statesman while conducting himself as a faction leader. He claims to be above the fray while stoking fires in every political party that threatens his influence. He presents himself as a peacemaker in the DRC while waging undeclared war on the political arrangements at home.

Let me be blunt. What does Uhuru Kenyatta actually DO in retirement? He flies to Lomé. He flies to Kampala. He flies to Addis Ababa. He sits on panels. He takes photographs. He issues cryptic statements through Kanze Dena. He endorses Matiang’i in Murang’a. He whispers to Kalonzo in Nairobi. But he has no mandate. His term expired in September 2022. And yet he behaves as though the presidency is a LEASE that he temporarily sublet and now wants back.

The Kenyatta dynasty does not think in five-year terms. It thinks in GENERATIONAL terms. Jomo planned for Uhuru from the 1970s. The groundwork took two decades. Do you think Uhuru is any less patient?

But long games have a weakness. They require all the pieces to remain on the board. And Kenyan politics has a habit of sweeping pieces off without warning. Raila’s death swept the biggest piece off the board. The Gen Z revolt rewrote the rules of engagement. The twelve million new voters registering before 2027 do not care about the Kenyatta dynasty, the Moi dynasty, or any dynasty. They care about the price of unga and the availability of jobs.

The Addis Ababa photograph captured this contradiction perfectly. Abiy Ahmed’s smile was diplomatic. Ruto’s posture was guarded. And Uhuru? His was the expression of a man who believes he knows something the rest of us do not.

The expression of a man playing a much, much longer game.