PREVIEW
Installing a hard-line police spokesman as chief communicator suggests Ruto is choosing loyalty over reconciliation ahead of next year’s elections
President William Ruto may have abandoned any plans to win over a sceptical public. His combative new spokesman, formerly with the National Police Service, Charles Owino sought a career in elected politics, joining Raila Odinga’s Orange Democratic Movement in 2021 as part of an unsuccessful campaign to obtain nomination for the governorship of Siaya. Instead, veteran Odinga ally James Orengo won the seat; Owino returned to his post with the NPS.
He replaces Isaac Mwaura and will lead the Office of Diversity, Inclusion and Disability Rights at the Executive Office of the President.
Though Owino has been moved from communications chief at the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Digital Economy, he obtained notoriety among critics for repeatedly defending police brutality over more than a decade as a police spokesman(AC Vol 53 No 19, Kilelengwani burns) .
Those claims have become harder to justify since the Generation Z protests in June 2024, after which dozens of activists were abducted and/or killed at the hands of the police.
Last year, Owino staunchly defended the killing of an unarmed hawker, Boniface Kariuki, shot at close range by a policeman. Weeks earlier he had denied that the police had been responsible for the death of schoolteacher and blogger Albert Ojwang in police custody (AC Vol 66 No 13, As protests mount, state repression goes regional).
When video footage of the police abusing Ojwang emerged days later, Ruto gave a public statement that he had died at the hands of the police. Six officers are currently on trial for Ojwang’s murder (Dispatches, 16/6/25, As protests grow, President Ruto admits police killed dissident blogger).
Owino’s willingness to ‘defend the indefensible’ points to a ‘batten down the hatches’ approach to political violence by the government ahead of next August’s general elections. Activists and politicians are sounding warnings about a repeat of the 2007-2008 electoral crisis.
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