Sifuna: Next political liberator or just a one-hit wonder?

Embattled ODM Secretary General Edwin Sifuna addresses a rally in Kitengela on February 15, 2026. [Peterson Githaiga, Standard]

Since independence, each Kenyan generation has waged its own contest with power. The republic’s founders confronted white colonial rule and, in time, dismantled it. Land that had been alienated from indigenous communities and transferred to settlers on generous terms was reclaimed and redistributed. The post-colonial settlement, however, bore its own contradictions. Constitutional amendments, not least those that entrenched a de jure one-party state, constrained political pluralism even as the trappings of sovereignty were consolidated.

Yet reform proved resilient. The restoration of multiparty politics and the holding of genuinely competitive elections marked a decisive turn. The promulgation of a new Constitution re-balanced the state in favour of citizens, entrenching checks and balances and safeguards that had been long absent. Today’s democratic space tolerates and even protects dissent. The Constitution enshrines fundamental rights and liberties as inalienable, providing citizens with both shield and sword. From this framework has emerged a new arena of struggle: An increasingly assertive public willing to challenge the State in ways that would have been unthinkable a decade ago.

Civil protests, sanctioned by law, are now routine features of political life. So too is recourse to the courts. Litigation has become a formidable instrument of accountability, frequently halting or reshaping State initiatives that sidestep public participation or disregard established legal procedures. In contemporary Kenya, the contest for power is no longer waged solely at the ballot box, but also in the streets and in the courtroom.

Edwin Sifuna, the Nairobi Senator and secretary-general of the Orange Democratic Party (ODM), has emerged as the most conspicuous standard-bearer of a renewed wave of protest. Having survived an attempt to unseat him from his party post, an effort thwarted through recourse to the courts, he has since marshalled sizeable crowds in Kitengela, Kajiado. There, he castigated what he portrays as an unprincipled dalliance between elements of ODM and the ruling Kenya Kwanza administration of President William Ruto.

Sifuna stakes out a claim to the moral high ground, arguing that alignment with the governing coalition would betray ODM’s founding ethos. Yet ODM’s posture towards the government is, in practice, more ambiguous. Under the rubric of a 'broad-based government,' the party has entered into a working arrangement with Kenya Kwanza. Several Cabinet secretaries now advancing the administration’s agenda hail from ODM’s ranks.

The dispute has thus assumed the air of an intramural reckoning. What might once have been dismissed as routine factionalism is increasingly cast as a generational contest; insurgent young Turks challenging an entrenched Old Guard over ODM’s identity and over the proper distance between principled opposition and pragmatic power-sharing.

Sifuna risks drifting into political obscurity for three reasons. First, Kenya’s youthful exuberance is no guarantor of ballots cast. The country’s excitable young have proved far more adept at protest than at registering to vote, a mismatch that blunts insurgent campaigns. 

Second, the national mood is defined by economic anxiety. Unless Sifuna can advance an agenda more compelling than that of William Ruto, who now promises to put money in citizen’s pockets, his appeal will falter. Third, high-stakes politics in Kenya demands tens of billions of shillings. Without deep-pocketed patrons, his campaign may exhaust both funds and momentum before the next poll.

Mr Khafafa is a  public policy analyst