Jubilee Party has a problem with political memory. The party has a less reliable memory when it comes to the politicians who carried it through its difficult seasons. Again and again, those who helped build the Jubilee Party have discovered that their political usefulness has an expiry date.
William Ruto is the biggest example. He helped Uhuru Kenyatta build the Jubilee coalition, campaigned with him twice and helped deliver the presidency in 2013 and 2017. Yet when the question of succession came, Jubilee closed the door on him. Ruto left, built UDA and used it to win the presidency in 2022. The man who had expected to inherit the Jubilee machine ended up building another one and using it to capture State House.
Now there is Jeremiah Kioni. After Jubilee’s crushing defeat in 2022, when the party had lost its grip on power and many of its politicians were looking for somewhere else to go, Kioni remained in the trenches. As Secretary-General, he became one of the party’s bold defenders during its factional battles and its struggle to remain politically relevant. Kioni stayed when Jubilee was no longer fashionable, defending an organisation whose political fortunes had collapsed around him.
Then the party found a new political project. Fred Matiang’i emerged as Jubilee’s presidential standard-bearer, and Kioni was among those who helped position him for that role. Yet in January 2026, the party removed Kioni as Secretary-General and replaced him with Moitalel Ole Kenta, moving Kioni to Deputy Party Leader.
None of this is unusual in the formal life of a political party. Leaders are replaced, structures are reorganised and new political calculations are made. But Jubilee’s history makes the timing difficult to ignore. The party has repeatedly shown how quickly political relationships can be rewritten when the centre of gravity shifts.
That is the story worth examining even as Fred Matiang’i takes over the party from Uhuru Kenyatta. Is the former ruling party capable of building an institution that remembers those who built it, or will it remain a party in which every new season produces new insiders while yesterday’s loyalists become yesterday’s news?
