Gachagua, Kalonzo and Wamalwa take opposition campaign to Juja in Kiambu

With 283 days to Kenya’s August 2027 general election, the united opposition opens a party office in Juja and signals that the battle for Kiambu County — and the Mount Kenya vote — has begun in earnest.

By David Kimani

Former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua took his Democracy for Citizens Party “Meet the People” tour to Juja in Kiambu County on Friday, opening a constituency party office and drawing Wiper leader Kalonzo Musyoka and DAP-Kenya’s Eugene Wamalwa to his side in a show of opposition unity with 283 days to the August 2027 general election.

The Juja stopover was the latest in a sustained grassroots mobilisation drive that has taken Gachagua across Kenya’s counties since his impeachment as Deputy President in October 2024. Friday’s event, held at the newly opened DCP office along Kenyatta Road in Juja Farm, drew enthusiastic crowds that opposition leaders were quick to read as a signal of the political wind blowing through Kiambu — a county that will be among the most fiercely contested battlegrounds next August.

Addressing the gathering, Gachagua framed the exercise in explicitly constitutional terms, a register he has cultivated since his removal from office. “Your commitment and support will not go unrewarded,” he told residents. “Together, we will restore our country to constitutionalism and the rule of law.” Later, on his official X account, he was equally direct. “The great people of Kenyatta Road, Juja, Kiambu County, are committed to correcting past political mistakes and charting a new path. That is their right, and it deserves respect. In the next 283 days, they will turn out in large numbers to exercise that right — and they are ready to do so. Aluta continua!”

Wiper leader Kalonzo Musyoka

The language was deliberate and the mathematics precise. Two hundred and eighty-three days places election day squarely in August 2027, and every word Gachagua spoke in Juja was calibrated for that countdown. The reference to “correcting past political mistakes” was unmistakably aimed at President William Ruto’s administration and, implicitly, at the parliamentary majority that voted to remove Gachagua from office two years ago. In Kiambu, where the memory of that impeachment remains raw, the message landed with force.

Kalonzo’s presence at the Juja event reinforced a pattern of deepening coordination between the Wiper leader and Gachagua that has gathered pace in recent weeks. Just four days earlier, on 26 October, Kalonzo had visited Gachagua at his Wamunyoro home in Nyeri County for talks expected to advance efforts to agree on a single opposition presidential candidate for 2027. That meeting came a week after Linda Mwananchi leader Edwin Sifuna also held consultations with Gachagua at Wamunyoro on 20 October, a day after the former Deputy President returned from a two-month stay in the United States. The rhythm of these engagements — Wamunyoro one week, Juja the next — speaks to an opposition machine that is tightening its coordination with deliberate urgency.

Wamalwa’s appearance alongside both men added a further dimension. His DAP-Kenya party has been involved in the Kalonzo-led Komboa Kenya alliance, which has signalled plans to begin formal talks with key opposition figures on a unified presidential ticket to challenge Ruto. His presence in Juja alongside Gachagua and Kalonzo underscored that whatever negotiations are under way behind closed doors, the public face of the opposition is, for now, one of studied solidarity.

The significance of Kiambu as a political theatre cannot be overstated. The county sits at the political and psychological heart of the Mount Kenya region, a bloc that delivered Ruto his winning margin in 2022 and which both the government and the opposition are now working furiously to define, claim and mobilise ahead of the next vote. Since his impeachment, Gachagua has reinvented himself as a central mobiliser within the United Opposition, with his DCP now operating across multiple counties and building structures designed to convert public sympathy into electoral infrastructure.

DAP-Kenya’s Eugene Wamalwa

That infrastructure received a tangible boost in August, when DCP’s candidate won the Ol Kalou parliamentary by-election in Nyandarua County — a result that strengthened the party’s national profile and provided momentum as it builds ahead of the general election. The opening of the Juja constituency office on Friday follows a similar pattern: physical party presence in key locations, each opening treated as a public event, each event generating social media content and local media coverage that extends the campaign’s reach beyond those physically present.

The broader coalition that has coalesced around Gachagua — formally described as the United Alternative Government — brings together DCP, Wiper, Jubilee under deputy leader Fred Matiang’i, Martha Karua’s People’s Liberation Party, Justin Muturi’s Democratic Party, DAP-Kenya and Peter Munya’s Party of National Unity. It is a broad church, assembled from the wreckage of previous coalitions and animated by a shared objective: removing Ruto from power. Whether its internal tensions — over presidential candidacy, running mate selection and constituency-level resource allocation — can be managed through to polling day remains the central question of Kenya’s pre-election politics.

Gachagua has made no secret of his own ambitions within that coalition. He remains confident that he is best positioned to lead the opposition challenge against Ruto, pointing to the growing popularity of DCP. Kalonzo, for his part, has maintained his own presidential aspirations. Reports of an understanding between the two men — with Gachagua backing Kalonzo as his preferred presidential candidate — have unsettled some opposition principals who fear being sidelined. The alliance is productive but not without friction, and the coming months will test the durability of the trust built in sitting rooms in Wamunyoro and on campaign stages in Juja.

What Friday’s visit to Kenyatta Road made clear is that the opposition is not waiting. The DCP office in Juja is open. The countdown clock is running. And in Kiambu County — populous, politically volatile, and absolutely decisive — the campaigns for August 2027 are no longer a future event.

They are already here.

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