Country was 'backsliding' under Moi: Kibaki

Former President Mwai Kibaki has indirectly blamed his predecessor Daniel Moi for slowing down the country’s growth even as its peers prospered.

In his first public lecture since he left power in April this year, Mr Kibaki who spoke on Kenya’s journey since independence described the first decade of the Moi regime as a “period of backsliding”.

“In terms of state organisation, there was an outstanding difference between the period spanning 1966 to 1982 and the one that followed 10 years after till 1991. It was the fact that the leadership feared that organised political opinion that went contrary to the ideology of the government of the day posed a threat to the interests of the state,” he said.

Mr Moi replaced Mzee Jomo Kenyatta in 1978 after the latter had led the country since independence in 1963. But Kenya’s third President argued the gains Mzee Kenyatta had brought on board were eroded during the Moi era.

“The descent into a period of backsliding and stagnation that followed this terrific start lasted almost one complete human generation. Well, at times every country experiences down moments characterised by diminished fortunes. And Kenya had its own share of time of wandering in the wild.

“Those were, effectively, Kenya’s years in the wilderness, the years during which Singapore, Malaysia and South Korea left countries like Kenya far behind and yet, on the starting line, we had begun virtually shoulder-to-shoulder with respect to development and potential.”

50 YEARS OF INDEPENDENCE

The former president spoke to a gathering of about 2,000 students, lecturers, government officials and members of the public at the University of Nairobi's Taifa Hall. The talk was titled “Kenya @50: Of hindsight, Insight and Foresight, Reflections on the State of the Nation,” which he argued was meant to “solemnly take stock of the road travelled at that particular point in time.”

Mr Kibaki’s 15-page speech drove through Kenya’s history from independence to date, lasting one hour and 16 minutes. After his talk, the audience asked 12 questions; he answered one and ignored the rest.

“You should consider what you should do now, what is there that you should do; because that is the only reason which can make sense. What you should have done, you should have done that time and because you did not do it at that time, why are you thinking backwards?” he replied when an Economics student asked if there is anything he did as a young man that the youth can learn from.

“No. No, for the reason that it is a wrong manner of thinking that after you have been through your life, you want to think what you should have done. It is wrong logic; it is a wrong sense of considering who you are.”

His lecture had elaborated on how the colonialists imposed Majimboism on Kenya, how they used foreign aid to ensure Kenya remains dependent on them and how it fell because it went against Kenya’s quest for national unity.

The former president delivered an analysis of Mzee Kenyatta’s struggle to piece the country together in fighting illiteracy, disease and poverty especially since the colonialists left little resources behind. He talked of Kenyatta’s three-point strategies on the ‘Africanisation programme’: Commercial agriculture, Transfer of business to Africans and industrial and financial access to Africans. These, he argued were weakened from 1982, Moi’s era.

But there was a flowing irony in all these: Mr Kibaki was an MP from 1963 to 2013, Finance and Health Minister as well as Vice President in the Moi regime until he parted ways with the second president at the start of multiparty democracy.

Yet he argued that only multiparty democracy brought back the hope that Kenyans wanted to chase their dreams most of which he said were achieved during his time as president.

“The hard-boiled reaction by the establishment against what was viewed as dissidence led to the clamour for multi-partyism. That was attained in 1991.

“And that is how several other political parties joined KANU in the search for a share of political power. It also opened up opportunities to give the country's leadership a new vision. Besides, the expanded political space gave the country hope for a new constitution. That long awaited dream bore fruit once the promulgation of the new Constitution took place in 2010.”

Other success stories, he added, include free primary education, revival of the cooperative movement, opening of more schools and tertiary institutions, annual economic growth of 7 per cent as well as an improved road network in the country.

His administration though, was blotted with the 2008 post-election violence in which 1,113 died and 650,000 others were displaced. Kibaki thinks the violence brought the country “on the brink of an artificial apocalypse” and was solved only because of Kenyans’ nature to work together despite different political ideologies.

He however had a warm assessment of Uhuru Kenyatta’s government. The former President thought the Jubilee administration had been above average in its first seven months in power.

“So far, the leadership of this country has done what has been within its ability and reach, with regard to getting Kenyans to the promised land. However, a lot still remains undone,” he said.

“I have no doubt whatsoever that from now on; we shall have the government and the people who make success.”

President Kenyatta’s government replaced Kibaki’s decade long presidency. And although the President and his deputy are facing trials at the International Criminal Court (ICC), Mr Kibaki said all Kenyans must rally behind the government if we must get any meaningful development.

“My hope is that each of us in this country will play their part fully and faithfully especially in the area of creating both jobs and wealth, be it with and from our natural or imported resources,” he said.