Ol Kalou offers Gachagua, Kuria a new battle ring

Former Cabinet Secretary Moses Kuria is leading the United Democratic Alliance’s (UDA) campaign to fill the Ol Kalou parliamentary seat left vacant by the death of David Kiaraho.

In doing so, he is spoiling for a fight with former Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua, who is the leader of Democracy for Citizens Party (DCP) and one of the most influential leaders in the Mt Kenya region.

Although former ruling Jubilee is also fielding a candidate in the by-election, the contest is seen as mainly between DCP and UDA.

Kuria was last week given the mandate by the President to lead Ol Kalou by-election campaign for the ruling party and it’s an opportunity for him to face Gachagua head on. Interestingly, his brother Alloise Kinyanjui is a Gachagua ally, and the party’s preferred candidate for Juja parliamentary seat in next year’s election.

Kuria has in the past accused Gachagua of hounding him and other Mt Kenya region Cabinet Secretaries out of Ruto’s Cabinet. That was before Gachagua was himself kicked out of the government in 2024.

That bad blood now animates a contest that is less about Ol Kalou’s dairy farmers and railway lines than about who emerges the political supremo in the Mt Kenya region.

After UDA nominated Samuel Muchina, a man who worked as Kiaraho’s personal assistant, Kuria said that the candidate is “alive to all the issues of Ol Kalou.” 

 “The people have sent a message that this is about issues and about Ol Kalou. It’s a big statement for those who think that this will be about emotions and sloganeering.”

Kuria hopes to replicate the grassroots strategy he implemented in Juja’s by-election in 2021, when his candidate on a minor party ticket defeated the ruling Jubilee candidate.

He has promised to “unveil many projects in the next two months,” citing a railway line to Gilgil and Nyahururu, a university, housing project and a hospital.

“These are not overnight projects,” he insisted. “It is affirmation that work is ongoing and has been ongoing while others dwelt on emotions and have actually nothing to show.”

Kuria believes that he will outsmart Gachagua’s narrative of betrayal in Ol Kalou, and in the Mt Kenya region in general.

“We can vote for a second term for Ruto and then seek the presidency again, instead of voting for someone different and waiting for ten years,” he said. 

Since Gachagua was impeached in late 2024, he has been  building his DCP party around a single narrative: that Mt Kenya’s loyalty has been taken for granted and its interests diluted in Ruto’s government. In Ol Kalou, he is testing whether that grievance can be converted into votes.

“I’m very happy with what happened in Ol Kalou,” Gachagua said after his party’s nomination process arrived at candidate Samuel Kamau Ngotho. “The future of a party is determined by free, fair and credible nominations. I have been around and saw party primaries since 1992. Ol Kalou was a litmus test.”

Gachagua added: “Once the DCP nominations are over, the DCP candidate is the next MP.”

While Gachagua’s party did not field a candidate in the November 2025 Mbeere North by-election and supported DP’s Newton Karish, Kuria sponsored Duncan Mbui, a candidate who DCP had picked before the Opposition reached consensus.

Gachagua would later blame Kuria for “being used by the State” to divide the Opposition and deny them victory.

Kuria believes the very same reasons that saw Gachagua, through DP, lose in Mbeere North will see his party lose in Ol Kalou by election.

And then there is the third force. The Jubilee Party, under deputy leader Jeremiah Kioni, has announced it will field a candidate and expects “our partners in the united opposition to rally behind this candidate.” Jubilee has picked Wilson Kigwa as its man for the contest.

“Following consultations guided by the Party Constitution, the National Elections Board has settled on Eng. Wilson Kigwa as the Jubilee Party candidate,” the statement read.

In its statement, the party said it is heading into the by-election “ready, united, and stronger than ever,” signaling renewed efforts to consolidate its support in the region.

Kioni has called the contest “a clear litmus test of our collective commitment to trust, cohesion, and the broader objective of presenting a united front.”

While Kioni believes that the contest is a three horse race, others believe the former ruling party is a largely a historical residue since even Kiaraho had defected to UDA.

Ol Kalou is an agricultural constituency. Politics there runs through dairy prices, transport costs and household liquidity.

Fuel prices land with immediate force on farm budgets. For UDA, that is dangerous because it complicates the argument that being in government brings prosperity. For Gachagua, it is an opportunity because economic pain feeds the narrative of neglect.

When the votes are counted, Ol Kalou will not simply be choosing a successor to Kiaraho. It will be answering a question about the two men still fighting to define Mt Kenya: whether the region now bends to Kuria’s machine, with its pragmatism and state-backed projects, or rallies to Gachagua’s grievance, with its emotional voltage and its bet that injury can be turned into new political centre.