These are not serious people

The Orange Democratic Movement Party of Kenya (ODM) is a pale shadow of the political movement that defeated the Banana side during the 2005 constitutional referendum. It has been in steady decline from the date it buried the hatchet with Mwai Kibaki's Party of National Unity and joined a Grand Coalition Government. It started kicking its last kicks of relevance when it led the Coalition for Reforms and Democracy into a defeat, and cemented its place as an also-ran political party when the Azimio One Kenya fell to the Kenya Kwanza onslaught. On the 11th February, of 2026, it affirmed to itself that it is no longer a serious political party and should be treated with the same pity one treats the slow learners in school.

The decision by the party's high command to turn a stop-gap arrangement in which the geriatric Oburu Odinga was a placeholder for a young a dynamic leader into a permanent sinecure was to be expected. The late Raila Odinga had tried to build a cadre of young politicians who could challenge for senior leadership in the political party and failed. So, in the absence of credible young guns to take Raila's place, Oburu was the most logical, if stupidest, choice. It wouldn't be so bad if he had any sort of dynamism about him. He doesn't and it is quite terrible to see.

What is worse is the foolishness of the political party to thin its leadership ranks simply because it does not know how to manage ambitious politicians. The decision to sack Edwin Sifuna as its secretary-general is asinine; his replacement by an unknown councillor is imbecilic. Sifuna is a hard-charger. You only need to watch videos of him savaging Kenya Kwanza infants on TV for you to appreciate what he could have brought to the political party. He has charisma by the bucket and for all his manoeuvring and conspiring, he appeared committed to the political party that had given him a national profile.

The shortsighted men and women in charge of party strategy - Junet, Wanga, Nassir, Winnie and Oburu - are so focussed in keeping their noses in the Kenya Kwanza trough, they no longer seem to care that Kenya Kwanza is hell-bent on turning itself into the new KANU with the intention of ruling Kenya for the next twenty-four years. If that happens, not only will the ODM-ites lose their privileged access to the trough, they will lose everything they have amassed over the past fifteen years and they will be lucky if their leading lights don't spend the entirety of the Kenya Kwanza reign fighting all sorts of criminal charges in the law courts.

The red herring that ODM is chasing after - Uhuru Kenyatta's meddling in the Azimio leadership and whatnot - reveals the dearth of strategic thinking at the highest levels of the political party leadership. Uhuru is not the equivalent of Cardinal Richelieu, pulling strings behind the scenes to achieve some grand political agenda; he is a very young ex-president with too much money and time on his hands and a massive chip on his shoulder about the man who bested his pet project at the hustings in 2022. Uhuru's games with Azimio will not bear any sort of fruit beyond stymying District Focus Gachagua's stillborn ambitions and giving Uhuru something to do so that he doesn't lose any more of his good humour in his post-presidency.

ODM is paying attention to the wrong things instead of building a political machinery to replace the oversized influence of the late Raila Odinga. It is not recruiting new members. It doesn't appear to be raising a campaign war chest to defend the seats it holds, to take back the seats it lost in 2022 and 2017, or to poach the unsafe seats held by Azimio and Kenya Kwanza. It is sacking young men who had the measure of the party, who kept many of its secrets, and who executed many of its plans - and all because the party's ancien régime has its back up because Sifuna will not swear fealty to a decrepit political party infrastructure marching in the wrong direction. These are not serious people. They deserve to lose everything they hold dear.