President William Ruto returned last week from his Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan junkets, and on to the most urgent agenda items. No, it wasn’t to offer leadership on the transport sector strike over high fuel prices; his priority was the premature election campaigns under the guise of launching, inspecting or opening various development projects.

In Mombasa, where the luxury private jet that called the lie to his calls for austerity landed, the president immediately launched into his usual condemnation of the “tribalists” allegedly out to set back the country into ethnic fiefdoms.