Raila holds consultative meeting with Busia ODM leaders
Former Prime Minister and Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) leader Raila Odinga has held a strategic meeting with elected officials from Busia County.
The meeting reflected on the two-and-a-half-year review of party progress and governance collaboration, a rare insight into internal party dynamics amid Kenya’s competitive political landscape.
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Attendees included Governor Paul Otuoma and MPs Joseph Oyula and Raphael Wanjala, elected in 2022 under ODM, highlighting the party’s stronghold in Busia, where it secured five out of seven parliamentary seats, per IEBC data, showcasing its regional influence despite national challenges.
The meeting’s timing, just over a year before the 2027 elections, suggests a calculated effort to strengthen party unity and address local issues like infrastructure (e.g., power outages in Butula), potentially countering skepticism from critics about ODM’s future viability.
This comes a day after Raila faulted police roadblocks mounted across Nairobi for preventing him and other Kenyans from attending the 35th Saba Saba Day commemoration at Kamukunji Grounds on Monday.
“I was going to join Kenyans at Kamukunji to commemorate Saba Saba Day. Unfortunately, as you all know, there are roadblocks all over town, which have made it difficult for people to move to Kamukunji. In the circumstances, I have decided to talk to the media here at Serena,” he said.
Raila, who addressed the media from Serena Hotel in Nairobi on Monday, July 7, 2025, said the extensive security barricades had made it impossible to access the historic venue. Reflecting on the historical roots of the Saba Saba movement, Odinga recalled past struggles for multi-party democracy in Kenya.
“In 1982, when some of us wanted to form a political party, the regime then went to Parliament and introduced a law to make the country a single-party state by introducing Section 2A that made it illegal to form any other political party,” he said.
He decried that by 1990, he had already been detained twice for pushing for democratic reforms, adding that those who dared to challenge the ruling regime were vilified and persecuted.
