A requiem mass for a fallen lawmaker is supposed to be a solemn affair. But in Kenya’s political theatre, even the dead cannot rest in peace when the living have scores to settle. On Wednesday, at the burial of the late Ol Kalou MP David Njuguna Kiaraho in Nyandarua County, President William Ruto and his impeached former deputy Rigathi Gachagua shared a podium for the first time this year — and promptly turned it into a political battlefield that laid bare the fractures threatening to reshape Mt Kenya politics ahead of 2027.
The setting was Captain Grounds in Ol Kalou, where thousands of mourners had gathered to pay their respects to Kiaraho, a legislator remembered for his independence and conviction. Gachagua, who now leads the Democracy for Citizens Party (DCP), was there with a pointed message: the late MP had refused to vote for his impeachment in 2024, even under intense pressure. “When I was being hounded out of office, he received threatening messages from abroad and was coerced to vote for the impeachment, but he refused. That is why I am here to honour him,” Gachagua told the crowd, his voice carrying the weight of a man who has turned his political humiliation into a rallying cry.
What followed was a masterclass in political theatre. Gachagua, far from the broken figure his opponents expected after the historic 2024 impeachment, looked directly at the President and declared: “You managed to hound me out of office, but as you can see the people of Mount Kenya still love me. I am still in people’s hearts.” The crowd roared its approval. Then came the dagger: “We overwhelmingly voted for you, but ahead of the 2027 polls, you will have to convince us to give you a second term. You betrayed my people and hence lost the respect you had gotten.”
It was a breathtaking display of defiance — a former deputy publicly telling a sitting president that his mandate has expired in the hearts of the very people who propelled him to power. And the reception Gachagua received in Nyandarua, deep in the Mt Kenya heartland, suggests this is not mere bravado. The former deputy president is positioning himself not just as a critic, but as the authentic voice of a region that feels betrayed by the Ruto administration.
The drama did not end with Gachagua. Nyandarua Senator John Methu took to the podium and delivered what may be the most audacious speech any sitting senator has directed at a Kenyan president in recent memory. “Nakuheshimu lakini sikuogopi” — I respect you, but I do not fear you — Methu told Ruto, before listing a catalogue of broken promises: the unfinished Kariamu-Shamata road, the stalled Ol Kalou Stadium that was promised within ten months. When allies of the President attempted to silence Methu by switching off his microphone, the crowd erupted in fury, forcing organisers to restore it. The senator pressed on, undeterred.
President Ruto, for his part, fell back on familiar calls for decorum and respect at funeral gatherings — a position that, while defensible on protocol grounds, rang somewhat hollow given the depth of grievance on display. The President finds himself in an increasingly uncomfortable position in Mt Kenya. His aggressive push to merge Kenya Kwanza affiliate parties into UDA is meeting resistance, with leaders like National Assembly Speaker Moses Wetang’ula dismissing the exercise as “blackmail.” Meanwhile, his budding alliance with ODM — cemented through Raila Odinga’s absence at the African Union Commission — has complicated the political calculus, with ODM’s own internal fights over zoning arrangements threatening to unravel the coalition before it can be formalised.
The Nyandarua showdown matters because it reveals the true state of play in what will be Kenya’s most consequential political contest since 2013. Gachagua has successfully recast the impeachment narrative — once framed as a constitutional accountability measure — into a story of ethnic betrayal and political persecution. Whether that narrative is fair is debatable. That it resonates deeply in Mt Kenya is not.
For Ruto, the danger is not just Gachagua. It is the broader unravelling of his Mt Kenya support base at the very moment he needs it most. The senator’s microphone moment — when the crowd essentially overruled the President’s allies — was a small but telling metaphor: you can cut the mic, but you cannot silence the discontent.
As Kenya hurtles toward 2027, the battle lines are being drawn not in Nairobi’s boardrooms but at funerals and church fundraisers across the highlands. Gachagua is betting that Mt Kenya’s sense of grievance will translate into votes. Ruto is betting that the power of incumbency and coalition-building with ODM will be enough to hold the centre. One of them is wrong. The mourners at Captain Grounds on Wednesday seemed to have already made up their minds.
