Kenya’s embattled Deputy President, Rigathi Gachagua, calls himself the “truthful man”, attributing his remarkable rise to the fact that he speaks truth to power.
But as he faces impeachment proceedings, he says these troubles are also a result of his outspoken nature.
Before he was elected MP in 2017, little was known about the man who would, in five short years, rise to become Kenya’s second-in-command.
Not many people outside Gachagua’s central Kenya constituency had heard of him or his style of politics.
Gachagua captured the limelight in the run-up to the 2022 elections, when he vehemently opposed President Uhuru Kenyatta’s choice of preferred successor.
Kenyatta was campaigning heavily for former Prime Minister Raila Odinga.
But Gachagua allied himself with William Ruto, Kenyatta’s then deputy, who was angling for the presidency that his boss did not want to bequeath to him. (BBC News)