Salutary lessons for Kenyans from last week's mini polls
Opinion
By
Leonard Khafafa
| Dec 03, 2025
Depending on one’s political sympathies, last week’s by-elections were either a model of orderly democracy or an exercise doomed from the start.
Cast as a proxy battle between President William Ruto’s Kenya Kwanza coalition and factions allied to his estranged former deputy Rigathi Gachagua, the contests offered less of a test of local loyalties than a snapshot of battlelines drawn between the political elite.
Considered a dress rehearsal for the 2027 General Election, Ruto and his eclectic coalition, buffed up with recruits from the ODM party, hailed the outcome as a resounding endorsement of what may yet crystallise into a formidable ruling bloc.
Gachagua’s camp treated the results as an ominous portend: evidence, they claim, of creeping electoral malpractice and the heavy-handed use of state machinery to tilt the scales against them.
Several salutary lessons emerge. Chief among them is that the ODM, even without its towering co-founder Raila Odinga, remains a political force of consequence. Odinga, who recently died while receiving treatment in India, had long held the party together through the magnetism of his personality.
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His departure was widely expected to trigger an internal rapture: on one side, the old guard clinging to the party’s traditional posture; on the other, an impatient cohort of younger politicians unhappy with ODM’s drift towards accommodation with the KK administration under the banner of a broad-based government.
Second, Gachagua, once assumed to command a near-fanatical following, appears a far less formidable figure than previously imagined. In areas where his favoured candidates were expected to sweep the polls, they merely kept pace with those backed by the KK coalition. Even among his fellow Mt Kenya voters, his influence seems to be ebbing, perhaps as they recognise that he has chosen to confront a coalition that is amply financed and unburdened by any reluctance to exploit the prerogatives of incumbency.
Third, the much-vaunted political clout of the Generation Z has yet to materialise. Despite predictions that they could sway the next election, voter registration among this cohort has fallen short of the threshold needed to move the needle. Their presence is felt far more online than in polling booths, where the decisions that shape policy are ultimately made. Whether this pattern persists, or shifts as 2027 approaches, remains uncertain.
Fourth, the KK administration’s relentless campaigning appears to be yielding results. Ruto has been criticised for spending a disproportionate amount of time atop vehicles, expounding government policy, much to the chagrin of the elite, who would prefer he confine himself to offices of State House or Harambee House.
However, for many ordinary citizens, particularly in rural and marginalised areas, such displays are their closest encounter to power. They respond to his folksy, hands-on approach in ways the more aloof bureaucratic style of his predecessors never elicited – most notably, at the ballot box.
Finally, last week’s political manoeuvres have left several politicians stranded in uncertainty. ODM’s youthful faction, seeking to unseat the party’s entrenched leadership by backing outsiders, backfired. The old guard’s grip on power remains firm. In the wake of a lacklustre performance by the opposition, Gachagua’s endorsement of former Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka as a potential presidential contender now loses its significance.
Mr Khafafa is a public policy analyst