Mwai Kibaki
Emilio Stanley Mwai Kibaki was a Kenyan politician who served as the third President of Kenya from December 2002 until April 2013. He served in various leadership positions in Kenya's government including being the longest serving Member of Parliament in Kenya from 1963 to 2013. He was the fourth Vice-President of Kenya for ten years from 1978 to 1988 under President Daniel arap Moi. He also held cabinet ministerial positions in the Jomo Kenyatta and Daniel arap Moi governments, including as minister for Finance under Kenyatta, and Minister for Home Affairs and Minister for Health under Moi. Kibaki served as an opposition Member of Parliament from 1992 to 2002. He unsuccessfully vied for the presidency in 1992 and 1997. He served as the Leader of the Official Opposition in Parliament from 1998 to 2002. Following the 2002 presidential election, he was elected as the President of Kenya.
Early life and education
Kibaki was born on 15 November 1931 in Gatuyaini village, Othaya division of Kenya's then Nyeri District. He was the youngest son of Kikuyu peasants Kibaki Gĩthĩnji and Teresia Wanjikũ. Though baptised as Emilio Stanley by Italian missionaries in his youth, he has been known as Mwai Kibaki throughout his public life. Kibaki started his schooling at the village school in Gatuyaini, where he completed two years. He then continued his education at the Karima mission school, close to Othaya town, before moving to Mathari School between 1944 and 1946. In addition to his academic studies, he learned carpentry and masonry at the school. After Karima Primary and Nyeri Boarding primary schools, he proceeded to Mang'u High School, where he studied between 1947 and 1950, gaining the highest grade in his O Level examinations.In his last year at Mang'u, Kibaki briefly considered enlisting in the army, but this ambition was thwarted when Kenya's Chief colonial secretary, Walter Coutts, prohibited members of Kikuyu, Embu, and Meru communities from joining the military. Kibaki instead attended Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, where he studied economics, history, and political science. He graduated with a first class honours degree in economics. After graduation, Kibaki remained in Uganda, working for the Shell Company of East Africa. He then earned a scholarship entitling him to undertake postgraduate studies at any British university. He chose the London School of Economics, from which he obtained a BSc in public finance, with distinction. In 1958, he went back to Makerere, where he taught as an assistant lecturer in the economics department until 1961. In 1961, Kibaki married Lucy Muthoni, the daughter of a church minister, who was then a secondary school head teacher.
Political career prior to presidency
1960–2002
In early 1960, Mwai Kibaki left academia for active politics by giving up his job at Makerere and returning to Kenya to become an executive officer of Kenya African National Union, at the request of Thomas Joseph Mboya. Kibaki then helped to draft Kenya's independence constitution.In 1963, Kibaki was elected as Member of Parliament for the Doonholm Constituency in Nairobi. His election was the start of a long political career. In 1963 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 an opponent 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. The same year Time magazine rated him among the top 100 people in the world who had the potential to lead. He was 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 the Vice Presidency, and kept the Finance portfolio until Moi changed his ministerial portfolio from Finance to Home Affairs in 1982. He had in 1978 rejected an offer to become World Bank Vice President for Africa instead choosing to further his political career. As of 2023, he is still regarded as one of the most effective and consequential finance ministers of the Republic of Kenya. Later as President, he kept close tabs with the treasury and directly influenced key economic policies resulting in steady economic growth. Kibaki fell out of favor with President Moi in March 1988, and was dropped as vice president and moved to the Ministry of Health.
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". Similarly, Kenneth Matiba also referred to him as "General Kiguoya" for refusing to resign the Kanu government and join the opposition after he was dropped as vice president in 1988. 'Kiguoya' translates to the 'fearful one' in the Kikuyu language. 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 fig tree with a razor blade".
It was therefore with great surprise that the country received the news of Kibaki's resignation from government and leaving KANU on Christmas Day in December 1991, only days after the repeal of Section 2A of the then Constitution of Kenya, which restored the multi-party system of government. Soon after his resignation, Kibaki founded the Democratic Party and entered the presidential race in the upcoming multi-party elections of 1992. Kibaki was regarded as one of the favourites among Moi's challengers, although his support came mainly from the Kikuyu voters as the election was fought along ethnic lines, confirming a prediction made by both Moi and political analysts at the beginning of multipartyism.
Kibaki came third in the subsequent presidential elections of 1992, when the divided opposition lost to president Moi and KANU despite having received more than two-thirds of the vote. He then came second to Moi in the 1997 elections, when again, Moi beat a divided opposition to retain the presidency. Kibaki joined third-placed Raila Odinga in accusing the president of rigging the poll, and both opposition leaders boycotted Moi's swearing in for his fifth term in office.
2002 elections
In preparation for the 2002 elections, Kibaki's Democratic Party affiliated with several other opposition parties to form the National Alliance of Kenya. A group of disappointed KANU presidential aspirants then quit KANU in protest after being overlooked by outgoing President Moi when Moi had Uhuru Kenyatta nominated to be the KANU presidential candidate, and hurriedly formed the Liberal Democratic Party. NAK later combined with the LDP to form the National Rainbow Coalition. On 14 October 2002, at a large opposition rally in Uhuru Park, Nairobi, Kibaki was nominated the NARC opposition alliance presidential candidate after Raila Odinga made the famous declaration; "Kibaki Tosha!"On 3 December 2002, Kibaki was injured in a road accident while on his way back to Nairobi from a campaign meeting at Machakos junction from Nairobi. He was subsequently hospitalized in Nairobi, then London, after sustaining fracture injuries in the accident. After the accident, he had to move using a wheel chair up to months later after his presidency. For the remainder of his life, he walked rather awkwardly as a result of those injuries.
The rest of his presidential campaign was thus conducted by his NARC colleagues in his absence, led by Raila Odinga and Kijana Wamalwa who campaigned tirelessly for Kibaki after stating, "The captain has been injured in the field... but the rest of the team shall continue."
On 27 December 2002, 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.
Presidency
Swearing in
On 30 December 2002, still nursing injuries from the motor vehicle accident and in a wheel chair, Kibaki was sworn in as the third President and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Kenya, where thousands of cheering supporters at the historic Uhuru Park within Nairobi City. At his inauguration, he stressed his opposition to government corruption, saying:Kibaki's swearing in marked the end of four decades of KANU rule, the party having ruled Kenya since independence. Moi, who had been in power for 24 years, began his retirement.
Leadership style
President Kibaki's style was that of a quiet, publicity-averse, but highly intelligent and competent technocrat.Unlike his predecessors, he never tried to establish a personality cult; never had his portrait on every unit of Kenya's currency; never had all manner of streets, places, and institutions named after him; never had state sanctioned praise songs composed in his honour; never dominated news bulletins with reports of his presidential activities - however routine or mundane; and never engaged in the populist sloganeering of his predecessors.
His style of leadership gave him the image of a seemingly aloof, withdrawn technocrat or intellectual and made him seem out of touch with the street, and his seemingly hands-off leadership-by-delegation style made his governments, especially at the cabinet level, appear dysfunctional.