Ruto’s masterclass in political miscalculation

Here’s the premise: Ruto has stolen ODM, but in the process he has also killed its utility to him.

ODM, especially after the death of the Raila Odinga on October 15, 2025, is not just a party but a memory, a machine, a grieving constituency, and a battlefield over what comes next. In that vacuum, the logic of state power is simple: don’t fight the machine head-on; climb into it, sit on the levers, and make it serve you.

That’s what “broad-based government” politics has been about for the last few months: draining the opposition of bite, flattening parliamentary resistance, and creating the impression that there is no alternative team on the bench. And for a while, it works.

As long as the internal wrangles remain inside ODM, the country is trained to treat them as “their family business.” Even when the noise is loud, it’s still contained. A fight between old guards and reformists becomes entertainment — a distraction from misgovernance — and the regime gets to watch the opposition spend its energy punching itself.

That’s why, paradoxically, it was in Ruto’s best interests for Sifuna and the young guns to stay exactly where they were: noisy, inconvenient, and boxed into “party discipline” conversations that never quite graduate into a national movement. Then came the miscalculation.

On February 11, 2026, ODM’s National Executive Committee meeting in Mombasa announced it had removed Sifuna as Secretary-General, with one of the deputy SGs, Catherine Omanyo, to act. The same reporting describes a wider clean-up; allies being kicked out of internal party structures, names like Caleb Amisi and Johnes Mwaruma becoming part of the collateral damage.

The next day, February 12, 2026, the Political Parties Disputes Tribunal stepped in and stayed the implementation and gazettement of that NEC resolution, setting the dispute for mention on February 26, 2026. Legally, it means the “expulsion” is now contested, delayed, procedural, and messy.

Politically, it means something far more consequential: the attempted sacking has already done the job of launching Sifuna out of the ODM inbox and into the national subject line. This is the part Ruto never seems to learn.

Kenyan politics has a weird rule: your enemies are easiest to manage when they’re still “your problem.” The minute you kick them out, you don’t weaken them, you rebrand them. You turn them into evidence. You give them a story that doesn’t require imagination: “Look what they did to me.” You hand them martyr oxygen in a country currently starving for symbols against you.

We watched a version of this with Rigathi Gachagua. While he was Deputy President, his battles were framed as internal United Democratic Alliance drama. The kind of chaos many people cheered from the sidelines because it looked like the ruling party eating itself. Then he was impeached and removed by the Senate in October 2024, and overnight the same conflict gained a different shape: a national anti-Ruto figure with internal secrets.

Now apply that logic to Sifuna, in this specific moment.

The country is in an anti-political-class mood. You can call it Gen Z impatience, post-2024 protest energy, or just the exhaustion of watching the same faces rotate seats while the cost of living skyrockets. But the direction is clear: the public is increasingly clustering politicians into one blurred category called “they.”

So what does Ruto do, consistently, with uncanny talent? He keeps assembling the most emotionally combustible team of political outcasts under one roof. The old guns, especially those often seen as grifters of Raila Odinga, and supremely disliked as such, as the only ones he’s managed to consolidate in this fallout. The ones who would have had utility for him, he pushed out.

An ODM that is “captured” but still cohesive would have been useful. An ODM that is tamed, quiet, disciplined, and willing to help the state manage Parliament would have been valuable. But an ODM that is captured and fractured, an ODM that cannot consolidate internally, cannot absorb reformers, cannot contain its own young energy, becomes dead weight. It stops being an asset and becomes a liability that leaks.

That’s the irony: in trying to “own” ODM, Ruto has also increased the likelihood that ODM’s most effective communicators will find a new national platform outside its structures. And once you give a skilled political communicator a national grievance plus a microphone, you don’t get to decide where that story ends.

Which brings me to the dream sequence, not as prophecy, but as a picture of the opportunity Ruto is accidentally creating.

A man can dream: imagine Sifuna and the young guns drifting into the orbit of David Maraga. Imagine them becoming the mouthpiece for the most constitution-forward candidate on the field. Imagine that the massive bloc of citizens (around 11M) who have emotionally checked out of elections, not because they hate voting, but because they hate being played, start to believe again that a new dawn is not just marketing.

Then the dominoes.

The “united opposition” outfits, forever allergic to missing a winning bus, get forced into alignment. The country gets a 2002-style reset moment because exhaustion and possibility finally beats cynicism. And the young guns, sharpened by conflict and public pressure, take their turn in 2032, with Sifuna as a serious contender for the generational handover.

Who says no? Probably Ruto. It doesn’t matter.

That’s the whole point. The presidency is not a remote control. It’s a megaphone. And Ruto keeps using it to amplify the exact people he most needs to keep small.

If you wanted to design the worst possible political outcome for an incumbent heading into 2027, you would do exactly this: neutralize formal opposition structures, then manufacture a parade of wronged, high-profile defectors whose only job for the next 18 months is to turn your government into a daily courtroom of public opinion.

And then you’d act surprised when the crowd starts clapping for the prosecution.

Follow our WhatsApp channel for breaking news updates and more stories like this.

The writer is an active citizen and owner of a tech start-up. lewisngunyi10@ gmail.com