Wheelbarrow: Will campaign symbol make it to Ruto’s presidential standard?
One of the highlights of the inauguration on Tuesday will be the lowering of President Uhuru Kenyatta’s blue presidential standard to hosting that of President-Elect William Ruto. So far, NTV has learned that Ruto has settled on the colours yellow and green for his standard with a final design expected on Thursday evening.
The green appears to be inspired by not only his political party’s colors but his association with Kenya’s second President Daniel Arap Moi who mentored him in politics. When Uhuru was selecting his presidential standard, he drew his inspiration from the founding President Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, also his father, who had a dark blue standard.
Most people have expected that Ruto’s yellow UDA color would dominate the standard, the color will feature on the two spears like other presidents have had. What remains is the symbol that the president-elect will have on the flag with others having chosen something that identified with their parties.
At Independence, Jomo had the Kenyan flag with the court of arms on a black background as his presidential standard. In 1970, the standard was changed to a solid blue flag with two yellow spears and a shield. It also included a yellow cockerel which has been the symbol of the former ruling party – KANU.
When Moi took over in 1978, he maintained a similar design but on a solid green colour and made the shield bigger while the cockerel was turned from yellow to red.
For Kibaki, he chose a white flag but maintained the shield and the spears like his predecessors. The other element that Kibaki’s standard had was two olive branches around the shield – to symbolize peace and prosperity.
Other than picking the blue color used by his father, Uhuru altered the spears slightly and instead of a cockerel, his standard has a white dove. The dove was the key symbol for his then The National Alliance Party (TNA).