OMWENGA: Matiang’i and the politics of a country hungry for change

Jubilee deputy leader and presidential candidate Fred Matiang’i's interview with Jeff Koinange was not just another political interview. It was an opportunity for him to make the case why he is best suited to lead the country in our quest for a third and final liberation.

He made that case, even as some bloggers took to social media to predictably peddle a different narrative, complete with distortions and outright falsehoods.

One centred around his no nonsense work ethic which these bloggers desperately tried to cast as suggestive of the man becoming a ‘dictator’ if Kenyans give him the nod and he becomes our sixth president.

It’s a fact Matiang’i has for years been defined by his exemplary work as a consequential Cabinet Secretary in the Uhuru Kenyatta government. He was the state’s enforcer of order — efficient, firm, sometimes unyielding — the very qualities and work ethic one must have to be effective in any government, especially ours. That legacy is both his armour and his Achilles’ heel.

It renders him hands down the only one among those vying who can effectively lead the country at this juncture; a juncture where flowery, pretense and chicanery will not work.

The Gen Z already see this quality in him and is the reason more and more of them are warming up to him beyond the core who long ago accepted him as their choice. He just needs to dance carefully in the stage, especially the Linda Mwananchi movement, where he shares space with its leaders though in the context of birds of the same feather flocking together.

The interview began with the economy — not as a policy debate but as a lived crisis. Kenyans are not discussing inflation in abstract terms; they are negotiating survival.

Matiang’i’s critique was pointed: the government has become so ineffective and its leaders so inept people have just lost trust in government. As he has promised previously, the former Interior CS reiterated restoring trust in government will be a priority if he is elected as our sixth president.

That restoration of trust in government will not come in a vacuum. Rather, in a series of consequential policy formulations, decisions and actions not unlike those he carried out as a consequential CS, but more impactful having only performed with one of his hands tied in the back; he was good, but he was not the president.

As Matiang’i hinted during the interview, the old order is comfortable with top‑down authority and the quiet assumption that the state knows best — an attitude the current government broadcasts daily with its “don’t disturb us while we eat” posture. Gen Z rejects that entirely.

It demands transparency, participation and accountability without negotiation. To move between these worlds is to navigate fundamentally different definitions of leadership.

A leadership which the former CS has demonstrated he has: discipline, competence and a believer in institutions, coherent policy and delivery over theatrics. T

hese are qualities that resonates with Kenyans exhausted by political gimmickry. But competence alone will not satisfy a generation that wants not just results but a seat at the table where decisions are made.

When confronted with the more controversial chapters of his tenure, Matiang’i did not apologise; he contextualised. Decisions, he said, were made in the national interest under difficult circumstances.

It was a defence rooted in necessity, not contrition — a reminder that like everyone else vying for the presidency, including the incumbent, each one is a product of the old order but what makes him unique, is his track record as to what he did compared to the rest.

One cannot but grade him far above his opponents and that is the case he made during the interview and will continue to make. This is the space Matiang’i occupies. To the old guard, he is familiar — a custodian of stability.

To Gen Z, he is the bridge from the old to the new — a leader who understands how government works and can be effective. He is a leader who understands their suffering and has a solution to make their lives better alongside the rest of the country.