Two weekends, two fronts: How DCP is fighting on both sides of the Atlantic
Nyandarua Senator John Methu leading grassroots rallies in Laikipia County 8
While Gachagua prepares his first diaspora rallies in Spokane, Methu held the party line in Laikipia — and the weekend split reveals a political operation maturing beyond its founder
By Joseph Wanjohi
Democracy for the Citizens Party ran two simultaneous political operations yesterday — Nyandarua Senator John Methu leading grassroots rallies in Laikipia County while party leader Rigathi Gachagua, now in the United States since 28 August, rested ahead of his first formal diaspora engagement in Spokane, Washington, which begins on 4 September — a deliberate division of labour that signals DCP has outgrown its status as a one-man political vehicle.
The optics matter as much as the logistics. In Kenyan politics, an absent leader is a vulnerable leader. Opponents read absence as weakness. Supporters read it as abandonment. The opposition to managing a fifty-day international tour — the longest absence from domestic politics by any senior opposition figure in this election cycle — is therefore not merely logistical. It is a test of whether the structures built around Gachagua over the past year can hold weight independently.
Yesterday’s answer, at least from Laikipia, was yes.
Methu’s schedule was disciplined and public: a church service at ACK Ngaruru in the morning, a rally at Kinamba Town at 2.30 pm and a closing engagement in Sipili at 4 pm. The itinerary was released in advance, the venues confirmed, and the meetings held — the basic blocking and tackling of a functioning party machine operating without its principal. This is not nothing. Kenyan political parties have a long history of dissolving into factional confusion the moment their leader leaves the room. DCP has not done that.
Gachagua’s US tour is structured with equal deliberateness. After arriving at JKIA on the evening of 26 August and touching down in America two days later, he is spending the first ten days resting with his wife, Pastor Dorcas Rigathi — a period he described as essential after what he called sustained campaigning without a break. “I have not had time to spend quality time with her. I like to take ten days to rest, meditate, pray, read and re-energise,” he said before departing. The candour was strategic. It humanised the absence and framed it as personal restoration rather than political retreat.
From Spokane on 4 September, the formal diaspora programme begins. He will move from Washington to Portland, Oregon, then Kansas, Dallas and finally Boston — five cities, five distinct Kenyan diaspora communities, six weeks of sustained political and fundraising engagement. The Kenyan diaspora in the United States remitted approximately KSh370B in the first seven months of this year alone. That figure is not lost on a party that needs resources to fight a government-backed incumbent in every corner of a country with 47 counties and thousands of wards. Building relationships with diaspora communities is, in practical terms, building the financial infrastructure of a 2027 campaign.
Gachagua was unusually candid about his motivations before departing. “When I’m here, there is a lot of influence — Methu tells me this, others tell me that. This pulls me one way, this the other way. I want to make decisions without undue influence,” he said. The remark was self-aware and politically significant. It acknowledged that DCP’s leadership dynamics are not static — that Methu and others have grown into genuine institutional roles — while making clear that strategic decisions ultimately remain with Gachagua. The fifty days in America are, in part, a thinking retreat.
Back in Laikipia, the ground Methu is tending was won at considerable cost. On 29 July, twenty-four sitting MCAs from Laikipia and Nakuru counties formally defected to DCP at Gachagua’s Wamunyoro residence. Among them was the Laikipia County Assembly Deputy Speaker, Anthony Theuri Wambui — a defection that penetrated not just the political periphery but the institutional structure of county governance. Those MCAs bring ward-level operational capacity: voter registration knowledge, polling day logistics, community networks that no amount of national messaging can replicate. Holding their loyalty during Gachagua’s absence is the immediate task. Yesterday’s rallies were about doing exactly that — showing the newly joined MCAs that the party is present, active and worth the political risk they took by crossing over.
UDA has not surrendered Laikipia quietly. The Service Party’s Laikipia East MP Mwangi Kiunjuri remains in the field, warning that defection without delivery is no guarantee of voter support. “If you are elected on UDA as MP, senator or governor and you have not delivered, don’t think you can decamp to DCP and be sanitised. You will remain as useless,” he said. The warning is directed at the defectors, but the audience is the voters — and it is a message DCP cannot afford to ignore.
The next five weekends will tell a revealing story. Each Saturday, Gachagua will be addressing Kenyan diaspora communities in American cities. Each Sunday, Methu and the DCP ground operation will be in the field somewhere in Mt Kenya. Whether the two fronts hold together — whether the diaspora dollars flow home and the wards stay green — will determine whether DCP arrives at 2027 as a serious national force or a regional protest movement that peaked too early.
The weekends have started. The count has begun.
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