Why limping Opposition and Church will find it hard to keep Kenya Kwanza on toes

Wiper Party leader Kalonzo Musyoka accompanied by DAP-K Party leader Eugene Wamalwa, former Kiambu Governor Ferdinand Waititu, and other leaders at St Joseph the Worker Church in Racecourse, Nakuru City, after attending a service on December 1, 2024. [Kipsang Joseph, Standard]

A resurgent fraternity of mainstream churches may have to hold the opposition's fort for some time, as those who should occupy that space struggle to get their act together.

Kenya’s political opposition is limping towards 2025. It is a feeble and waning entity; a badly wounded crew overloaded with heavy assignments that it is ill-placed to perform. President William Ruto’s Kenya Kwanza regime has intentionally whacked down the opposition over the past two years, to make it a sorry vestige of its original self in August 2022. 

The need for help speaks for itself. The Church has recently demonstrated it could fit the bill. Catholic bishops and the NCCK have over the past two months breathed fresh air in a political space suffocating under the weight of a perverse state, with nobody to reproach it.

The two have called out the Ruto regime on a wide slate of offensives against Kenyans. The state’s initial angry response quickly gave way to mild surrender. The state has also made spirited efforts to buy out the Church with huge donations. Whether the buyout will succeed or not is a matter to watch. The buyout efforts are however not out of character.

Immediately after he took office, President Ruto staged a bold raid into Azimio's ranks in Parliament. This marauding political break-in paved the way for future prowls into other opposition spaces. This exercise has effectively neutralised the Opposition, both in the Legislature and outside.

As 2024 enters its last few moments, questions abound about the future of the opposition. Can it survive to 2027? If it does, will the spirit of alternative government be sufficiently strong to withstand the powerful winds around President Ruto and his new friends, retired President Uhuru Kenyatta and Azimio’s 2022 presidential candidate, Raila Odinga? Can it be trusted to speak loudly and enough for Kenyans, even if it does not form the next government?

Ruto’s November 2022 parliamentary swoop into Azimio ferreted away the entire Jubilee team in Parliament. It marked the start of herding critical voices into the Kenya Kwanza ranks, and placing them at the beck and call of State House.

Also in tow were smaller political parties in Parliament. Subsequent manoeuvres have progressively eroded the very foundations of multiparty democracy and political competition.

READ: Azimio is here to stay, says Kalonzo

They have created a completely new civic reality opposed to the expectations of the 2010 Constitution. Ruto has extra-constitutionally formed a government with his 2022 competitors, although they all deny it.

There has been no regard for the provisions of the Constitution, as well as those of the Political Parties Act 2007 (Amended 2011) on the formation of post-election political party alliances and coalition government.

The recent inclusion of ODM and Jubilee (Uhuru) politicians in the Ruto Cabinet without formal alliance affiliation shows how weak the voices that should hold the government to account have become. Ruto, Uhuru and Raila have thrown the future of dissent into doubt.

The opposition is at its weakest since the return of multiparty democracy in December 1991. It is unlikely that anything short of new voices from civil society and the religious fraternity could secure democracy and the rule of law.

President William Ruto and Former Prime Minister Raila Odinga at the Raila Odinga Stadium, in Homa Bay County for this year’s Genowa Governor's Cup on December 27, 2024. [PCS]

The Judiciary too is in a limp, and the citizens are virtually on their own. Kenya Kwanza has silenced dissent using the multiple cards of inducement and reward on the one hand, and coercion and fear on the other. Accordingly, a once formidable political opposition is now in the belly of the Ruto regime, in the midstream of its first term.

In exchange for the options of political reward or fear, the State House has won for itself the freedom to do whatever it will, without the burden of censure or oversight.

The Kenyan State now enjoys the unrestrained freedom of the bull in a China shop. It can get away with almost anything, with nothing more than a feeble whimper coming from what is left of the opposition. As the curtain comes down on 2024, therefore, there are rising fears about the democratic future of Kenya.

Ruthless abductions as part of State clampdown on dissent after the June-July Gen-Z uprising, have taken on rare ruthlessness and frequency. Kenyans are captured in broad daylight by unaccountable marauders. They take them to unknown destinations for indefinite periods and do unknown things to them. The State has not seen the need to be accountable. It has sent out conflicting messages on the ownership of the abductions.

The Police have disowned the abductions. The country is left to guess who owns the abduction squads. President Ruto has said the government will end the abductions. In exchange, he has asked parents to make their children act responsibly. Ruto-friendly MPs, Junet Mohamed and Kimani Ichungw’a have said that youth who misuse digital technology deserve to face the music.

They were referring to youth who have been abducted after allegedly publishing distressing digital effigies of grief, involving the President. Kenyans are left to read between the lines in the three conflicting messages by the Police, the President, and the MPs. 

Meanwhile, this year’s Christmas messages from the pulpit pointed at the collective Christian Church as the new spearhead in the opposition space.

Prelates used different platforms to call the bugle over creeping intolerance by a government that has all but abandoned its earlier assurances against extra-judicial use of state machinery. Shortly after his inauguration in September 2022, Ruto criticised the Uhuru regime over abductions and disappearances.

READ: Azimio coalition at crossroads after Raila party opts to join Ruto

He accused the Uhuru regime of “extra-judicial killings of innocent citizens.” He stressed that the age of abductions was “over, forever.”  Today, however, Ruto’s government is facing the same criticism.  There is mounting concern about who will speak for the country in the face of a regime that appears determined to consolidate power as a curtain raiser to crushing the Opposition into total surrender, ahead of the 2027 elections.

Crowning this concern about freedom in Kenya is the surrender of Parliament to the Executive. Then there is the acquisition of major elements of the opposition and their subsumption into government. These elements have since become some of President Ruto’s loudest apologists.

Raila and ODM were acquired during the Gen-Z uprising in June–July. However, even ahead of that, Raila and Ruto were already warming up towards one another much earlier.

Raila’s quest for the Chair of the African Union Commission (AUC) has been the glue holding them together. Raila traded in his trademark public interest activism for Ruto’s support for his AUC Chair’s quest. The amity between them after the Gen-Z uprising has served as the most critical catalyst in fostering State emasculation of the democratic space. 

The newfound unity between Kenya Kwanza and former dominant elements of the opposition is Kenya Kwanza’s insurance against criticism over the unbridled traumatising of dissenters.

Once an ardent custodian of the common good, the AUC-focused Raila hardly sees any evil. While he has this week criticised the abductions, his default mode has been to hear no evil and say nothing evil against the Ruto Government, even in situations some would consider odious. To the contrary, he has often come out of the woodwork to defend some of the more controversial public complaints against the Ruto government.

A case in point was the matter of the infamous government deal with the Adani Group of Companies in the aviation, energy and health sectors. Raila defended the disgraced humongous tenders that were irregularly awarded to the Indian group. The deals have, however, since been cancelled.

He vouched for the integrity of the Adani Group, stating that it had done sterling work elsewhere in the world. He disclosed, further, that dialogue with Adani on the Kenyan projects had begun when he (Raila) was Kenya’s Prime Minister, in the grand coalition government with President Mwai Kibaki.

The loudest defenders of the Ruto regime, however, have been three of Raila’s four ministers in the Ruto Government, Ali Hassan Joho (Mining and Blue Economy), Opiyo Wandayi (Energy), and John Mbadi (Finance). Previously known to be among the most eloquent voices against the Ruto regime, the three now glorify the Kenya Kwanza to the high heavens. They have recently begun appealing for a second Ruto term in the State House.

To crown his victory over the Opposition, Ruto recently brought in retired President Uhuru Kenyatta. Uhuru has seconded three of his closest political allies to an embattled and visibly rattled Kenya Kwanza regime, keen to survive the 2027 elections.  

This is the state of the art as Kenya transits from the year 2024. It will be recorded in history as the year when Ruto consolidated State power around himself.

Parliament became a voting machine in the hands of the Executive. Two Opposition giants closed ranks with the regime and seconded representatives to the Cabinet. The State clamped down heavily on dissent, adopting fear through abductions as the key to dealing with the more hardcore dissenters.

The biggest casualties were youth, some of whom disappeared without a trace. But, remarkably, it was also the year when human remains were found in gunny bags and dumped in quarries. Nobody seemed eager to establish whose remains they were, or how they had got there.

The task for the political Opposition in the year 2025 will gravitate around stemming this tide and calling the country back to order. Whoever would fit this bill enters the fray knowing that there sits in power a shaken regime that is not overly popular. Like all regimes in power, this regime would like to retain power at the next polls.

Yet, as it runs out of time and favour, it is focusing not so much on delivering its election promises and pledges, but rather on silencing dissent. To be in Opposition to this dispensation is going to require resilience and mettle.

Those who would stand in that gap will be made of sterner stuff than those in the regime. This is despite the fact that the public may be grossly disillusioned with the regime. For, the regime has the State machinery. It has the money and the propaganda machinery. Above all, it has a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence and the instruments to administer it.

Raila’s migration into Ruto’s flanks is easily the most consequential development in Opposition politics in the country.  The rise of Raila in Kenya’s political space from the period 1997 peaked in 2007. He became the most significant voice in the country’s politics. Successive regimes from Moi to Ruto, through Kibaki and Uhuru, discovered that they could not ignore him and hoped to run the country smoothly.

A succession of handshakes to accommodate him did the trick. The settlement with Ruto has, however, been of a different kind. It has left the country on the political limp. For, when he closed ranks with Moi, there remained a strong Opposition out there, to put both of them in check. And when he shook hands with Kibaki, he remained the Opposition in government.

Finally, his teamwork with Uhuru made Ruto, then Deputy President, the de facto Opposition. His companionship with Ruto, for its part, has left the Opposition space extremely weak, to the extent that the Church has had to come out of the woodwork, to begin playing the role of the Opposition. Together with them is the Law Society of Kenya (LSK), and an amorphous youth movement, generically referred to as Gen-Zs.

The rocky road ahead will require all hands on a united deck. The Church and LSK may be frontal in pointing out the blemishes and pitfalls. They cannot, however, organize and mobilize for alternative governance as is normally expected of political parties.

At the very best, they sensitize the country and equip the people with the ethical, moral and ideological armoury that they need for their mobilization. But they cannot, themselves, possibly organize and mobilize. All eyes, accordingly, remain on what is left in the Opposition political space.

President William Ruto shares light moments with Kasmuel McOure during the opening of a new church sanctuary at A.I.C Kipkorgot in Uasin Gishu County on December 22, 2024. [PCS] 

What is left of the outfit called One Kenya Azimio la Umoja Alliance can give itself a befitting New Year’s present by accepting that it is dead. They may wish to bury or cremate it soonest and think of other alliances, as the Church, LSK and civil society hold the space for them. Wiper Party Leader, Kalonzo Musyoka, is the most seasoned political leader in Azimio and the Opposition.

Despite unending aspersions cast against his ability to fit in the Opposition mantle, he has doggedly held on. There have been missed opportunities, however; perhaps in the hope that those with whom he worked in Azimio would recognize him as the next big item in that space, and allow him to lead. The political space does not work that way, however. Political power is taken. Nobody understands this better than Raila.

There exists every possibility of him returning from the African Union to situate himself afresh as the Opposition if those he has left behind will not seize the moment.  This is regardless of whether he wins the AUC chair or fails to capture it. His latest remarks on abductions point to this possibility.

The time for Kalonzo to make the critical move is now. Can he convince his remaining allies in Azimio that they should bury the dead entity and look for a fresh vessel with a new focus, new energy, and new friends? To fit the bill, he may want to wear the mantle of decisiveness and learn to act with speed, spice and acute credence. He has around him Jubilee’s Jeremiah Kioni and DAP’s Eugene Wamalwa, as relatively reliable pillars to lean on. But if they dillydally, events will drown them in the soup of lost opportunities.

The most lethal soup for them and for Team Ruto are the emerging voices. Jimi Wanjigi has not been seen to be sufficiently serious to be a part of the conversation. He has the history of a kingmaker, who has also linked successful candidates into the right matrices.

ALSO READ: Religious leaders now differ on claim State is muzzling the Church

When he threw his hat in the ring in 2022, however, his bid stayed mostly in the “also ran” space, as did David Wahiga, Wajackoya, Ekuru Aukot and others whose names are probably forgotten. While such candidates abound in competitive politics world over, there is always a need for them to repackage themselves as serious contenders. They must change their image from frivolous fringe spaces to eminent leadership spaces. Coming along with them is Okiya Omutatah, who has significant empathy from the Gen-Zs.

Martha Karua of Narc Kenya is also in this space. What arsenal could each of these leaders pack in, in order for the country to take them seriously? Kalonzo needs to demonstrate mettle, organisational and mobilisation ability, decisiveness, and most important, fire in the belly.

Karua is decisive. What she lacks most, however, is the ability to transcend the bilious outlook, and transform it into charm and fire in the belly. Like Wanjigi, she has her finger on the right stuff, virtually all the time.

However, she comes across as a resentful politician who finds teamwork and compromise difficult. A profound dialogue with herself in that space could help. Omtatah has won some admiration from some Gen-Zs due to his consistency in public interest litigation. Regular advocacy and charismatic packaging will be of help to him.

Wanjigi is exciting to listen to. He demonstrates deep knowledge of the challenges and has exciting thoughts on the solutions to Kenya’s challenges. Yet, he comes across as urbane to the extent that beyond the Gen-Z population, he needs to work hard in rural communities.

Name and face recognition is a priority in his case. Luchiri Wajackoya has name recognition and some interesting thoughts. He has, however, been most impactful in the space of dramatic relief. He needs to consider migration from that space.

The opposition space, meanwhile, is yawning. The Church, LSK and civil society may have to stand in the gap before those who should occupy the space restore themselves. But that is only if the Church and LSK can withstand efforts to buy them out, in a nation where there seems to be nothing that political money cannot buy. Time will tell.

Dr Muluka is a strategic communications adviser. www.barrackmuluka.co.ke