By Victor Mboya
Kenya is scheduled to have a general election in August 2022, and one of the main front-runners appears to have made the front page of a British magazine.
An image of the cover of The Economist has been circulating on Twitter, with the face of William Ruto, Kenya’s Deputy President.
Ruto is running for the presidency leading the United Democratic Alliance party and the Kenya Kwanza coalition. The other main frontrunner, Raila Odinga is leading the Azimio la Umoja coalition which also includes his Orange Democratic Movement party.
The headline on the magazine cover reads “The man who screwed an entire country” while the post accompanying the image reads: “This guy is responsible for every tough situation happening right now. Maliza Uende #RutoMalizaUende”.
The cover also promises “A 14-PAGE SPECIAL REPORT ON WILLIAM RUTO KENYA”. We checked to see if the cover was genuine.
The dates written on the magazine cover are 11 to 17 June 2011. We checked the magazine’s archive for the issue that was published around those dates. The archive shows that the headline on the cover was the title of a leader, or editorial piece, published for the 11 June 2011 issue, about the former Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, with the exact title as the cover shared on Twitter.
A reverse image search also reveals the original cover image to be that of Silvio Berlusconi. The publication’s Facebook page shows that Berlusconi’s photo was used on the cover of the UK-Europe edition, while a an Italian blog points out that the photo of Barack Obama was used in the US and Asian edition.
The cover showing Ruto is fake. Similar fake covers have also been created using President Uhuru Kenyatta’s image.
