KENYA Special Report The Kibaki succession


In 21 months’ time, Kenya’s third president, Mwai Kibaki, will be calling it a day. To many Kenyans, the man who took over as president in 2003 is not the same man about to retire.


Wanjohi Kabukuru looks at why the Kibaki of 2003 is a different kettle of fish in 2011.


Above: President Mwai Kibaki, “laid back” but wily as a fox. He might have a lot to say about his succession I


n 2003, Mwai Kibaki, the man who became Kenya’s third president since independence in 1963, was seen as the “ultimate gentleman of Kenyan politics”. He was the calming father figure who


was expected to manage the country’s transition from a long and difficult era under the first two presidents to a calmer period of democracy and rule of law. Few, if any, expected Kibaki to be a crafty and wily fox capable of political dirty tricks. Today everyone agrees that he is a politician after all, and no one knows this better than his prime minister, Raila Odinga.


58 | April 2011 New African


Now the race to be Kibaki’s successor is


on – and getting dirty. And the involvement of the “international community” is no longer camouflaged in diplomatic etiquette. Six months ago, Prime Minister


Raila Odinga was considered his most likely successor. Even the British weekly magazine The Economist subtly endorsed him. “Can Kenya make its new deal work?” was the headline of its 28 October edition. “Kenya has recovered its breath,


endorsed a new political system, and is now poised to forge ahead as the region’s undisputed economic motor and diplomatic


nerve centre,” The Economist went on. “Though its own policies remain fragile under a government of national unity, it has begun to find balance, if not true stability, on the domestic political front, too. Kenya’s future could be bright if the next election, expected in August 2012, can pass off peacefully, perhaps with a clear-cut transition to President Raila Odinga, who was almost certainly cheated out of the top job by last minute electoral fiddles last time around.” This was before Côte d’Ivoire’s recent election crisis, and Luis Moreno-Ocampo,


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