Sifuna’s reply was curt.
“One can only conduct a coup when the office has a holder. The holder of this one long absconded duty. So, this is not a coup. I am only filling a glaring vacancy which is causing party programs to stall,” he said.
Amimo then followed up with a question on whether the party leader Raila Odinga was aware of the goings-on, to which the newest coup plotter in town responded in the negative.
To his credit, the now Nairobi senator also made it clear at the press conference that he would only fill the “vacancy” until the party leader either asked him to stand down or confirmed him to the position.
Ababu had been hurling political epithets at Raila for several weeks before this “coup”, which is what prompted Sifuna’s action.
However, as fate would have it, the ODM chief was destined for a function in Busia — Ababu’s homeland — just a few days after this incident.
As is normal with Raila, he still needed to play “chanda na pete” politics with Ababu that week in Busia, before returning to Nairobi to address the matter of the fire in his political house. Sifuna was asked to stand down and he obliged.
Not many people took note of this June drama at Orange House. In fact, given that Sifuna had no godfathers within the party or any known powerful network to prop him up, many within ODM dismissed his coup as just youthful nuisance by an unknown quantity. Indeed, appearing on a TV show, Ababu arrogantly asked “who is Sifuna?”
But this incident, for those keen enough provided a window into the Sifuna brand of politics, which would emerge after a few more years.
I can summarise it simply as “impatient with things not getting done and loyal to the party leader to a fault”. If anyone was waiting for confirmation that the bold always rise, Sifuna was confirmed as party SG days before the 'Handshake' between then President Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila.
The young man who had made a move to stop his party boss from being dragged through the mud by its own SG and had stood down to await further orders from his boss had finally arrived in the coveted office; this time through the front door.
Interestingly, Sifuna’s foray into elective politics using his beloved ODM vessel didn’t quite go according to plan. Trying his hand at the party nominations in Kanduyi constituency, Bungoma county; he was disillusioned by the way the exercised had been conducted and flew to Nairobi to lodge an appeal at party headquarters.
While there, someone noticed that a smart aleck within the party had bizarrely issued a direct ticket for Nairobi Senate run to one utterly colourless fellow named Chapia Chapia, and immediately realised Sifuna would be a perfect fit for it.
The process of retrieving that ticket and issuing it to Sifuna was what Moses Wetang'ula (now National Assembly Speaker) would call “noisy and messy”.
With a very short time to get ready for the contest, the lawyer still managed nearly 700,000 of votes cast in the Nairobi senatorial run, a massively respectable show, even though I am firmly on the side that believes that a more credible election would have had him as winner.
Not letting the disappointment of 2017 weigh him down, like a true general, Sifuna set out to transform ODM by expanding its grassroots reach, revamping the structures, mainstreaming science and technology in its operations, and empowering the county offices so that the party would be “mission ready”.
By the time the 2022 general election arrived, the he had built up enough political, operational and streetwise experience to make his own Senate run a little more organised than in 2017. Well, at the very least, there was no messy fight for the ticket.
But it is the period after the August polls that has brought out the firebrand Sifuna. For the record, he is a nephew of legendary parliamentary debater and firebrand, Lawrence Sifuna, one of those MPs that former Attorney General Charles Njonjo christened “the seven bearded sisters”.
In a way, the younger Sifuna, by lineage, was always destined to be a “bearded sister” in the current Senate. I could add Migori Senator Eddy Gicheru Oketch to make them two for the time being. The Azimio protests in the last weeks have provided him a perfect ground to showcase his political talents.
Certain events have contributed to this.
First, because the two ODM deputy party leaders, former governors Hassan Joho and Wycliffe Oparanya do not hold elective offices and, therefore, are not as effective as they were when they did.
Second, ODM chairman John Mbadi appears to be still be sulking after being bypassed for Minority leader position in the National Assembly. This has ensured that Sifuna has found himself filling the huge gap left by the three top offices.
It has essentially been an invitation to step up as Raila’s right hand man on the streets, which he has taken up with the enthusiasm of a tilapia to water.
I have stated before that the Azimio leader's support base is one acquired in the trenches, and the senator’s emergence as “Raila’s hands” in battles with the police and in pursuit of the common good has endeared him, especially to Luo voters, who consider anyone watching the back of their leader as a community hero.
It is difficult to tell what ambitions Sifuna may hold for the future, but the way he has navigated the delicate multi-ethnic Nairobi politics paints a picture of a man who knows what he wants and how to get there. He is hugely popular with the youth and female voters and is emerging as a favourite of “the Raila tribes”.
His Nairobi base also insulates him from the future dynamics of his homeland in western Kenya, where a multi-front political battle for supremacy will soon be in the offing between Wetang'ula, Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi, former CS Eugene Wamalwa and Senate Majority Whip Boni Khalwale.
Sifuna’s biggest strength lies in his credibility and subscription to clean politics. He is not only loyal to Raila, but practises the same political purity that has enabled the former Prime Minister to be a fixture of Kenya’s politics for decades.
Since it is the support base that embraces a leader and pushes him to the next step, the political expectations on him will be huge. But those who learn at the feet of legends, like Sifuna does at the feet of Raila, often find a well-beaten path to help them find their way onwards.
