Gachagua reveals tense exchange with Sifuna over 2024 impeachment as 2027 alliances take shape

The former deputy president says he confronted the Nairobi senator about their opposing positions during his dramatic removal from office two years ago

By Yvonne Wambui

Rigathi Gachagua has lifted the lid on a candid and uncomfortable conversation he had with Nairobi Senator Edwin Sifuna about the events surrounding his impeachment in October 2024 — an exchange that sheds fresh light on the shifting political calculations driving Kenya’s road to the 2027 general election.

Speaking during a media interview on Wednesday, Gachagua said he confronted Sifuna directly during a recent meeting, asking the senator plainly how they could contemplate working together politically given their opposing positions during the impeachment process that ended his tenure as deputy president under President William Ruto.

“I asked him how we could work together after everything that happened,” Gachagua said, recounting the exchange with a candour that has become something of a trademark since his removal from office.

Sifuna’s response, according to Gachagua, was straightforward and, ultimately, one the former deputy president said he came to accept. The senator argued that their differences had been rooted not in personal animosity but in the competing interests of the political camps to which each belonged at the time. Political leaders, Sifuna reportedly told him, make decisions based on the demands of their parties and the expectations of their supporters — not on the basis of individual relationships.

Gachagua said he found the explanation reasonable. The two men, he acknowledged, had never campaigned for each other, never shared a political platform and had operated from entirely different corners of Kenya’s fractious political landscape. In that context, Sifuna’s conduct during the impeachment, while painful, was not a personal betrayal in the conventional sense.

The conversation has drawn considerable attention precisely because it illuminates one of the defining features of Kenyan politics — the speed and ease with which former adversaries can find themselves contemplating cooperation, and the rationalisation that makes such realignments possible.

The backdrop to that conversation is among the most turbulent episodes in Kenya’s recent political history. In October 2024, the National Assembly voted by 281 votes to 44 to impeach Gachagua on charges that included gross violation of the Constitution and misconduct — accusations he vigorously disputed. The scale of the vote, cutting across party lines and catching many observers off guard by its speed, signalled the depth of the rupture within the Kenya Kwanza administration.

The Senate proceedings that followed on 9 October 2024 provided Sifuna’s most visible moment in the affair. The senator declined to second a motion proposing the formation of a special committee to investigate the charges against Gachagua, a decision that drew scrutiny at the time and one that Gachagua’s account now revisits from a different angle. The Senate ultimately proceeded with the matter in a full-house sitting, and Gachagua’s removal was confirmed.

What his account of the Sifuna conversation reveals is less about the mechanics of the impeachment and more about how Gachagua himself has processed the experience — and how he is positioning himself for whatever comes next. The willingness to engage former opponents, to hear their explanations and, crucially, to accept those explanations as politically coherent rather than morally disqualifying, suggests a man focused on the future rather than consumed by the past.

That future is increasingly being shaped by the gravitational pull of 2027. Kenya’s political landscape is in a state of visible flux, with alliances forming and dissolving at a pace that challenges even seasoned observers to keep track. The prospect of former opponents cooperating — once a source of public cynicism — has become almost a defining characteristic of the current moment, raising legitimate questions about the role of ideology, policy and genuine public interest in political decision-making.

For ordinary Kenyans watching these developments, the Gachagua-Sifuna exchange offers something worth reflecting on. Political relationships, it confirms, are rarely permanent. Yesterday’s opponent is not necessarily tomorrow’s enemy, and the opposite is equally true. What matters, ultimately, is not the personal history between politicians but whether the partnerships they form and the decisions they make serve the people who elected them.

That test, for Gachagua, Sifuna and every other political figure navigating Kenya’s pre-election terrain, is still very much ahead of them.

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