ODM secretary general Edwin Sifuna’s entry into active politics was purely accidental. It almost never happened.
According to him, he was in his village watching the results of the 2013 elections stream live, when he felt disgusted by the treatment his mentor, Raila Odinga, was receiving.
Sifuna decided that in his own small way, he would do something about it. When the election period was done, he travelled to Nairobi and went to seek an appointment with the ODM boss, with only one thing in his mind, “I am reporting for duty, please deploy me!”
What many outside the core of political parties don’t realise is that when a party leader running for president has just lost an election, the thousands of hangers-on who usually swarm his space and crowd his office are gone, and the incoming traffic is uniquely thin.
In his mind, Sifuna wanted to change things, and it speaks volumes about Raila’s own belief in the youth that just a couple of years later, he threw Sifuna into the deep end as ODM secretary general, to lead the party’s reform agenda, and position it for the next challenges.
But let me go back a little. Having placed himself in ready-mode as Raila’s Rapid Deployment Political Force, it wouldn’t be long before Sifuna found some action.
In the period immediately after the 2013 polls, then ODM secretary general Ababu Namwamba had been fomenting rebellion against Raila’s leadership in the party, with everyone appearing powerless to act on it.
But in June 2016, just as he had done post-2013, Sifuna decided he had had enough of the insults and abuse directed at the party leader, and stormed Orange House to overthrow Ababu. Raila then asked him to stand down and placed Agnes Zani to act in the position, an order Sifuna, ever the dutiful soldier, obeyed.
It must have come as a surprise even to him in early March 2018, just before the famous Handshake, that he would be the next ODM secretary general. With the wisdom of hindsight, it appears to the discerning eye that the former Prime Minister was strengthening his party by filling all vacant positions before his deal with Uhuru.
It was a clever move, because in the life of the Handshake, when Jubilee seemed to flirt with implosion daily, the flawless ODM political and parliamentary infrastructure drove the Handshake agenda.
In that period, Sifuna vindicated himself as an indefatigable servant of his party and his leader, as well as the engine driving the reform within the party and its organs. You will never meet a man whose political obituary has been written more times. In the murky water of premier politics in Kenya, where backstabbing and gossip are on the menu daily, there have been periods of low moments when the political hyenas have declared Sifuna finished. The cat truly has nine lives.
I have been in conversations where the question is posed: What really does Raila see in Sifuna? My answer has always been in form a question too. What if Raila sees the younger version of himself, the daredevil firebrand, in him? Love him or hate him, the consensus across board is that the post of secretary general fits a hawk and hardliner more, because the holder is the last line of defence for the party and the leader.
I have been bemused when even political enemies across in the Tangatanga formation bemoan Jubilee secretary general Raphael Tuju’s refusal to “be like Sifuna”. It’s as if they all wish they had one like him.
In 2017, when Sifuna ran for the Nairobi Senate seat, he was such a late entrant that it was even a miracle he appeared on the ballot in the first place. He had first run in the ODM primaries in Kanduyi constituency, which were so poorly conducted that he was in fact coming to party headquarters to lodge a complaint after, when he was informed the party didn’t quite have a candidate for the Nairobi Senate seat. Did he mind taking it?
Well, as fate would have it, another claimant popped up, who dragged the case in court so long that the ODM candidate just made it with minutes to spare. Sifuna went ahead to garner 691,414 votes, clocking second in contest.
I am tempted to say two things. First, that this was the highest number of votes garnered by any Luhya candidate in the history of Kenyan elections, and two, that he probably would have hit a million and won by a landslide had the elections been credible.
But those who burn the midnight oil looking for the next Luhya kingpin, and those who conduct elections like we are in throwing livestock in a dip, will stone me. But if the next Luhya kingpin were to be based on number of votes, the ayes clearly have it!
The ODM secretary general will be on the ballot again for the Senate seat. His billboards around Nairobi suggest there will be no more last minute entrance into the race. I can’t vouch for the veracity of online polls, but each one I have seen polling the Nairobi Senate race shows Sifuna way ahead of the competition.
In all honesty, it would be a tragedy if Nairobi doesn’t send such an articulate debater, a fearless and uncompromising fighter and a reformer to the Senate.
The outgoing holder of the office has chosen infamy of anonymity in the House, ducking serious debate and abstaining from crucial votes. Without courage under fire in the senator, it is no wonder that the county’s performance was so dismal that the President unveiled the Nairobi Metropolitan Service to bring sanity to the city’s core operations.
In fact, the sitting Senator has been absent to explain to Nairobi residents what the whole NMS thing entails and whether or not it is an affront on elective democracy as stated in some quarters. Sifuna is not the type to hide from such matters.
There is no doubt in my mind that being the third senator of Nairobi, Sifuna will be a cut above the first two. His navigation of ODM in these delicate seasons, his loyalty to his ideals and firm stand in national and county issues, make him a choice whose time has come.
Just like he went to Raila in 2013 and asked to be deployed, and never tired in delivering in his mandate, he has come to Nairobians asking to be deployed.
I don’t think the city will find a better personality for senator. Take my word for it.
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