Kenya’s opposition fractures at Raila’s memorial

The first anniversary of Raila Odinga’s death exposed a movement torn between principle and power, with 2027 already casting its long shadow over Bondo

By David Kimani

The first anniversary memorial of former Prime Minister Raila Odinga in Bondo yesterday became an unscheduled but unmistakable referendum on the soul of Kenyan opposition politics, as leaders who once stood together beneath the same banner publicly staked out irreconcilable positions on whether to embrace President William Ruto or resist him.

What was billed as a commemoration of one of Kenya’s most consequential political figures became instead a platform for airing a rupture that has been widening for months. On one side stood the ODM establishment, now firmly embedded in Ruto’s broad-tent government and speaking the language of collaboration and national unity. On the other stood the Linda Mwananchi faction, invoking Raila’s legacy to argue that opposition without spine is not opposition at all. The tension between these two visions was palpable, and in the year before a general election, it is far more than an internal party dispute.

Raila died having spent much of his final years in a political accommodation with the very administration his supporters had long opposed. Whether that accommodation represented pragmatic statesmanship or an abandonment of his movement’s foundational purpose remains, even now, a question his lieutenants cannot agree on. The anniversary did not resolve that question. It sharpened it.

ODM Deputy Party Leader Simba Arati set the tone early, urging members to hold firm and not to be seduced away from what he called Baba’s home. His warning was pointed. “Let us not abandon Baba’s home. Anyone who wants to leave, do not leave. But if you have been bought by a sponsor, then take the money and leave with that sponsor,” he said. The reference to external financiers, without naming names, signalled the depth of suspicion now running through the party’s internal relationships. It also suggested that the departures Arati fears are not merely possible but imminent.

Energy Cabinet Secretary Opiyo Wandayi went further, dispensing entirely with the language of opposition and speaking instead as a man whose political home is now firmly inside the government tent. His declaration was striking in its directness: “ODM is firmly established in President William Ruto’s government. Those who dream of being able to remove Ruto from power are daydreaming. Ruto will get 100 per cent of the votes in this county.” Siaya County, Raila’s ancestral heartland and one of the most reliably opposition-voting regions in the country, delivering unanimously for an incumbent president would represent a political transformation without modern precedent in Kenya. Whether Wandayi genuinely believes this or was performing loyalty for an audience in Nairobi is a question only 2027 will answer.

The contrast with Siaya Governor James Orengo could not have been more deliberate or more stark. Orengo, a lawyer and long-standing constitutionalist who has spent decades defending democratic space in Kenya’s courts and parliament, chose Raila’s memorial to make the clearest statement yet of the Linda Mwananchi movement’s founding argument. “Baba never traded principles for political expediency, and we must firmly reject any arrangements designed to silence the opposition, blur accountability, and compromise our hard-won democratic gains,” he said. The phrase “silence the opposition” is not a casual construction. It is a direct characterisation of what Orengo and his allies believe ODM’s accommodation with Ruto has achieved — and it carries with it an implicit accusation that those cheering for Ruto in Bondo are complicit in that silencing.

Embakasi East Member of Parliament Babu Owino, now among the more prominent faces of the Mwananchi Party, reached for the same legacy but drew a different lesson from it. “Baba taught us one thing: that leadership is not about power. Leadership is not about titles. It is not about the names that we have, but leadership is about the courage to defend justice and service delivery,” he said. The emphasis on courage was not incidental. In the context of a party that critics say has chosen comfort over accountability, the invocation of courage reads as a rebuke, softened just enough by the reverence of the occasion.

Nairobi Senator Edwin Sifuna, who has made no secret of his presidential ambitions, used the occasion to speak simultaneously to the crowd in Bondo and to the wider national constituency he is beginning to cultivate. His promise was personal and pointed: “Even as we move forward to seek the Presidency, I want you to know that I will not forget you. I will also never forget what Baba taught us: that we must put the lives of our citizens first whenever we make decisions.” In a single sentence, Sifuna positioned himself as the legitimate heir to Raila’s political tradition while signalling that the presidency is now an explicit goal rather than a distant aspiration.

He also took what amounted to a public swing at unnamed colleagues on the same platform. “Baba taught us that politics is about persuasion; politics is not about forcing people. You must engage people calmly and patiently. We have heard some of the leaders here whose work is to intimidate people. Their work is to force people,” he said. The accusation of intimidation, delivered in Bondo, at a memorial, with the targets sitting nearby, was a reminder that Kenyan politics rarely observes the normal conventions of occasion.

With fourteen months until the August 2027 general election, the stakes of this internal fracture are considerable. The opposition’s ability to mount a credible challenge to Ruto depends in large part on whether it can consolidate around a candidate and a message before the campaign season properly begins. A movement divided between those pledging Ruto a hundred per cent in Siaya and those vowing to restore genuine accountability cannot easily perform either function.

Raila spent his political life holding contradictions together through sheer force of personality and strategic ambiguity. The men and women gathered in Bondo yesterday are discovering, a year after his passing, just how much of their own cohesion depended on his presence to sustain it.

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