“Expulsion to nowhere” screamed the Daily Nation headline of Friday, September 8, effectively capturing the futility of the week’s supposed political highlights that ultimately exacerbated the opposition’s already weakened position.
ODM’s National Executive Committee resolved to expel five of its legislators – Gem MP Elisha Odhiambo, Suba South’s Caroli Omondi, Lang’ata’s Phelix Odiwuor, Bondo’s Gideon Ochanda as well as Kisumu Senator Tom Ojienda – over close ties with President William Ruto of the Kenya Kwanza coalition.
In a statement to newsrooms, the five were accused of “violating the ODM constitution and the Political Parties Act 2011 by openly associating with and supporting activities of a rival political outfit, as well as opposing lawful decisions made by party organs. The five are thus deemed to have resigned, and the party will commence the process of removing them from the register.”
In theory, once the names have been removed from the register, the five will lose their seats and by-elections will be called. However, in practice, the reality is different. In 2021, nominated Senator Isaac Mwaura who had been expelled from the Jubilee Party was reinstated by the High Court in Nairobi which ruled that due process had
not been followed.
Speaking to the near impossibility of losing their seats, Gem’s Odhiambo was defiant stating, “I can tell you I am still the MP, and I will serve until 2027.” For John Mbadi, the ODM chairman, he is clear as to the gist of the matter, “I do not see any problem with the law because it is explicit. It is our justice system that has issues that need to be fixed. What I also fault is that the process is too cumbersome.”
But the person tasked to be the referee, Anne Nderitu, who is the Registrar of Political Parties, waves play on, stating
that, “it is a quasi-judicial process and must fulfil the principle of the Constitution and Political Parties Act. The tedious process is meant to ensure fairness to both political party and errant members.”
In essence, the expulsion of the MPs only gives them something to keep busy as they will now move to appeal the expulsion or start a possibly lengthy judicial review process first at the Political Parties Dispute Tribunal (PPDT) and eventually through the courts.

Weak opposition
In the 2022 elections, Raila’s Azimio la Umoja coalition of which ODM is a member bagged 173 seats while Ruto’s Kenya Kwanza coalition secured 164 seats with 12 lawmakers voted in as independents. Kenya Kwanza currently enjoys a majority in the 349-member Parliament, a shift that occurred following Ruto’s presidential victory, as legislators from Azimio-affiliated parties crossed over to Kenya Kwanza by formalizing their allegiance through postelection agreements.
This was despite the respective parties not exiting their pre-election agreements first as demanded by the law. The continued bending of the law continues the bad manners that ironically the Parties Act sought to curb. The effectiveness of the party system in a democracy depends on the relationship between the government and the
opposition parties being clearly defined.
So that the party in power governs and the opposing party contributes to the creation of policy and legislation through constructive criticism and putting forward their policies as alternatives. When there is no distinction between the ruling party and the opposing party, it is the citizens or voters who suffer as parliamentary oversight is crippled.
The three arms of government that form the structure of the national government in Kenya are the Executive, Legislature and Judiciary. Currently, in Kenya, the opposition is virtually dead as it neither has the numbers
in the House nor the intellectual muscle (apparent in the weakness in its arguments in the House) to take on President Ruto and his people inside the legislature and outside in the various political machinations.
With the Kenyan legislature now a rubber stamp for the Statehouse, it has been left to the Judiciary to provide checks and balances to the Executive. New regulations or laws are now routinely opposed through the courts, sometimes by the Law Society of Kenya (LSK) and sometimes by people like Busia Senator Okiya Omtata (the irony of a lawmaker so helpless he can’t do the opposing in the House) and a variety of other activists as well as by civil society organisations.
Examples of situations when the judicial process has played an opposition role are the halting of the executive order that lifted the ban on logging as well as the stopping of the appointment of 50 Chief Administrative Secretaries (CASs). In both cases, the High Court stopped the President in his tracks. So, the message which should be clear to
all and sundry, is that if you wish to oppose Executive overreach in Kenya, please go to court, not to the National Assembly or the Senate.