Garissa Township MP Aden Duale on Wednesday said Deputy William Ruto is the closest to what the late former President Mwai Kibaki was.
I fell off my chair in laughter! There couldn’t have been two more different men.
In character and in temperament, DP Ruto is the polar opposite of Kibaki. One will forever be known as the gentleman of Kenyan politics, while the other, well let’s just say, is the extreme opposite of that.
On the three key areas of the Second Liberation, the journey towards a new constitution and the hugely underestimated pursuit of clean politics, good governance and national unity, there is no scale on which you would place the two together. But I digress.
I had personal family tragedy when my father died in December 2002, bang in the peak of the election campaigns. It was the typical change moment, with the knowledge that President Daniel Moi was no longer going to be part of our public lives, and the Kanu juggernaut would be tamed, even if its candidate, Uhuru Kenyatta, won the election.
Within the family, we made a decision to push the burial to after the election to avoid moving anyone from their voting stations on account of the funeral. The burial later took place as elections results were being announced.
It was almost hilarious watching people huddled in groups in the homestead around transistor radios following the results, while trying very hard to appear to exercise their mourning duties. You couldn’t begrudge anyone that moment; the feeling that we were in mourning, but the rest of the country was planting the largest seed of hope was alive. A Gallup poll released just a few months later showed us to be the most hopeful people on the planet.
The Kibaki mandate was so resounding that a multi-tribal, multi-sectoral and multi-party movement had bestowed on him the faith to bury everything Kanu and take us on a new path. The jury is still out on whether he achieved the national unity agenda everyone had set out for him, especially if we put the 2007 post-election violence in perspective. But on the key indicators of economic growth, he lay the foundation for a future renaissance, if any.
Kibaki has been touted as the best of Kenya’s four presidents. Point by point, I wouldn’t necessarily agree, but it is easy to understand that Kenya’s biggest and longest lasting problem is marginalisation based on ethnicity, which no president has managed to slay. In fact, my personal view is that by attempting to break the two-tribe stranglehold on Kenya’s presidency in supporting Raila Odinga for president, Uhuru probably outscores Kibaki on that.
And this for me is the first lesson from the Kibaki era for the next President. The mandate given by the wide cross section of Kenyans should, for intents and purposes uplift the lives of all those demographics, not just a small tribal cabal.
If this area is considered a relative failure for Kibaki, the next President has no excuse at all, because lessons abound on how to do it right. But by far, Kibaki’s biggest fete must have the gathering of talent within his Cabinet, and the free hand given to ministers to deliver.
It takes a person very secure in and with himself to not only assemble such heavy hitters to work for him, but also allow them the free space to shine in their own dockets. This to me was the foundation of the infrastructural and economic boom of that period.
A Cabinet with Anyang Nyong’o at Planning, Raila at Roads, Kalonzo Musyoka at Foreign Affairs, David Mwiraria at Finance and George Saitoti rolling out the free education promised in the Narc manifesto, was always going to outdo itself.
This is especially a message to presidential candidates or those who have previously had a chance nominate people in the Cabinet but opted for semi-literate wheeler dealers and rubble rousers, that running a cabinet portfolio, or indeed the country, isn’t a clownfest.
To a large extent, the Kibaki presidency represents the first time many of us born in the 70s felt free. In January 2003, we reveled in the confidence that painful stories revolving around torture chambers at Nyayo House and Nyati House, detentions and disappearances, would be things of the past. It was to the comforting temperament of the president that the nation took solace.
Kibaki wouldn’t be caught on camera unleashing angry speeches, especially in vernacular. In fact, even the 2008 PEV, often considered the biggest blot on his legacy, would be difficult to pin on him, because there was never a moment anyone felt Kibaki would engage in ethnic mobilization or any such pursuits.
Many of those who will troop to the former President’s funeral service, especially those who seek to rule after he did, will praise his virtues as a unifying leader and dignified personality. I wonder how many of them will see a reflection of him on them.
Among them will be people who, when Kibaki rolled out the free education, pushed for the 2010 constitution or navigated through a difficult period of a divided Cabinet, shaky accords and illness, remained the pessimists.
Retired US President Bill Clinton has previously stated how he marveled at the spectacle in January 2003 when a million extra children arrived in Kenyan primary schools following the call to free education.
Between that brilliant moment and March 2013, when Kibaki called it a day, the country history is replete with anecdotes of successes and failures from which to build on, or make right, so that we not only eulogize the late president as the best ever but pick up the lessons too.
In August, we hope to see a unifying president, an economic liberator, a fighter for equal rights and justice, a warrior for the marginalized and a builder of bridges.
It would help if aspiring presidents surrounded themselves with people who want the same things, rather than voluble tribal and tender merchants waiting for the big payday.
As for those who think they are the closest to Kibaki everyone has ever been, as they say in certain places, every dream is valid. We would all be better off if we sought to mirror the positives of the Kibaki rule and persona, rather than just rosy speeches and lofty manifesto items that none intends to keep.
May the late president’s soul rest in peace.
