Communist Party of Kenya

The party was established in 1992 as the Social Democratic Party (SDP) by Johnstone Makau.[2] The party did not nominate a presidential candidate in the December 1992 general elections, and received only 177 votes in the National Assembly elections.

Charity Ngilu joined the party before the 1997 elections, and was selected as the party's presidential candidate. She finished fifth in a field of 15 candidates with 7.9% of the vote. The party also won 15 seats in the National Assembly. Ngilu left the party after the elections, and in 2001 was succeeded as party chairman by James Orengo.[2] He stood as the party's presidential candidate in the 2002 elections, but received just 0.4% of the vote; the party also lost all 15 seats in the National Assembly. Its vote share was reduced to 0.4% in the 2007 general elections, in which it fielded 24 candidates. It also failed to win seats in the 2013 elections, receiving only 0.15% of the vote with seven candidates.

In 2019, the party changed its name from SDP to Communist Party of Kenya[3] Under its communist mandate, the CPK sought to "win popular power by organising the masses and freeing them from the capitalist ethnic and financial political orientation that we are in now."[4] With the change, it took a revolutionary position and adopted a Marxist/Leninist ideology as a communist party.[5]