Sifuna's meteoric rise in the middle of opposition wilderness and the work ahead

Nairobi Senator Edwin Sifuna during the unveiling of The Equitable Party (TEP) at Sarova Stanley Hotel in Nairobi on October 4, 2026. [TEP, Standard]

Nairobi Senator, Edwin Sifuna, is easily the best thing to happen to Kenya’s political opposition during the William Ruto regime, thus far. The hard part begins now, however, in the wake of launching himself in the Equity Party.

He has mercurial marbles of alliance formations to juggle, in Kenya’s political arena that is traditionally defined by selfish agendas, treachery and behind the scenes machinations. His party becomes the third entity in the original Linda Mwananchi Movement, itself a statement of absence of ideological unity of purpose in the formation. Two of his comrades-at-arms, Caleb Amisi (Saboti MP), and Babu Owino (Embakasi East), went ahead of him in acquiring parties.

Even then, the camp already had another option in Trans Nzoia Governor’s Democratic Alliance Party (DAP) whose availability to Sifuna was a few weeks ago underscored by party leader, Eugene Wamalwa, who invited Sifuna to pick up the DAP ticket, unconditionally. It is possible that many other parties will spring up, with Linda Mwananchi eventually morphing into the coalition outfit. That should worry the architects and strategists in the formation, for the factions speak to the fragile character of the movement, and the high potential for irreconcilable schisms and even possibilities for decamping and separations.

In spite of this, Sifuna remains the one person Ruto should worry about and also fear politically. He has all the four aces required to send President Ruto home, with extras in the bag. Ruto possibly knows this, as is lent credence by his repeated angry verbal blows against Sifuna.  The senator’s meteoric rise is almost cosmic. He has probably not even understood, himself, how his effort to fight for the ODM party morphed into a search for Kenya’s highest office.

What the opposition will do with this dynamic is up to them. Both Sifuna and his colleagues will do well, however, to recognise that he is a strong jab in the Opposition arm. He has re-energised the opposition in a manner that speaks to the proverbial destiny of fate. Circumstances have placed him on a landscape that was yearning for his kind of political conviction, moral courage, youthful age, celerity of mind, unblemished public record, and gift of the gab. Those are five critical political assets. It is difficult to beat these five aces.

His anti-establishment resistance began even before his former boss and mentor, Raila Odinga, died last year. Sifuna began rising in the middle of an opposition political wilderness, bringing a fresh breath of life, and a new whiff of hope to a fraternity in atrophy. He is especially inspirational to Kenya’s disillusioned populous youth. His 2024 infraction against an emerging Ruto-Raila amity instantly captured the imagination of a youthful population, and a nation, staggering on the brink of a budding dictatorship.

A Gen-Z youth uprising in June 2024 was the first notable resistance against the Ruto slide.  For as soon as he assumed power in September 2022, Ruto embarked on a systematic destruction of the opposition. He began consolidating power at the centre, to beat the country’s multiparty democracy. His  raid  into the Jubilee Party and consolidation, around him, of periphery parties like Ugenya MP David Ochieng’s Movement for Development and Growth, was only an inoculation against what was to follow. In the fullness of time, his UDA Party would neuter partner parties like Amason Kingi’s PAA, Moses Wetang’ula’s Ford Kenya, and Alfred Mutua’s Maendeleo Chap Chap. Musalia Mudavadi’s ANC was swallowed up altogether. The leaders of these entities have since become unmistakable echoes of Ruto’s voice, only in the third person narrative.

The Gen-Z uprising withered away because of absence of organized  leadership and an ordered political leaning, as well as structures. Random youthful voices naively mistook these deficiencies for political assets. Ruto took advantage of these gaps to swallow up some of the more vocal voices in the youth space. He subsumed them into his regime. Consumed with them, too, were hitherto opposition ideologues, like Prof. Makau Mutua, Adams Oloo, and other ODM top brains that have since learned to sing Ruto’s praises, or just remain quiet.

Accordingly, nothing epitomizes Ruto’s desire to sterilise and dominate the political space better than the broad-based government takeover of ODM. Cobbled together extra-constitutionally between UDA and ODM,  the broad-based affair remains Ruto’s most successful institutional coup against democracy in Kenya.  With ODM safely in the UDA belly, the Orange party’s loudest voices have turned into Ruto’s most ardent apologists.

Even before  Raila’s passing, some of his most loyal mouthpieces were already blowing Ruto’s strange trumpet. Gladys Wanga, Peter Opondo, John Mbadi, Hassan Joho, Opiyo Wandai, and Millie Odhiambo, began outdoing one another in the effort to catch Ruto’s attention. They did this  in the very presence of Raila. Their daily canticles on the Ruto leadership were couched in excessive laudatory superlatives. This puffery has gained a new high since the death of Raila, with Mbadi often quipping rhetorically, “Where is Raila now? He is dead! He will never come back!” In the periphery is the supporting cast of Sam Atandi, Esther Passaris, Adbulswamad Nassir, Simba Arati, and Beatrice Elachi. Other minor stars are the Brothers Kajwang – TJ and Moses.

Raila’s death further boosted Ruto’s political triumphalism, leading him to boast in public about his presumed invincibility. On more than one occasion, he has bragged openly with the words, “The only person I could worry about was Raila Odinga. But now Raila is dead. Nobody among these people in the opposition can now beat me in any election. They cannot!”

Then Sifuna happened. The millennial ODM secretary general broke ranks with his party leader and the brigade. He read from an independent script, completely refusing to recognize the broad-based affair. Like Martha Karua of the People’s Liberation Party, Sifuna declared the broad-based entity “illegal”, to the chagrin of some of his colleagues who found it expedient to toe the line. But in him, new hope was born, expressing itself in the simple self-introduction, “Mimi ndio Sifuna (I am Sifuna).”

In linguistic pragmatics “Mimi ndio Sifuna” has wider significance than plain self-presentation. The expression is loaded with unsaid things, among them, “I am the Sifuna you have been hearing about”, “I am the Sifuna they want to throw out of the party”. Above all, “I am the Sifuna who has refused to recognize ‘this broad-based thing’ no matter what happens to me. I am the Sifuna who has refused to be one more of the Ruto loud mouths.” It is self-definition.

Yet, it matters whether the opposition will recognize that Sifuna, as self-defined and in practice, represents a Kairos moment.  “Mimi ndio Sifuna” is bigger than the Nairobi senator. This moniker is the hope of a disillusioned nation that yearns for liberty and accountable government. Mimi ndio Sifuna is an invitation to reimagine the Kenyan nation, and promising future possibilities.

Mimi ndio Sifuna is a dream beyond the mere removal of a sitting president through an election. It is a negation of all that Ruto has so far represented. It is, especially, resistance against Ruto’s creeping one-man-rule in Kenya. To borrow from Albert Camus in the novel titled The Plague, “Mimi ndio Sifuna” speaks to a nation that is “impatient with the present, hostile to the past, and deprived of a future.”

Yet, Linda Mwananchi’s replay of the politics of self-focus is its Achilles  heel.  In a gone age, the king of jockeying being witnessed in Linda Mwananchi gave Kanu an additional 10 years in power – from 1992 to 2002. In spite of avowals that they were looking for a single candidate, opposition kingpins could not agree on who that person should be. Everyone wanted unity, but only unity that would take them to State House.

Is the same happening in Linda Mwananchi and in the opposition as a whole? They come together today to say that there is no division among them, then they part, for each to proclaim that he is the most astute to govern Kenya. The biggest responsibility to shape up, however, rests with Sifuna, and not his internal detractors in Linda Mwananchi, or outside. Kenyans are excited about him more than any other individual on the political landscape. He has urgent business to carry out, not for himself, but for the frustrated deprived.

To do this, does he first need to recognize, like Machiavelli did, that those who have been with him as he has risen in ODM will look at him scornfully, no matter what? That they do not even like the thought that he is rising? Caleb Amisi captures this aptly when he says, “I am the one who has made Sifuna. He is my product. I could even have said, ‘Mimi ndio Osotsi’.”

To both his Linda Mwananchi comrades-at-arms and the rest of the opposition chiefs, Sifuna is at once an upstart and a stumbling block. He sits where they wish they could sit. That was why, to upend him, some like Babu Owino and Amisi, ran ahead to form their own parties. By launching his own party, he has spurned their invitations to run for president on their tickets. As he prepares to negotiate a coalition with them, they will come with harsh terms.

What ideological divide would necessitate this, we may ask? Do manifestos matter, or is it pure egomania and megalomania? The same is true for the rest of the parties in the opposition. None of the leaders can tell Kenyans how their party is fundamentally different from the rest in the “alternative government in waiting.” Self-focus seems to be the only discernible divisive factor. 

Meanwhile Sifuna has unfinished business with the Office of Registrar of Political Parties (ORPP). The office remains afraid of the name Linda Mwananchi, for some strange reason. While the political parties disputes resolution tribunal has declared as unconstitutional ORPP’s original rejection of the Linda Mwananchi name, the registrar has indicated his intention to escalate the matter to the High Court. It looks like a purely time wasting manoeuvre, as anyone familiar with political party registration processes and names knows. But in that wastage resides both a dilemma and an opportunity for Sifuna. It is a dilemma that he may very well be selling a future alliance name that he might in the end never use, if the courts reverse the tribunal’s decision. But it is an opportunity because politics thrives on controversy. If the name survives the ORPP passions, ORPP will have helped to market it through the tussling.

That said, Sifuna will do well to recognize that he is now an institution and a movement. He is bigger than himself. Like Raila, in whose footsteps he is steadily fitting, he will learn to be decisive. He must especially recognize that time and tide wait for no man. Additionally, he will have to recognize that there are those who can play in the senior league with him, and those whose value does not go beyond public political nuisance. Time will not wait for him to satisfy doubting nuisance entities around him. He must begin moving resolutely, to avoid the tragedies that befell big movements before.

Political parties in Kenya have since 1991 been shopping baskets. And occasionally they are lost to other people. Jaramogi Oginga Odinga and Kenneth Matiba fought over the Ford basket in 1992. Attorney General Amos Wako facilitated their ripping it into two. Neither was able to carry enough votes to take the bearer to State House. To make matters worse, Mwai Kibaki materialized with a third basket, called the Democratic Party. This was a spoiler’s basket.

And in 2007 Kalonzo Musyoka ran away from Raila with the ODM Kenya basket. Raila was lucky to discover a look-alike basket, called ODM, in the hands of a certain Mugambi Imanyara. That basket became the ODM that has recently been torn into Linda Ground and Linda Mwananchi. today there are slightly over 90 other baskets.

Recognising the urgency of the work to be done, Sifuna has picked up one of these baskets. He must now move on. If the Linda Mwananchi name becomes a yoke, he must drop it and register another coalition name. For, what’s in a basket’s name?  Raila Odinga demonstrated that it is not the name of the basket that matters. For, the basket will smell the same, regardless of the name. It is the power behind it that counts. When Ford Kenya could not work for him, Raila resigned and took over the National Development Party (NDP) and got going. Later, he merged NDP with Kanu, but just as soon quit that space to take over the Liberal Democratic Party from Denis Kodhe, as soon as he discovered that Mzee Moi was scuppering him. LDP joined up with Kibaki’s DP, Wamalwa Kijana’s Ford Kenya, and Charity Ngilu’s Social Democratic Party to form the National Rainbow Coalition (NARC) that won the 2002 election.

That is where decisiveness comes in, and decisiveness is itself a show of maturity and ability to lead. Sifuna must also be decisive on people who can only be drags and let go of them. Humans are sometimes like crabs. Put in a bucket, a bunch of crabs will each try to scale the vertical walls to get out, but none succeeds. Theirs is random grabbing. As one crab climbs up, another one reaches out for purchase. It inadvertently pulls another one down. In the end, none gets out.

Humans are often in similar scenarios, but now not accidentally. Out of envy and insecurity, people pull others down to their own level. Crabs act on blind survival instinct, humans on deliberate “pull him down” intent. The result is the frustration of the dreams of not just one individual in a bucket, but those of frustrated and deprived mass populations.

Is it high time for Edwin Sifuna to take stock of these basic home-truths, even as he navigates the political partnership space? Is it also time for the rest of the opposition to recognize the ripeness of the moment and quit pussyfooting in the arena? Edwin Sifuna is ahead, as things stand. He has the Kenyan youth as the big wind behind him. Shakespeare reminds us that “there is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads to fortune.”

But Shakespeare also cautions us that when we fail to catch the high tide at the flood, we will remain in the shallow waters, as the tide moves on. We must catch the high tide when we can. Sifuna is on such an ocean just now. He could even become the tide and say with the tide, “Mimi ndio Sifuna.” And those who stand in the way of the tide will be swept away to their doom. The rest of the opposition, too, can take lessons on the need to strike while the iron is hot. The country needs to move beyond vibes of “We shall present one candidate” towards a breakdown of the imagined new Kenya under the rule of law. The time is nigh.

Dr Muluka is a Strategic Communications Adviser

www.barrackmuluka.co.ke