In the ruthless calculus of Kenyan power politics, there is a fine line between a strategic retreat and a full-blown rout.
Yesterday, as Senator Fatuma Dullo stood on a podium in Mandera beside UDM party leader Ali Roba and President William Ruto, she hoped the world would see a queen-in-the-making in motion.
Instead, seasoned political observers witnessed something far less regal: the quiet, desperate scramble of a political contender who has already conceded defeat.
Let us be unsparingly clear. Senator Dullo’s public declaration to contest the Isiolo gubernatorial seat on a UDM ticket is not a bold crossing of the Rubicon.
It is an act of political flight—a cynical escape hatch thrown open after the grim reality of opinion polls and grassroots loyalty crushed her ambitions.
For months, she played the sphinx: silent during the UDA Isiolo South by-election, conspicuously absent from the State House meeting of Isiolo leaders.
That was not stoic patience. That was the paralysis of a politician watching her own obituary being written in real time. The cold, hard truth is that Dullo did not leave UDA; UDA left her.
Party insiders, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirm that the ruling party’s decision to hand incumbent Governor Abdi Ibrahim Hassan—affectionately known as Governor Guyo—a direct ticket was never in doubt.
Why would it be? In the unforgiving arena of electoral politics, parties flock to winners.
And Governor Guyo is not merely winning; he is governing like a latter-day Pericles, transforming Isiolo from a parched afterthought into a beacon of tangible development.
Consider the evidence that Dullo dare not mention. Under Governor Guyo, Isiolo has witnessed a renaissance that makes her campaign promises sound like ghostly echoes from a forgotten manifesto.
Major infrastructural arteries now connect previously isolated wards. Healthcare reforms have turned crumbling dispensaries into functional clinics.
Water projects—once the stuff of campaign slogans—now flow through parched communities.
Agriculture is receiving serious investment, while employment opportunities for youth and robust support for women and small enterprises have turned the governor into a folk hero.
The masses are not merely fond of Guyo; they are fiercely, almost religiously, loyal.
Against this fortress of delivery, what does Senator Dullo offer? A change of party letterhead.
As one caustic pundit put it, “She has chosen to face the ballot rather than the nomination—because she knows the ballot offers the only slim chance of a consolation prize: a state appointment after her inevitable defeat.”
That is not bravery. That is the political equivalent of jumping from a sinking ship onto a lifeboat made of reeds.
The ancient Greeks had a word for such characters: phygopolemos—one who flees battle.
Dullo saw consecutive opinion polls giving Guyo a 20-point lead. She witnessed his grassroots machinery devour every by-election challenge.
And rather than wage a principled, uphill fight within UDA, she ran. Her move to UDM is a pre-emptive alibi, a way to blame the party, not her own unpopularity, when the 2027 results roll in.
Let us not romanticize this. Senator Dullo is not a tragic hero out of Plutarch.
She is a politician who read the numbers, saw the rising tide of Guyo’s popularity, and decided that losing under a different banner is easier than losing under the one that rejected her.
The people of Isiolo are not fooled. They have seen the new tarmac, felt the hospital beds, and drunk the clean water. They know who fights for them—and who fights only for survival.
When the ballots are counted in 2027, Governor Guyo will likely secure a second term not by accident, but by accomplishment.
And Senator Dullo? She will be left with a faded UDM sticker, a folder of unused talking points, and the faint, bitter smell of a battle she abandoned before the first shot was fired.
In politics, as in ancient Rome, fortune favors the bold. But it utterly abandons the fleeing.
Disclaimer| The views and opinions expressed in this article are author’s very own
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