By The Weekly Vision Political Desk
The battle over President William Ruto’s running mate in the 2027 General Election has opened a largely hidden front inside the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), involving Cabinet Secretary Hassan Joho, National Assembly Minority Leader Junet Mohamed, and the role of former ODM Secretary-General Edwin Sifuna in the mix and, eventually, CS Wycliffe Oparanya.
At the heart of the political intrigue is an arrangement that The Weekly Vision has established through multiple investigative sources. According to political accounts independently relayed to this publication, Junet and Joho had taken the initiative to advance Joho’s prospects of becoming President Ruto’s running mate. Under the alleged political understanding, Junet would do much of the work that Joho could not comfortably undertake himself from inside ODM and the broader political establishment.
Joho had previously served as one of ODM’s deputy party leaders. But his appointment to the Cabinet placed him inside the Executive and subjected him to the constitutional and ethical obligations governing State officers, including requirements concerning political neutrality, impartiality and the separation of public office from partisan political activity.
That did not mean Joho ceased to be a politician or surrendered his political ambitions. Rather, according to the sources, it meant that a direct campaign by a serving Cabinet Secretary to manipulate ODM’s internal machinery in pursuit of his own place on a future presidential ticket would have presented serious political and legal questions.
This, the sources say, is where Junet became crucial. As a senior ODM figure and National Assembly Minority Leader with considerable influence within the party, while also operating within the political environment created by the broad-based arrangement between ODM and Ruto’s administration, Junet was reportedly positioned to advance the political objective from a place Joho could not openly occupy.
The alleged understanding was straightforward: Joho would remain the intended beneficiary, while Junet would help create the political conditions within ODM necessary to make an ODM-backed Joho candidature possible.
That meant confronting one major obstacle: Edwin Sifuna. Sifuna had become the most prominent internal voice against the deepening ODM relationship with Ruto’s administration. As Secretary-General, he occupied one of the party’s most strategically important offices, controlled a powerful administrative platform and represented a growing constituency within ODM that opposed turning the broad-based arrangement into a formal pre-election bargain. For those pushing an eventual Ruto–ODM ticket, Sifuna was therefore more than an internal dissenter. He was an obstacle.
The Weekly Vision has established that political discussions surrounding the campaign against Sifuna’s continued tenure as Secretary-General overlapped with the wider effort by Junet and Joho allies to position ODM for negotiations over the 2027 ticket. Sources familiar with the manoeuvres say Junet’s role was not simply that of an ODM official supporting an administrative disciplinary process. His influence inside the party was allegedly part of a wider political calculation in which a less resistant party leadership would make it easier to negotiate ODM’s position with State House.
On February 11, 2026, ODM’s National Executive Committee, where Junet also sits, relieved him of the Secretary-General’s position at a meeting in Mombasa. He challenged the decision before the Political Parties Disputes Tribunal, which found that he had not been accorded a fair hearing, forcing ODM back to the drawing board.
The party then returned to its internal dispute-resolution mechanisms before the NEC voted again on June 22 to remove him. The second process ultimately survived the legal and administrative challenge. The fact that ODM’s leadership had to fight the battle twice is politically significant.
For nearly five months, the party’s senior leadership remained locked in a struggle over one of its most important offices. According to sources familiar with the political calculations around that fight, the removal of Sifuna was also viewed as important in reducing internal resistance to an eventual ODM bargain with Ruto, a bargain in which Joho was, at least initially, expected by some of those involved to emerge as the party’s preferred candidate for Deputy President.
Joho’s own political activity at the Coast provided the public side of the equation. In the early months of 2026, he intensified consultations with Coast leaders, holding a series of meetings widely interpreted as groundwork for a possible national bid. Leaders from the region openly argued that Joho should be considered for the deputy presidency, presenting him as a politician capable of bringing the Coast, sections of the Muslim vote, younger voters and other constituencies into a Ruto-led ticket.
Yet the most consequential part of the campaign, according to our sources, was taking place away from the public rallies. It was the attempt to make ODM itself the vehicle through which Joho’s candidature could be taken to State House. Junet’s importance in that strategy lay in both his party position and his political reach.
The Weekly Vision’s political sources say Joho’s candidature encountered growing resistance within the circles that would ultimately matter in determining Ruto’s running mate. The concerns were not necessarily about his ability to dominate Coast politics. Joho remained a powerful regional figure. The problem was the national calculation.
Infotrak polling released in July found Joho enjoying strong support at the Coast as a potential running-mate option, but his numbers did not translate into comparable national strength. Other contenders, particularly Deputy President Kithure Kindiki, performed considerably better nationally. For State House, the calculation was larger than the Coast.
A running mate would have to add votes without creating new political liabilities or destabilising other regional calculations. According to the sources, intelligence and political assessments increasingly suggested that Joho was not the candidate around whom State House was prepared to build the 2027 ticket. It was at this point that the alleged Junet–Joho political initiative began to unravel.
Sources familiar with ODM’s internal discussions say that once it became apparent that Joho was unlikely to secure acceptance at State House, Junet and other senior party figures began looking for an alternative candidate who could preserve ODM’s larger bargaining objective: securing the deputy-presidential position on a Ruto-led ticket. The objective, in other words, survived even as the preferred beneficiary changed.
Oparanya offered a different political package. Like Joho, he was a long-serving ODM figure who had subsequently joined Ruto’s Cabinet. But his Western Kenya base presented a different electoral calculation. His candidature could be framed not simply as an individual ambition but as a broader regional bargain capable of bringing Western Kenya into a Ruto–ODM equation.
By August, Junet was openly advancing that argument. He publicly maintained that if UDA provided the presidential candidate, ODM should supply the deputy president. More significantly, he began identifying Oparanya as the preferred ODM candidate.
Sifuna’s continued presence at the centre of ODM was considered problematic because of his open resistance to a deeper pre-election accommodation with Ruto. Once the campaign against Sifuna succeeded, however, Joho did not automatically inherit the political prize. State House had its own calculations. And when those calculations turned against him, Junet’s role changed from promoting the original beneficiary to protecting the larger bargaining position.
That explains why Sifuna’s removal and Oparanya’s subsequent elevation should not be read as two entirely unrelated developments, nor should Oparanya be portrayed as the original target of the political manoeuvres surrounding the Secretary-General’s office. According to the investigative accounts reviewed by The Weekly Vision, Joho was the initial political beneficiary contemplated by the Junet-led initiative.
Oparanya emerged later when that project ran into the hard political reality of State House acceptability. Sifuna, meanwhile, represented the political current neither project wanted. His resistance to the broad-based arrangement had made him a powerful symbol for ODM members who believed the party risked losing its identity by moving too close to Ruto. His removal weakened that internal institutional resistance, even though it did not eliminate his political influence.
Indeed, his profile outside ODM’s top administrative office has continued to grow. The irony is that the battle to remove him may have succeeded institutionally while failing to extinguish the political constituency he represented. For Joho, however, the consequences have been more immediate. The man who, according to sources, was initially at the centre of an internal initiative to prepare ODM for his eventual consideration as Ruto’s running mate now finds himself watching another former Raila Odinga lieutenant occupy that political space.
Junet’s journey tells the story. He allegedly began by helping create the conditions for Joho’s political bid. He ended by publicly marketing Oparanya. The explanation, according to the sources, lies in the moment State House concluded that Joho was not the political fit it wanted. That did not destroy the larger strategy. It merely changed the candidate. And that may be the clearest lesson from ODM’s post-Raila power struggle. The fight was never simply about Joho, Oparanya or Sifuna as individual politicians.
It was about control of ODM’s bargaining machinery: who would decide the party’s price in a 2027 alliance with William Ruto, who would present that price to State House, and ultimately, who would benefit from the deal.
Joho’s bid, according to the political accounts examined by The Weekly Vision, was the first major attempt to answer that question. Oparanya’s emergence suggests the bargaining machine survived even after its original candidate lost the confidence of the people whose approval mattered most.
