Four Americans who died with William Ruto’s pilot, Captain Mario Magonga after their helicopter came down near Lobolo in Central Island National Park in Turkana county were Ruto’s 2022 strategists.
A source at the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) told the news rooms that the two choppers were taking the tourists to the Central Island but one of the helicopters crashed as they attempted to find their way back to Lobolo since they were unable to land because that place is very hilly.
Although Ruto’s office has distanced itself, the four Americans who were in the Turkana chopper crash were veteran political consultants alleged to have been flown to Kenya to begin setting up Deputy President William Ruto’s 2022 presidential campaign.
Sources within the police told the news rooms that the American strategists had begun laying out an elaborate campaign game plan for Ruto.
The Campaign Services Group linked to the four boasts of having run three presidential campaigns, over a dozen US Senate campaigns and congressional campaigns “from California to New Hampshire”.
Part of their services includes writing campaign plans, writing voter contact plans and data management.“We work in partnership with our clients to craft unique, individualised and highly innovative strategies that are creative, aggressive, responsive and effective,” the website states.
Apart from being a political campaign mogul, Burke had interests in entrepreneurship and is said to have been trying to establish a lodge in Kenya that would cater to entrepreneurs.
One of its executives was taped saying that they ran “just about every element” of Uhuru’s campaign in 2013 and 2017.
“We have rebranded the entire party twice, written their manifesto, done two rounds of 50,000 (participant) surveys,” Mark Turnbull, MD of Cambridge Analytica, was covertly filmed as saying by UK broadcaster Channel 4.
“Then we’d write all the speeches and we’d stage the whole thing – so just about every element of his campaign,” Turnbull added.
Ironically, in 2013, a Romanian citizen then working for Cambridge Analytica mysteriously died in a hotel in Nairobi.
Renowned Nairobi-based pollster Tom Wolf said one of the reasons Kenyan political figures prefer foreign consultants is because of confidentiality.
“One advantage is that there is less anxiety about foreigners being ‘disloyal’. When you are hiring one, you get guarantees that all they learn will be kept confidential. That might be hard locally since the homegrown experts have their relatives and friends who they can easily talk to, in contrast with foreigners who are easy to keep in a bubble,” he told the Star.