17/08/2026
My heart is bleeding at the events preceding Homa Bay Linda Mwananchi's scheduled rallies today.
I condemn, without reservation, the use of our young sons and daughters to propagate violent attacks in Homa Bay, in a bid to stop Linda Mwananchi from conducting their series of rallies. I equally condemn, in the strongest terms, the assault on journalists Fred Ooko and Brian Ongoro of AFP, who were attacked and had their equipment destroyed simply for doing their jobs. An attack on the press is an attack on every Kenyan's right to know. Attacking a political convoy is an attack on the right of every Kenyan to move, assemble, and associate freely – rights our Constitution guarantees and that too many of our people have paid for in blood.As a leader born in a political family, and conscious of the history of our country, I cannot help but see a dangerous pattern in Luo Nyanza, where a region whose sons and daughters paid the ultimate price for us to get democracy has turned around and is now being used to stifle the very democracy those before us fought so hard for. Who is keen on dividing us? Who stands to benefit?
My late father, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, spent a lifetime being punished – through detention, through the banning of his party, through decades in the political wilderness – simply for insisting that Kenyans deserved a real choice at the ballot. He was not alone. Argwings-Kodhek did not live to see old age. Tom Mboya was cut down by an assassin's bullet. Prof. Crispin Odhiambo Mbai, son of Homa Bay, a University of Nairobi political science professor, chaired the critical Devolution Committee at the Bomas constitutional review conference, and was killed in 2003, roughly five months into the tense constitutional deliberations that began in April 2003. The devolved constitutional order he championed was eventually realized in 2010, seven years after his death.We must take stock as a community. We have had men and women who believed political disagreement Should