Win by all means: Why November by-elections matters for Ruto

President William Ruto is leaving nothing to chance as he bids to win all seven parliamentary by-elections slated for November 27, 2025. He is focusing on either weakening or scuttling the opposition with eyes trained on the bigger prize of the 2027 presidential elections.

It is with that in mind that he appears to be fixated on  winning the mini polls through all means, including withdrawing opposition candidates and the use of extra-legal means like his allies dishing out money and promising roads and water development projects in battle ground constituencies.

After last year’s Gen Z protests and the fallout that resulted from the impeachment of his former deputy Rigathi Gachagua, the president is leaving nothing to chance.

Political analyst Martin Andati says old habits die hard and so Ruto is copying from the Kanu style book. Buy, induce and cajole to get as many people on your side as possible but the only challenge is that it may not translate into numbers.

“Preliminary numbers in Baringo, according to government sources indicated that Gideon Moi’s numbers were at 80 per cent, and so he feared losing a seat to Gideon, who has been in Azimio,” says Andati.

Sources also indicate that President Ruto is going to create two positions of deputy prime cabinet secretary to allow new appointments into the Cabinet. One slot will most likely go to Rift Valley and the other to the coast region.

Although the Cabinet can only accommodate 22 people, a recent ruling by the courts allowed advisors and others to attend the meetings.

That opened room for appointment of deputy PCMs who may not even go through the vetting process because they are treated as administrative positions.

Two ministries will be given to appointees from Rift Valley. Other demands that were reportedly agreed the allocation of five permanent secretaries slots and two ambassadorial posts.

Policies such as the mandatory deductions for the affordable housing projects and the Social Health Insurance Fund (SHIF) have given the opposition fodder to campaign against him. Forced disappearances, killings and abductions also made Ruto’s government very unpopular.

Political scientist Prof Amukoa Anangwe however thinks President Ruto and his campaign team will pull out all stops to win the seats because of the repercussions of failure. They cannot afford to hand the momentum to their rivals barely two years to the next General election.

The aggressive campaign style the president is applying should be a cause of worry to the opposition, whose unity is at stake because of the raids Ruto is making in their ranks. He bagged Raila’s ODM party last year and by extension almost all Luo Nyanza votes and has also tried to win other areas like Coast and Western through cabinet appointments.  

‘These politicians are cut from the same cloth. Don’t be surprised if Ruto is having discussions with Kalonzo and others through emissaries. The Wiper party leader has denied talking to Ruto, but Deputy President Kithure Kindiki has been very open about it. There is some sense of worry among them,” says Anangwe.

Anangwe argues that the opposition will be emboldened, especially if they bag the battle round seats of Malava, Mbeere and Magarini. He also thinks Kenya Kwanza could have heavily lost in Baringo had Kanu chairman Gideon Moi contested for the senatorial seat.  

It is argued that losing a seat in a region perceived to be his main support base was unfathomable and so he went to all lengths to avoid a scenario where he could be seen as weak among his own people.

 “They must win all of them or at least a majority of them, especially in the battleground areas, otherwise they will hand the impetus to the opposition, which will be very dangerous because of the short time remaining before the 2027 elections,” says Anangwe.

The political science scholar is looking forward to very tightly contested by-elections, because the opposition will also not want to send a bad signal of losing elections to their supporters, especially now when they claim to be working as a team. 

Rigathi Gachagua (DCP) and Kalonzo Musyoka (Wiper) are well aware of the powerful forces that could infiltrate their ranks and rock the boat, as was the case this week, when Mwingi West MP Charles Nguna from Wiper defected to President Ruto’s UDA.

The defection appeared to have been perfectly timed because it happened simultaneously with the Wiper Party National Delegates meeting that Kalonzo had convened at Uhuru Park in Nairobi. The Wiper meeting was also attended by all opposition leaders allied to the so-called united opposition.

President Ruto hailed Nguna for defecting to UDA, because the move will allegedly help his constituents get development projects from the government, which they were not getting when he was in the opposition but analysts say it was a corded message to the opposition that they are vulnerable.

President Ruto has been desperately trying to establish a strong foothold in Ukambani and the defection of the second-term MP must have therefore come through a lot of effort and horse-trading.

And after decamping to UDA, Nguna told Mwingi West voters to ‘tighten their belts’ because of the busy two weeks ahead when president Ruto will be holding political meetings and launching projects in the area.

Prof Peter Kagwanja, president of the Africa Policy Institute also thinks the panic resulted from the one-term campaign and intelligence reports suggesting that central region will not vote for Ruto.

And so he has crafted three alternative counter strategies to recover the lost votes, one being to weaken leaders from the Mt Kenya region, especially Gachagua and his followers.

Then there is the 41 against one plot, which has also been tested in the past to isolate central Kenya voters and the concretization of the Nilotic votes, similar to the Kamtusa group of the 1990s but now including lake Nilotes.

It is being done more scientifically, through the art of political management and manipulation. Bantu groups in Ukambani, Western and Kisii that Gachagua is mobilizing, will be dealt with through a divide-and-rule strategy.

The analysts argue that although President Ruto may not wrestle Ukambani voters from Kalonzo, he needs numbers, however smal,l from all regions in the country, including Gachagua’s Mt Kenya to top up what he will get from his strongholds.

That is why all by-election seats, including those to be contested by county assembly members, are important for both President Ruto and the opposition across the country.

Anangwe lists Mbeere as one area where the President will be keen to assess the damage that Gachagua’s ‘One Term Campaign’ as done to his popularity in the area and the larger Embu county, where UDA swept almost all seats in the 2022 parliamentary elections.

Indeed, the current UDA party chairperson is Embu governor Cecily Mbarire and much is expected from her in terms of delivering the Mbeere seat to the ruling party. Deputy president Kiture Kindiki and former Mbeere North MP Geoffrey Ruku are also under pressure to win it for Kenya Kwanza.

Mbeere is a crucial testing ground for Kenya Kwanza to see whether they have indeed lost ground at the grassroots level in Mt Kenya East, as opinion polls suggest.  Ruto will now also know if the ‘one term’ noises have sunk in to a level where he cannot garner votes in 2027.

“Both sides cannot take this by-election lightly. It is also a litmus test for the opposition. It is just about two years to the election. If Kenya Kwanza loses, public perception will change in favour of the opposition. Once a population takes a position, it takes a very big and expensive effort to change it,” says Anangwe.

He has also noticed that because of pressure, President Ruto is now bending backwards to work with leaders like Gideon Moi, Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga when two years ago he was dismissing them as dynasties who were opposed to the so-called hustlers or the hoi-polloi.

In Malava, Anangwe’s hunch is, UDA will carry the day because of the use of money, extra-legal tactics and political machinations that could come into play. President Ruto’s hatchet man Farouk Kibet has camped their dishing out money at public gatherings.

This week, while campaigning for UDA candidate David Ndakwa, Farouk, who comes from nearby Chepsaita village on the Uasin Gishu side, casually gave out one million to convert what he said was a store into a classroom.

 He said, Na hii store ni yanini hii. Situjenge classroom hapo. Mimi natoa million moja ya darasa (What is this store for. I’m giving one million to construct a classroom), to a round of applause and ululation by women.

Anangwe also thinks it will be easy for UDA to win in Malava, because voters there have a history of voting for MPs allied to sitting governments, apart from the late Soita Shitanda who was elected on Wamalwa Kijana’s Ford Kenya party ticket in 1997.

Although Stanley Kenga lost the Magarini seat to Harrison Kombe by 21 votes in the 2022 elections, Anangwe argues that a lot of parameters have changed since the last elections and the opposition should therefore not expect their candidate to get the same support without working hard for it.

“Once you lose, those votes are no longer there. People move on because you are out of the picture by virtue of not being their MP. Hanging around when you are not an MP is also very expensive because people expect handouts and so you have to start afresh to win a by-election,” says Anagwe.

Although political pundits expect the broad-based government to win the two by-election seats of Ugunja and Kasipul both in Raila’s Luo Nyanza backyard, commentator Owidi Odoyo cautions that the ODM candidate Boyd Were could come in a distant third position.