What the Deputy Presidency Is Actually Worth in a Coalition

Kenyan coalition negotiations keep arriving at the same currency: the deputy presidency.

It is worth asking what is actually being bought, because the constitutional answer and the political answer are very different.

What the office contains

Principal assistant to the President. The Deputy President deputises when the President is absent or temporarily incapacitated.

Succession. If the office of President becomes vacant, the Deputy President assumes it.

Whatever is delegated. Beyond the constitutional minimum, a Deputy President's role is what the President chooses to give them — committees, portfolios, delegations, visibility.

That last point is the whole thing. The office has a floor and no ceiling, and the difference between the two is entirely at the discretion of one person.

What it does not contain

An independent power base in government. No ministry, no budget, no statutory function of its own.

Security of tenure in practice. A Deputy President can be impeached, and Kenya has recent experience of the relationship between a President and a Deputy President ending badly and publicly.

A guarantee of succession as a candidate. Being deputy does not make you the party's next presidential nominee, as Kenyan political history repeatedly demonstrates.

So why is it the currency?

Three reasons, and only one of them is about power.

Regional inclusion. It is the most visible token that a region is inside the arrangement. A community that holds it is represented at the top; one that does not has an argument that it was used.

Positioning for the cycle after. A deputy president is the most prominent non-president in the country, which is a substantial platform for 2032 even without formal power.

It is indivisible and therefore negotiable. Unlike ministries, which can be distributed to several partners, there is exactly one, which makes it a clean thing to trade.

What a coalition partner should ask for instead

If the analysis above is right, a partner accepting the deputy presidency in exchange for delivering a bloc of votes may be accepting a symbol.

The things that are actually worth more, and are harder to negotiate:

Written down-ballot arrangements. Which seats the partner contests unopposed. These are enforceable in practice because they are visible on a ballot paper.

Specified ministries with budgets, named in the coalition agreement rather than promised.

A structural commitment — a policy or constitutional item the partner exists to deliver.

Kenyan coalition history suggests partners generally take the symbol and discover the rest was not written down.

And for an aspirant watching all this

The negotiation over one office at the top will produce zoning decisions about seats at the bottom. That is the mechanism by which a national bargain reaches your constituency.

Ask now, in writing, whether your seat is part of it.

Related: how coalition agreements work.

What partners should insist is written down

If the analysis above is right, a coalition partner accepting the deputy presidency in exchange for delivering votes is accepting the least enforceable thing on offer.

The enforceable things are specific and unglamorous:

Named constituencies and counties the partner contests unopposed. Visible on a ballot paper, therefore self-enforcing.

Named ministries with named budgets, in the agreement rather than in a conversation.

A specified legislative commitment — a bill, with a timeline.

A dispute mechanism that does not require the goodwill of the party that won.

Kenyan coalition history is a long record of partners accepting the symbol and discovering that the rest was never written down. The agreements are deposited documents; the remedy is to insist that what matters is in them.

The 2027 version of this argument

All of the above is being played out in Kenya right now. A sitting Deputy President has stated publicly that the 2027 ticket is settled; reporting on the governing coalition's negotiations says a partner party has sought the same slot; and a regional council of elders has attached a 2032 claim to its backing.

Every participant is treating one office as the price of a bloc of votes, and the 2027 seat arrangements that reach individual constituencies will be decided in the same negotiation.