How political goofs of the decade led to Kenya's worst moment of madness

The meeting at State House, Nairobi must have been tense. It was December 2002, right after Christmas, and the then President Moi’s ‘kitchen Cabinet’ and military generals were debating the possible outcome of a rather ambitious project.

The coming General Election had been billed as a momentous occasion for the country. After 24 years of Mr Moi’s administration, the time had come to pass on the baton. Who that man — not woman — would be had captured the imagination of the nation for more than a year.

President Moi had long created the image of an invincible politician. For the two and a half decades he was in power, he had successfully tuned all members of his party to one frequency; his word was law.

But now, the invincible man had made a political move that had confounded both friend and foe. He had gone against the advice of his allies and intelligence chiefs to pick a political novice — Mr Uhuru Kenyatta — to succeed him.

Crumbling plan

The State House meeting arrived at a verdict that was no music to the old man’s ears: his plan was crumbling by the minute, and his preferred successor would be trounced by the opposition.

In the 1980s, Mr Moi had ruthlessly — and many times mistakenly but successfully — suppressed political dissent. To his political allies, he was awe-inspiring while, to his critics, he was dread-inspiring.

Those close to him in his heyday speak of a man who survived largely on good political tactics and an avid consumption of intelligence. It has, therefore, remained a national mystery why Mr Moi — against the advice of some of his political aides, military chiefs and the intelligence honcho — would stick to Mr Kenyatta and fail so miserably.

He had spent a considerable part of his last years at the helm crafting his succession and, mid his last term, tapped the politically young Uhuru, nominated him to Parliament and appointed him a minister.

No deterrent

In the meantime, one of the then opposition leaders, Mr Raila Odinga, had begun warming up relations with the man at State House. It seemed odd that Mr Odinga would see eye-to-eye politically with the same man who had thrown him into detention years before, but that seemed no deterrent.

Their political union was viewed as an authentication of the long-held belief that Mr Moi was unbeatable, therefore Mr Odinga had decided “if you can’t beat them, join them”.

The two tied the knot in Kasarani, Nairobi in March 18, 2002.

However, the marriage bore powerful undercurrents in Kanu. Party loyalists had eagerly waited to inherit the formidable political machine that Mr Moi had built, and the team, which included J. J. Kamotho, the then secretary-general and one of Kenya’s most effective party spokespersons; Vice-President George Saitoti; and Foreign Affairs minister Kalonzo Musyoka, minced no words telling the President off.

The later merger of the independence party with Mr Odinga’s Liberal Democratic Party didn’t help cool the tempers in Kanu neither, nor the following words, uttered by Mr Moi to introduce Mr Uhuru to the public a few months to the 2002 General Elections.

“I have analysed the qualities of all the people around me, and I have seen the potential in this young man. I am not running again for office, but when you vote for Uhuru, you will be voting for me.”

That was it for Kanu loyalists and, as discontent grew within the union, Mr Odinga started capitalising on the dysphoria and became the epicentre of what came to be known as the Rainbow Alliance — a grouping within Kanu born out of dissatisfaction with the way Mr Moi had brought in Mr Kenyatta, and which would later endorse Mr Mwai Kibaki as Kenya’s third president.

Roads Minister Franklin Bett, a former State House comptroller and now Buret MP, was later to say that he knew that Mr Moi had politically lost it when he bulldozed the Uhuru candidacy against the advice of his aides.

“That year, Kalenjins only voted for Moi’s choice because he went round pleading with them in vernacular. I vividly remember two meetings, one in Bomet and another in Eldoret, where the former president spoke in a grave voice as he made a pitch for Uhuru,” Mr Bett said.

Resounding defeat

Mr Kenyatta was handed a resounding defeat at the ballot by Mr Kibaki, altering Kenyan politics forever as none could tell who would have assumed power had Mr Moi let the majority view rule in Kanu.

Kanu’s loss ushered in the Narc era on a euphoric platform built on the promise to fight corruption tooth and nail. As it turned out, Mr Kibaki and Mr Odinga had signed an MoU — prior to the elections — that the latter would be appointed Prime Minister in the new government.

The promise was also premised on Mr Kibaki’s pronouncement that Narc would complete the constitutional review process in 100 days, and it was apparent then that a substantive PM’s position would be created.

But, instead of Mr Kibaki building on the political capital he had gained at the campaign, he went headlong into a blunder that still haunts Kenya today... by ignoring the pact and becoming generally unavailable for consultation.

LDP, which Mr Odinga headed and which had teamed with NAK to form the National Rainbow Coalition, complained that President Kibaki, in naming the Cabinet, had reneged on a 50-50 position-sharing basis that was part of the MoU.

But Mr Kibaki was still recovering from an accident that had put him on a wheelchair in the sunset days of the campaign, and public sympathy rested with the recuperating old man, rather than the complaints from the Rainbow wing of the government.

Things cooled off. But those who were wronged didn’t forget. When the constitution making process got underway, it divided the Cabinet along the fault line of LDP and NAK.

Mr Odinga epitomised the ‘No’ campaign. He attracted a few Cabinet ministers and, significantly, members of Kanu, whom he had helped defeat only two years earlier. President Kibaki took sides late in the day, joining an incoherent ‘Yes’ campaign by those who remained politically loyal to him. He was defeated at a referendum, held on November 21, 2005, by a 58 per cent majority.

The hitherto laid-back President Kibaki responded by firing his entire Cabinet.

“Following the results of the referendum, it has become necessary for me, as the President of the Republic, to reorganise my government to make it more cohesive and better able to serve the people of Kenya,” the President said.

As had been suggested at the referendum, the ‘No’ team, riding under the Orange banner, metamorphosed into a political party. So, when President Kibaki announced that he would defend his seat in September 2007, Mr Odinga, the Orange party flag-bearer, was his most formidable challenger.

Both camps treated the elections as a do-or-die event, and ethnic tensions reached an all-time high.

A special Intelligence report entitled “Critical Dates and Events – General Elections 2007”, was forwarded on December 6 to Electoral Commission of Kenya chairman Samuel Kivuitu.

It, among other things, warned that “increased political activity and attendant lawlessness are likely to overwhelm the security organs.”

The following day, another report generated by the intelligence services was sent to Mr Kivuitu, and this time copied to the Secretary to the Cabinet and Head of the Public Service Francis Muthaura and the then Commissioner of Police Maj Gen Hussein Ali.

The report warned of issues likely to inflame an already volatile situation including, “persisting claims of election irregularities”, but no one took heed, hence the political violence after the 2007 polls.

The political disagreement that began with the demise of a privately signed MoU at the start of the decade, and the resultant political contest between President Kibaki and Mr Odinga, have, no doubt, shaped the politics of the past decade.