Kenya’s President-elect William Ruto has told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour that President Uhuru Kenyatta is yet to congratulate him.
“Unfortunately, President Kenyatta has not seen it fit to congratulate me,” he said. “Maybe he’s a bit disillusioned or maybe he’s unhappy that I defeated his candidate, but that is the nature of politics.”
Speaking on Amanpour’s show in an exclusive interview Wednesday, Ruto said he had already reached out to his election rival Raila Odinga, and said he would build alliances that will help to bring the country together.
“The administration that I’m going to run is going to be an administration that is going to serve all Kenyans equally, whether they voted for us or they did not,” said Ruto, whose victory was confirmed by a Supreme Court ruling on Monday.
Ruto, 55, won with 50.49% of the vote against Odinga’s 48.85% in last month’s election, which passed off calmly despite Kenya’s recent history of political violence, including the killing of nearly 1,500 people in the aftermath of the December 2007 election.
Asked about the peaceful proceedings, Ruto said that the situation has been improving since 2007, and the next election will be even better.
“I think it speaks to the heart of the maturity of the democracy of our country,” he said. “No citizen, no leader wants their country to be famous for violence.”
“We can go to an election, we can decide who our leaders are and the next day we can go back to work,” he added. “That is the standard we have raised for ourselves as the people of Kenya, I am very proud of it.”
Among those who have contacted Ruto are a number of world leaders, and he says he told them not to expect “a big shift” in Kenya’s foreign policy.
“I intend to scale up the participation of Kenya in many of the areas, especially in our regional peace initiatives,” said Ruto.
“I will be available, I will play my part, I will scale up Kenya’s standing and contribution in that space so that together we can contribute to a better, a much more peaceful neighborhood.”
Among those challenges is Somalia, with has longstanding security issues and now a looming famine.
“Somalia is a difficult nut to crack,” said Ruto, who said he has worked with the country’s newly-elected President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud in the past.
“We are looking forward to working with him and with the international community so that we can square out the challenges in Somalia, make it possible for Somalia to take care of its own security concerns,” said Ruto.
Amanpour also pressed Ruto on his controversial promise to deport Chinese people from Kenya, but the President-elect argued that he had been taken out of context.
He was referring to Chinese people who work without a permit, said Ruto.
“Everybody will do business, everybody will do whatever they want to do so long as they are doing it within the law,” he said.
“Anybody that operates outside the law, it doesn’t matter where they come from, they will be sent back from where they came from.”
