Musalia Mudavadi’s “Malava Seat” Speech: When National Leaders Forget Who They Work For

Yesterday, 23rd November 2025, you looked straight into the cameras and told the nation that the upcoming Malava by-election will either “build you or break you”. That it will determine whether you “truly have influence here in Western”. That if your candidate loses, it will have “serious political consequences for both you and Wetang’ula”.

My brother, I laughed until I cried. Then I cried because I stopped laughing.

Let me help you with something you seem to have forgotten in the air-conditioning of Karen and the five-star hotels of Nairobi: Malava is not your personal laboratory for ego measurement.

The people of Malava are not laboratory rats you are using to test whether your political remote control still has batteries.

Those voters waking up at 4 a.m. to go to the shamba do not care whether Musalia Mudavadi’s political CV looks shiny in 2027. They care whether they can sell their maize at a decent price, whether their child will find a job after Form Four, whether the road to Chegulo will stop swallowing motorbikes when it rains.

Yet here you are, chest-thumping that a small constituency of less than 60,000 registered voters must carry the political destiny of two national heavyweights on its shoulders.

“Malava will build me or break me.”

No, sir. Malava will not build you. You were already built (and paid for) in May 2018 when you boarded that famous flight to the “handshake” and left ANC dying at the airport. Malava will only decide whether it wants to continue being treated as a bargaining chip in your endless chess game with Wetang’ula, Ruto, and whoever is next on the negotiation table.

You see, when you say “don’t embarrass me”, you are talking like a colonial district commissioner who believes the native must vote correctly so that the white man does not lose face in front of his peers.

This is not 1952, baba. This is 2025. The people of Malava are not here to massage your influence index.

The audacity!

A whole Prime Cabinet Minister, number three in the land, telling a rural constituency: “Your democratic choice will determine whether I still matter in Western.”

So the purpose of their vote is no longer to choose the leader who will fight for their tarmacking, their hospital drugs, their youth fund? Their vote is now a public opinion poll about Musalia Mudavadi’s clout?

Let me tell Malava people something simple:

On by-election day, nobody will be checking whether you have embarrassed Mudavadi or Wetang’ula. The ballot is secret for a reason. Vote for the person who will wake up the next morning thinking about Malava, not the person who will wake up calculating how many more bargaining chips they now have in State House meetings.

Because if Malava “breaks” Mudavadi tomorrow, he will still have his official cars, his bodyguards, his office, his pension, and his next negotiation.

But if Malava keeps voting to massage the egos of big men in Nairobi, it will still have its floods, its poverty, and its forgotten promises.

So vote peacefully, vote wisely, and vote for Malava.

Not for Mudavadi’s feelings.

Not for Wetang’ula’s scoreboard.

Just for Malava.

And to the Prime Cabinet Minister: relax.

Your political career will survive even if Malava decides, for once, to put itself first.

After all, empires have fallen for less, and you still woke up this morning as number three in the Republic.

Malava owes you nothing.

You, however, still owe Malava five decades of broken promises.

Let the people choose