The man who waited too long: How Edwin Sifuna talked himself out of ODM
There was a time, not too long ago, when Edwin Sifuna could walk into any town in Kenya and the crowd would part like he was Moses at the Red Sea ,minus the staff, plus a microphone.
He had that rare gift: the kind of national appeal that makes ordinary politicians grin with envy and party bosses nervous in equal measure.
Honestly, there were moments when it felt like the man was one good rally away from being measured for State House curtains.
But politics, like a matatu on a Friday evening, waits for no one. And Sifuna, for all his charisma, seems to have missed his stage.
His real undoing was not ODM turning against him. Parties turn against people every other day in this country.
His undoing was hesitation. He neither fought hard enough to keep his grip on the party machinery, nor did he have the nerve to walk out of the door on his own terms before the door was shown to him.
Contrast that with his political cousin-in-arms, Rigathi Gachagua, who read the writing on the wall early, packed his bags, and built his own house.
Sifuna, on the other hand, dithered and now the Registrar of Political Parties has made it official that he is out as ODM Secretary-General.
Whether he now runs to a higher court to contest it is, frankly, beside the point. Courts can restore titles; they cannot restore momentum.
Every month spent in legal back-and-forth is a month his supporters spend wondering whether to keep the flag flying or start folding it up.
And here is the harder truth: even if his allies are right that a new outfit is coming, timing has already eaten most of the advantage.
Gachagua built his party while the iron was still hot. Sifuna is talking about building his after the iron has cooled, been rained on, and started rusting.
Launching a new party is one thing; touring all 47 counties to sell it before 2027 is an entirely different marathon and one has to ask, plainly, does he have the legs and the war chest for it?
Perhaps the most worrying shift, though, is not legal or logistical. It is geographical.
A man who once commanded a national stage has, in recent months, been spotted retreating into distinctly Bukusu political circles, trading national headlines for local funeral podiums, occasionally jostling for the microphone with local dramatists like Didmus Barasa. That is not a lateral move. That is a demotion dressed up as home-coming.
Kenya has enough Bungoma funeral orators; it only occasionally produces genuine national icons, and Sifuna was, for a stretch, one of them.
Still, as the old men at the village barazas like to say, it is not yet Christmas. The Kibichori Oracle is never wrong, rarely sober insists all is not lost for Sifuna.
What happens next hinges entirely on how quickly he can repackage himself: sharp, calculating, and willing to make the bold move he avoided the first time round. Kenyan politics has forgiven bigger stumbles than this one. But it rarely forgives a second hesitation.
𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝒘𝒓𝒊𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝒊𝒔 𝒅𝒊𝒓𝒆𝒄𝒕𝒐𝒓 𝒐𝒇 𝒄𝒐𝒎𝒎𝒖𝒏𝒊𝒄𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏𝒔, 𝑩𝒖𝒏𝒈𝒐𝒎𝒂 𝒄𝒐𝒖𝒏𝒕𝒚.
