Karua blasts Ruto at Raila Odinga’s funeral in a no-holds-barred takedown that’s peeled back the layers of decorum at the opposition lion’s graveside send-off, exposing what she calls a blatant hijack of mourning for political manoeuvring.
Martha Karua, the iron-willed Narc-Kenya leader and Odinga’s 2022 running mate, didn’t hold back in a blistering interview on KTN News, accusing President William Ruto of spinning a fairy tale of shared ideals with the late Agago while steamrolling the true spirit of the man they buried.
“If you listen to Dr William Ruto, you would think that he and the late Raila Odinga shared a lot in common, but absolutely not, because he stands for something totally different,” Karua fired, her voice steady as a courtroom cross-exam, cutting through the post-funeral fog like a machete through thicket.
The Bondo burial on October 20 was meant to be a tapestry of tributes – Luo drummers pounding rhythms of resistance, elders in beaded regalia whispering proverbs of perseverance – but Karua painted it as a stage-managed spectacle where unity chants drowned out dissent.
She zeroed in on a “choreographed group from within ODM” who, she claimed, turned eulogies into endorsements of Ruto’s overtures, forgetting the black armbands and the scent of fresh earth.
“They were only singing praises of the union with the State… seemed to forget that they were at a funeral. Was it a ceremony to endorse the union between ODM and Dr Ruto, or was it the burial of the Right Hon. Raila Odinga?” Karua asked, her eyes flashing with the fire that’s defined her from the 2007 post-election inferno to today’s hustler-bashing broadsides.
It’s a raw nerve in Azimio’s tender wound: Odinga’s death on October 14 left a leadership chasm, and Ruto’s surprise CGH award plus whispers of a 2027 pact have some salivating and others seething. Karua, 68 and unbowed after decades in the trenches – from detentions under Moi to brokering the 2018 handshake – felt the snub personally.
As running mate, she expected a slot to honour her partner’s legacy of unyielding reform, not this echo chamber of sycophancy. “They could have allowed one or two members from the opposition side to speak.
It would also have made sense to give me time to speak as his running mate,” she lamented, hinting at a deliberate blackout to stifle “divergent opinions” and brew “political capital”.
ODM’s machinery hums with succession buzz – Joho eyeing the throne, Orengo as elder statesman – But Karua’s blast revives the “third way” thunder from 2022, when she and Odinga railed against Ruto’s “deep state” grip.
As Siaya’s hills cradle Odinga’s rest, Karua’s stand reminds us: in Kenyan politics, funerals are forums, and silence is surrender. Will her blast splinter ODM further or rally the real radicals?