Mwai Kibaki
Mwai Kibaki, C.G.H. was born on 15 November 1931. He was the third President of Kenya, serving from December 2002 to April 2013.
Mwai Kibaki was first elected President in 2002 after beating Uhuru Kenyatta, now his successor as Kenya’s 4th President.
Mwai Kibaki was previously Vice-President of Kenya for ten years from 1978 to 1988 under President Daniel Toroitich arap Moi. He also held cabinet ministerial positions in the Kenyatta and Moi governments, including a widely acclaimed stint as Minister for Finance (1969–1981) under Kenyatta, and Minister for Home Affairs (1982–1988) and Minister for Health (1988–1991) under Moi.
Kibaki also served as an opposition Member of Parliament from 1992 up to his election in 2002 after his two unsuccessful bids for the presidency in 1992 and 1997. He served as the Leader of Official Opposition in Kenya’s Parliament from 1998 to 2002 after he came 2nd place in the 1997 Kenyan Presidential Election with his party, the Democratic Party of Kenya (DP).
Mwai Kibaki Early life and education
Kibaki was born in 1931 in Gatuyaini village, Othaya division of Nyeri County . He is the youngest son of Kibaki Githinji and Teresia Wanjiku. He was baptised as Emilio Stanley by Italian missionaries in his youth, but he has been known as Mwai Kibaki throughout his public life.
Mwai Kibaki’s history is not literary documented but oral narrations maintain that his early education was made possible by his much older brother-in-law, Paul Muruthi, who insisted that young Mwai should go to school instead of spending his days grazing his father’s sheep and cattle and baby-sitting his little nephews and nieces for his older sister.
Kibaki turned out to be an exemplary student.
He attended Gatuyainĩ School for the first two years, where he completed what was then called Sub “A” and sub “B” (the equivalent of standard one and two or first and second grade).
He later joined Karima mission school for the three more classes of primary school. He later moved to Mathari School (now Nyeri High School) between 1944 and 1946 for Standard four to six, where, in addition to his academic studies, he learnt carpentry and masonry as students would repair furniture and provide material for maintaining the school’s buildings.
He also grew his own food as all students in the school were expected to do, and earned extra money during the school holidays by working as a conductor on buses operated by the defunct Othaya African Bus Union. After Karima Primary and Nyeri Boarding primary schools, he proceeded to Mang’u High School where he studied between 1947 and 1950. He passed with a maximum of six points in his “O” level examination.
Influenced by the veterans of the First and Second World Wars in his native village, Mwai Kibaki considered becoming a soldier in his final year in Mang’u. However, a ruling by the Chief colonial secretary, Walter Coutts, which barred the recruitment of the Kikuyu, Embu and Meru communities into the army, shattered his military aspirations. Kibaki instead attended Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, where he studied Economics, History and Political Science, and graduated best in his class in 1955 with a First Class Honours Degree (BA) in Economics.
After his graduation, Kibaki took up an appointment as Assistant Sales Manager Shell Company of East Africa, Uganda Division. During the same year, he earned a scholarship entitling him to postgraduate studies in any British University.
He consequently enrolled at the prestigious London School of Economics for a B.Sc in public finance, graduating with a distinction. He went back to Makerere in 1958 where he taught as an Assistant Lecturer in the economics department until 1960. In 1962, Kibaki married Lucy Muthoni, the daughter of a Church Minister, who was then a secondary school Head Teacher.
Mwai Kibaki
Political life of Mwai Kibaki
In early 1960, Mwai Kibaki left academia for active politics by giving up his job at Makerere and returning to Kenya to become executive officer of Kenya African National Union (KANU), at the request of Jaramogi Oginga Odinga (who went on to become Kenya’s first Vice President). Kibaki then helped to draft Kenya’s independence constitution.
In 1963, Mwai Kibaki was elected as Member of Parliament for Donholm Constituency (subsequently called Bahati and now known as Makadara) in Nairobi.
His election was the start of a long political career. In 1963 Mwai Kibaki was appointed the Permanent Secretary for the Treasury. Appointed Assistant Minister of Finance and chairman of the Economic Planning Commission in 1963, he was promoted to Minister of Commerce and Industry in 1966. In 1969, he became Minister of Finance and Economic Planning where he served until 1982.
In 1974, Kibaki, facing serious competition for his Doonholm Constituency seat from a Mrs. Jael Mbogo, whom he had only narrowly and controversially beaten for the seat in the 1969 elections, moved his political base from Nairobi to his rural home, Othaya, where he was subsequently elected as Member of Parliament.
He has been re-elected Member of Parliament for Othaya in the subsequent elections of 1979, 1983, 1988, 1992, 1997, 2002 and 2007.
When Daniel arap Moi succeeded Jomo Kenyatta as President of Kenya in 1978, Kibaki was elevated to Vice Presidency, and kept the Finance portfolio until Moi changed his ministerial portfolio from Finance to Home Affairs in 1982.
When Mwai Kibaki was the minister of Finance Kenya enjoyed a period of relative prosperity, fueled by a commodities boom, especially coffee, with remarkable fiscal discipline and sound monetary policies.
Life in oppositon
Mwai Kibaki fell out of favour with President Moi in 1988, and was dropped as Vice President and moved to the Ministry of Health. He seemingly took the demotion in his stride without much ado.
Kibaki’s political style during these years was described as gentlemanly and non-confrontational. This style exposed him to criticism that he was a spineless, or even cowardly, politician who never took a stand: according to one joke, “He never saw a fence he didn’t sit on”.
He also, as the political circumstances of the time dictated, projected himself as a loyal stalwart of the ruling single party, KANU. In the months before multi-party politics were introduced in 1992, he infamously declared that agitating for multi-party democracy and trying to dislodge KANU from power was like “trying to cut down a (Mugumo tree) fig tree with a razor blade”.
It was therefore with great surprise that the country received the news of Mwai Kibaki’s resignation from government and leaving KANU on Christmas Day in December 1991, only days after the repeal of Section 2A of the Constitution, which restored the multi-party system of government.
Soon after his resignation, Kibaki founded the Democratic Party (DP) and entered the presidential race in the upcoming multi-party elections of 1992. He was criticised as a “johnny come lately” opportunist who, unlike his two main opposition presidential election opponents in that year, Kenneth Matiba and Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, was taking advantage of multipartyism despite not having fought for it.
Kibaki came third in the 1992 presidential elections. He then came second to Moi in the 1997 elections and so became the leader of the official opposition with the Democratic Party being the official opposition party in Parliament.
December 2002 elections
Kibaki teamed up with KANU orphans who had decamped from KANU to protest against President Moi’s choice of Uhuru Kenyatta as the KANU’s presidential candidate
Raila Odinga propelled Mwai Kibaki’s bid to clinch the presidency by declaring “Kibaki Tosha” This was after he formed LDP which teamed up with Kibaki’s NAK to form NARC.
On 27 December 2002, Mwai Kibaki and NARC won a landslide victory over KANU, with Kibaki getting 62% of the votes in the presidential elections, against only 31% for the KANU candidate Uhuru Kenyatta. This ended four decades of KANU rule, KANU having hitherto ruled Kenya since independence
On 26 January 2007, President Kibaki declared his intention of running for re-election in the 2007 presidential election. On 16 September 2007, Mwai Kibaki announced that he would stand as the candidate of a new alliance incorporating all the parties who supported his re-election, called the Party of National Unity (PNU).
The parties in his alliance included KANU, DP, Narc-Kenya, Ford-Kenya, Ford People, and Shirikisho.On 30 September 2007, a robust and much healthier President Kibaki launched his presidential campaign at Nyayo Stadium, Nairobi.
Post election Violence
The election was held on 27 December 2007.
Samuel Kivuitu declared Kibaki the winner by 4,584,721 votes to Odinga’s 4,352,993, placing Kibaki ahead of Odinga by about 232,000 votes in the hotly contested election with Kalonzo Musyoka a distant third.
One hour later, in a hastily convened dusk ceremony, Kibaki was sworn in at the grounds of State House Nairobi for his second term. This arose tension and led to protests by a huge number of Kenyans who felt that Kibaki had refused to respect the verdict of the people and was now forcibly remaining in office
Opposition supporters saw the result as a plot by Kibaki’s Kikuyu tribe, Kenya’s largest, to keep power by any means. The tribes that lost the election were upset at the prospect of five years without political power, and anti-Kikuyu sentiment swelled, spawning the 2007–2008 Kenyan crisis, as violence broke out in several places in the country, started by the ODM supporters protesting the “stealing” of their “victory”, and subsequently escalating as the targeted Kikuyus retaliated.
As unrest spread, television and radio stations were instructed to stop all live broadcasts. There was widespread theft, vandalism, looting and destruction of property, and a significant number of atrocities, killings and sexual violence reported.
The violence continued for more than two months, as Mwai Kibaki ruled with “half” a cabinet he had appointed, with Odinga and ODM refusing to recognise him as president.
The Country was only saved by the mediation of former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan with a Panel of “Eminent African Personalities” backed by the African Union, the United States and the United Kingdom.
Following the mediation, a deal, called the national accord, was signed in February 2008 between Raila Odinga and Mwai Kibaki, referred to as the “two Principals”. The accord, later passed by the Kenyan Parliament as the National Accord and Reconciliation Act 2008 provided inter alia for power-sharing, with Kibaki remaining President and Raila Odinga taking a newly re-created post of Prime Minister.
On 17 April 2008, Raila Odinga was sworn in as Prime Minister, along with a power-sharing Cabinet, with 42 ministers and 50 assistant ministers, Kenya’s largest ever. The cabinet was fifty percent Kibaki appointed ministers and fifty percent Raila appointed ministers, and was in reality a carefully balanced ethnic coalition. The arrangement, which also included Kalonzo Musyoka as Vice President, was known as the “Grand Coalition Government”.
The Legacy of Mwai Kibaki
The Mwai Kibaki presidency was about reviving and turning round country after years of stagnation and economic mis-management during the Moi years.
Kenya’s economy in the Kibaki years experienced a major turnaround.GDP growth picked up from a low 0.6% (real −1.6%) in 2002 to 3% in 2003, 4.9% in 2004, 5.8% in 2005, 6% in 2006 and 7% 2007, then after the post election chaos and Global Financial Crisis—2008 (1.7%)and 2009 (2.6%), recovered to 5% in 2010 and 5% in 2011.
The telecommunications sector boomed. Rebuilding, modernisation and expansion of infrastructure began in earnest, with several ambitious infrastructural and other projects,such as the Thika Superhighway.
President Mwai Kibaki also oversaw the creation of Kenya’s Vision 2030, a long term development plan aimed at raising GDP growth to 10% annually and transforming Kenya into a middle income country by 2030, which he unveiled on 30 October 2006.
The Kibaki regime also saw a reduction of Kenya’s dependence on western donor aid, with the country being increasingly funded by internally generated resources such as increased tax revenue collection.
Kibaki’s push for free primary education remains an important achievement, as will the revival of key economic institutions such as the Kenya Meat Commission and the Kenya Cooperative Creameries, ruined during the Moi-era
The passage of Kenya’s transformational 2010 Constitution, successfully championed by President Kibaki in the Kenyan constitutional referendum in 2010 was a major triumph and achievement, which went a long way into addressing Kenya’s governance and institutional challenges
Peaceful handover of power in 2013 marked the end of his presidency and of his 50 years of public service and active politics.
The Mwai Kibaki Presidency did not do nearly enough to address the problem of tribalism in Kenya.
Though president Mwai Kibaki was never personally accused of corruption, and managed to virtually end the grabbing of public land rampant in the Moi and Kenyatta eras, he was unable to adequately contain Kenya’s widely entrenched culture of endemic corruption.
Mwai Kibaki’s Family
President Mwai Kibaki is married to former First Lady of Kenya Lucy Muthoni. They have four children: Judy Wanjiku, Jimmy Kibaki, David Kagai, and Tony Githinji.
They also have three grandchildren: Joy Jamie Marie, Mwai Junior and Krystina Muthoni. Jimmy Kibaki did have, so far unsuccessful, designs to be his father’s political heir.
In 2004, the media reported that Mwai Kibaki has a second spouse, whom he allegedly married under customary law, Mary Wambui, and a daughter, Wangui Mwai. State House in response released an unsigned statement that Kibaki’s only immediate family is his wife, Lucy and their four children.
In 2009, Mwai Kibaki, with Lucy in close attendance, held an odd press conference to re-state publicly that he only has one wife. The matter of Kibaki’s alleged mistress, and his wife’s usually dramatic public reactions thereto, provided an embarrassing side-show during his presidency.
Ms. Wambui, the rather popular “other woman”, who enjoyed the state trappings of a Presidential spouse and became a powerful and wealthy business-woman during the Kibaki Presidency, frequently drove Lucy into episodes of highly embarrassing very publicly displayed rage.
Ms. Wambui, despite opposition from Kibaki’s family, led publicly by Kibaki’s son, Jimmy, and despite Kibaki’s public endorsement and campaign for her opponent, succeeded Mwai Kibaki as Member of Parliament for Othaya in the 2013 General Election.
Kibaki enjoys playing golf and is a member of the Muthaiga Golf Club.
He is a practicing Catholic and belongs to the Roman Catholic Church.
References: Wikipedia
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