Jeremiah Kioni: Kicking out Edwin Sifuna will split ODM into pieces
Jubilee Party Secretary General Jeremiah Kioni has cautioned the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) against any move to expel Nairobi Senator and ODM Secretary General Edwin Sifuna, warning that such an action would deeply fracture the party.
“Kicking out Sifuna from ODM is splitting the party into pieces, and you do not need anyone to explain that to you. Sifuna has managed, both when Baba Raila Odinga was alive and even after, to capture the imagination of a sizable section of ODM supporters.”
“If Mama Ida had not intervened yesterday and stopped the shenanigans within ODM, this country would be very different today. It would have marked the real beginning of the end of ODM,” Kioni said.
According to Kioni, this group includes ODM members who supported Raila Odinga’s decision to work with President William Ruto’s administration, as well as those who opposed it.
“These include those who agreed with Baba when he joined the broad-based government and those who disagreed with him. Baba was very careful, even in his last days, to ensure that he never lost the party or its followers. It was a very delicate balancing act, and he managed it well.”
For all practical purposes Jubilee as a political party has been dead for a long time now. The only time Kenyans hear anything related to Jubilee is when Uhuru Kenyatta goes somewhere or talk about other political parties like he has been doing lately. In fact, Jubilee has no MPs in parliament since their lone MP Sabina Chege who was nominated to parliament by Raila Odinga was the first to run from the opposition and join Ruto government. Jubilee did not say anything at that time but now they are furious that ODM may go with the William Ruto team in 2027 elections.
To keep their little corner in politics Jubilee is back to their war against Junet Mohamed now trying to bring a fist fight between Edwin Sifuna and the ODM leader in parliament. We have been there before, and it did not work for them at that time.
“We in Azimio were also betrayed by Junet Mohamed. He never participated in our demonstrations or the fight for the parliamentary majority. When we finally won, he worked with Wetang’ula to block the judgment. Today, he sits as a minority leader speaking for the majority. In parliamentary committees, he was responsible for giving slots meant for Jubilee members to other parties,” Kioni said.
Jubilee and opposition hopes were invested in ODM falling apart with Sifuna opposing any work with the broad-based government and any attempt to support Ruto in 2027 and Junet Mohamed and others going the other way. The first fireworks the opposition was hoping for after Sifuna was removed from the party was to ignite a tribal warfare between the Luos and the Luhyas, never mind that Junet Mohamed is actually not a Luo by ethnicity.
The opposition campaign would be to first take the Bukusu nation out of ODM and then pull out the rest of the Luhya community. They were crying with joy inside hoping that Edwin Sifuna and Junet Mohamed fights would drag ODM into a political garbage bag so it can be tossed in Lake Victoria. Sadly enough for them, that is not happening.
It seems the approach the ODM has taken to resolve the issues troubling their party may work pretty well. There was no hurried fighting meeting and now the ODM leadership is going through the right process to bring harmony into their party so they can focus on what the country needs not what individual leaders want for themselves.
Edwin Sifuna is not going anywhere and will work with other party leaders to deal with issues in the country today looking towards 2027. Political leadership like ODM now should be looking into what is coming up in the next budget instead of waiting until it is out and Kenyans are fighting in the streets for a livable budget for them.
John Mbadi the CS for Finance announced more than a month ago that he has posted budget proposals for public consultation. Not even a single MP has come out to talk to Kenyans about those budget proposals. Did Mbadi send the budget proposals to MPs? Has any MP even bothered to read those proposals?
The MPs are doing none of that and the opposition leaders are too busy with funerals to even know that budget proposals are out there for public consultation.
The opposition is now just praying that after the budget is released to the public the Gen Z Kenyan activists will come out to hold demonstrations against it and then Gachagua and Kalonzo Musyoka can pretend they are the ones leading the Gen Z demonstrations.
President Ruto could shock the opposition by negotiating a budget working with ODM and the public to come up with a budget embraced by Kenyans in June 2026 and the opposition will just crawl to the ground. That is what ODM needs to focus on now and forget silly party politics. ODM should be out there talking to Kenyans about what is in the budget and getting peoples suggestions on what needs to be added.
Kenyans actually know what they want and do not need to be spoon-fed with a budget that ruins their lives with high cost of basic things people need. That is what the opposition would have been dealing with right now, but since they are more interested talking about ODM and they do not have time for public consultations on the budget coming up in a few months and other MPs need to do that.
Let our children be! Ruto fires back at Gachagua over school placements
Because of the endless blunders by the opposition and Gachagua’s tribal madness, President Ruto is rolling around the country like there is no opposition party at all to challenge him on issues that are important to Kenyans and Ruto is enjoying opposition reckless innuendos like he is doing now with the opposition calls to tribalize national schools.
“How desperate can people be? Let our children be, let our children learn. Those children are Kenyans, wherever they come from, whatever community they belong to, they are our children — the children of Kenya,” Ruto said.
It is not only President Ruto telling the opposition off about making a mockery of Kenyan national schools, but other leaders who can see where Gachagua and his party are going with the war against national schools.
MP Kuria Kimani slams Gachagua over grade 10 placement remarks
Kimani, who is also the chairman of the parliamentary committee on finance, termed Gachagua’s remarks as retrogressive and meant to create confusion and anxiety among parents as schools open for the first term.
“Gachagua should go back and study his reasons for impeachment. It is due to such backward utterances that created the content of his removal from office,” Kimani said.
He said institutions of learning are free from tribal arrangements, adding that the education system dictates merit among learners.
“I have heard Rigathi Gachagua tribalising the last bastion of our values – national schools,” Kuria wrote. “He thinks he has the right to do so simply because he went to Alliance to supply milk when he was a District Officer in the area in the 90s.
If President Ruto can roll out the forthcoming national 2025/26 budget the way he is moving around the country now, he will walk right into his second term next year. That is the area where ODM needs to help Ruto and they have one of their main leaders, John Mbadi in charge of the budget.
The help Ruto and Kenyans need from ODM right now is for ODM to tell Ruto whom they are working with that they want real public consultation on the budget so that it will reflect what Kenyans want not just what the government is piling up on them.
If this so-called broad-based government can produce a popular budget that Kenyans identify with and support, then it is game over and that is fine for everybody including the opposition because they can then concentrate on funerals and their X Accounts which they read for themselves to look important.
