Kalonzo Musyoka has reached for one of Kenya’s most enduring political promises as he seeks to give the opposition a renewed sense of purpose ahead of the 2027 General Election: the journey to Canaan, he insists, is not over.
Speaking to the media in Nairobi on Monday, October 19, the Wiper Patriotic Front leader invoked the memory of the late former Prime Minister Raila Odinga, presenting his death not as the end of a political struggle but as a summons to complete it. His message was at once a tribute to a departed ally, a declaration of opposition resolve and an unmistakable attempt to position himself at the centre of Kenya’s unfolding political contest.
“I must say it plainly, the journey to Canaan is still on,” Kalonzo declared.
The words carried a significance beyond their biblical imagery. For years, Canaan was Raila’s shorthand for the promised land of political change, democratic renewal and a country in which ordinary citizens would no longer feel excluded from power. With Raila gone, the question of who inherits that promise has become inseparable from the struggle to shape the opposition’s future.
Kalonzo appears determined that neither the promise nor its political ownership should be surrendered.
“I want Raila to know that we’ll get to Canaan,” he said, in a striking appeal to the memory of a man with whom he shared years of political alliances, electoral campaigns and the disappointments of opposition politics.
A rebuke to the government and its political opportunists
Beneath the solemnity of his tribute lay a sharper political accusation: that the struggle Raila represented risks being appropriated by people who neither shared its sacrifices nor remain faithful to its principles.
Kalonzo has previously warned against what he described as leaders “dancing on Raila’s grave”, accusing political rivals of attempting to exploit the former Prime Minister’s memory for their own advantage. His latest invocation of Canaan reinforces that argument, placing democratic reform, electoral justice and the dignity of ordinary Kenyans at the heart of the opposition’s claim to Raila’s inheritance.
President William Ruto and his Kenya Kwanza administration remain the principal targets of the opposition’s wider criticism. Kalonzo has challenged the independence of Parliament, alleging that the National Assembly has been “captured”, and urged legislators to exercise their constitutional powers rather than surrender their responsibilities to the executive.
His indictment is directed at more than the President. It is also an implicit rebuke to opposition figures who have abandoned the trenches for government positions, while he presents himself as a politician who has remained steadfast through successive electoral seasons. The contrast is calculated: loyalty against opportunism, constitutionalism against political expediency, and the unfinished business of reform against the comfortable arithmetic of power.
Yet Kalonzo’s challenge is not without its own complications. Invoking Raila’s legacy may help him consolidate support among voters who identified with the former Prime Minister, but it does not automatically translate into a unified opposition or a winning presidential coalition. The question of who leads that coalition, and on what terms, remains central to the contest approaching in 2027.
His message to the country: democracy is the destination
For Kalonzo, Canaan is not merely a campaign slogan resurrected for a new election cycle. He describes it as a democratic Kenya in which citizens from every corner of the republic feel represented, included and heard.
“Canaan will be a land not just flowing with milk and honey, but in modern days, a democratic state,” he said.
It is an ambitious definition, shifting the metaphor away from the material promise of prosperity towards the institutional foundations of freedom. It speaks to constitutional safeguards, electoral credibility, accountable leadership and the right of citizens to participate in determining their country’s future.
He has also urged young Kenyans to exercise their constitutional freedoms, organise politically and demand accountability, placing the responsibility for democratic renewal beyond the political class alone.
“We must hold together because Raila did not fight for himself. He fought so that the ordinary Kenyan would have a voice,” Kalonzo said.
The remark is perhaps the clearest expression of his political ambition: to turn mourning into mobilisation and memory into a mandate.
Whether Kenyans will accept him as the custodian of that inheritance remains to be seen. But as the 2027 contest draws nearer, Kalonzo has made his proposition plain. Raila may be gone, but the political promise he helped popularise remains available for those prepared to fight over its meaning.
And in Kalonzo’s telling, the journey is far from finished. Canaan is still ahead.