It is almost an established fact in Kenya that when one moves up the slippery political totem pole, a key requirement for admission to a coveted place at the eating trough is leaving your brain behind.
We are seeing evidence of that every day in reasonably well-educated folk—engineers, medical doctors and researchers, architects, accountants, lawyers, scientists, university professors and other acclaimed professionals and academics—attempting to catch President William Ruto’s eye by making the most outrageous and illiterate public statements in defence of that mongrel of the so-called broad-based government.
If what we are seeing as campaigns for the 2027 elections pick up steam, our political discourse is evolving in reverse. We are regressing to a leadership that is so insecure and paranoid that it can only counter opposition with threats and organised violence.
What we are seeing coming out of the unguarded mouths of politicians is eerily reminiscent of the blood-curdling rhetoric that was a staple as the one-party regime of President Daniel arap Moi tried desperately to counter the march towards democracy and human rights in the early 1990s.
That was the era when loyalty to the emperor was measured by the decibel count of threats uttered against anti-Nyayo elements. Semi-illiterate denizens of the day competed in outshouting each other, threatening to cut off the fingers of multi-party campaign adherents, and in declaring their constituencies or regions off-limits to those that did not toe the straight and narrow path.
It was a period when those deemed educated, sober, measured and tolerant in their politics were deemed with suspicion, unless they purposely reduced the intellect of their public utterances to match that of the rabble surrounding Mr Moi.
It was evident at the time, also, that the loyal Kanu politicians who did not hail from the political backyard and fortress of the president felt obliged to go the extra mile in demonstrating their loyalty, and thus justify their places at the feeding trough, or at least to the dregs that might be thrown their way.
Similar nonsense is being played out today, as witnessed with the violent rhetoric, threats, intimidation and mobilisation of armed goons to counter opposition activities.
The prelude to the Linda Mwananchi movement rally in Homa Bay over the weekend provided the perfect example. The breakaway faction of the ODM led by Nairobi Senator Edwin Sifuna has clearly ruffled feathers. It has presented itself as a fresh and viable alternative to the old and tired politics that endures in both government and opposition ranks.
Nairobi Senator Edwin Sifuna addresses residents of Nyandiwa during the Linda Mwananchi rally on August 16, 2026.
Photo credit: Alex Odhiambo | Nation Media Group
From almost nowhere, Mr Sifuna has emerged as an exciting presidential prospect who has forced President Ruto’s campaign strategists back to the drawing board.
He has excited youth across the country, and is also building a solid regional following that could reduce President Ruto’s Western Kenya kingpins, Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi and National Assembly Speaker Moses Wetang’ula, to irrelevance.
It is also panic stations within the Ruto faction of ODM, the grouping that delivered the once venerable opposition movement into the president’s hands after the death of party founder and democratisation campaign legend Raila Odinga.
Raila’s successor as party leader, his elder brother and Siaya Senator Oburu Oginga, party chair and Homa Bay Governor Gladys Wanga, Treasury Cabinet Secretary John Mbadi and other senior figures are desperate to prove that they can deliver.
But the excitement generated by Mr Sifuna and other Linda Mwananchi stalwarts is exposing the fact that lining up the party base, and especially Raila’s Nyanza bastions, behind President Ruto's re-election campaign will be easier said than done.
Hence the evident desperation with which they are trying to prevent Linda Mwananchi running away with the Raila constituency, for his successful forays would render them, too, irrelevant to President Ruto’s strategy.
Hence the open mobilisation to violence by senior Homa Bay figures which the justice, law and order machinery played blind to.
The war cries are not coming from the semi-illiterate types of the Moi era, but from lawyers and other professionals who need to demonstrate that their only worth lies in blockading their constituencies from incursion.
The ODM fellows queuing behind President Ruto in the broad-based government arrangement, aptly bastardised as bread-based or blood-based, remind one of the hired mourners who wail more loudly than the bereaved.
Whether from the political platform or from spaces used by hired keyboard warriors, one can see ODM loyalists hurling insults and threats even louder than the fellows already well-entrenched in President Ruto’s real inner circle.
Mr Gaitho, an independent journalist, is former NMG Managing Editor for Special Projects. [email protected]
