Heavy personal loss for Kibaki

President Kibaki’s devastating feeling at losing two close allies, the Environment Minister John Michuki and former Defence minister Njenga Karume, is perhaps best captured by his son Jimmy Kibaki.

The younger Kibaki told Saturday Nation that Mr Karume was like a brother to the President and that the loss was almost too much to bear. Kibaki had know both men for more than six decades.

“We are shocked beyond words. I cannot speak for the president, but obviously it is an immense loss to lose two close friends whom he knew for almost 60 years,” said Mr Kibaki through a short message service.

While condoling with Mr Karume’s family, President Kibaki said he had learnt with a deep sense of loss the death of his dear friend, a fine gentleman and political ally.

Mr Michuki was one of the most hardworking ministers and a key ally of the President who served as Internal Security minister during the post-election violence.

While Mr Karume had reportedly gravitated towards Prime Minister Raila Odinga in his sunset days, his closeness with the president dating as far back as the pre-independence days could not have dented the friendship.

Perhaps the biggest indication President Kibaki’s friendship with Mr Karume went beyond politics is when to everyone’s shock, appointed Karume a minister in 2004 despite having supported his opponent, Mr Uhuru Kenyatta, in the 2002 elections.

He says they had been friends for so long and as is always the case with lifelong buddies, they harboured “intimate and even embarrassing details about one another.”

He writes that the clash between the two erstwhile comrades was given a great deal of publicity and that the press attempted to portray him as “someone who had deserted his friend in time of need.”

As their differences escalated, two elders — Mr Duncan Ndegwa and Mr James Kome — were sent to his Cianda House office where they pleaded with him to stop the quarrel since it was “causing a lot of embarrassment”.

Mr Karume reportedly told them he had no malice and that they should talk to Kibaki about the matter, instead.

“All the while I campaigned for Uhuru, I never derided or criticised Kibaki nor did I portray Moi as a good man,” he writes.

He says he had merely abandoned what he saw as a lost cause in the opposition and placed his hopes on what he believed was the winning side.

Mr Kenyatta lost to President Kibaki, but according to Mr Karume, they still spoke even though their relationship cooled down for a while during the campaign period and shortly thereafter.

He writes that he had always campaigned for Kibaki and never prioritised his own ambitions, ever since the times of Gema and the time he “was canvassing for Kibaki to become Vice-President.”

In the reshuffle following the 2005 referendum in which ministers who had opposed the draft constitution were purged, Mr Karume was moved to the high-profile Ministry of Defence, reflective of the trust the President had in him.

With the death of Mr Michuki, and now Mr Karume, the president has been robbed of age mates who he relied upon in different stages of his life.

In what marks the end of an era, the two leader’s passing on has left President Kibaki lonely.