We had been meeting regularly to consult on how best the opposition parties would form a grand alliance to beat President Daniel Moi’s Kanu in 2002.
The old adage of “united we stand divided we fall” had proven a reality to the opposition twice: In the elections of 1992 and 1997. Had the opposition been united in both elections, Kanu and President Moi would have been consigned to the dustbin of forgotten history. And Mwai Kibaki would perhaps have been president much earlier. But here we were humbled in each party by our past political hubris.
We decided, therefore, as a few selected leaders who were in no way contesting for the leadership of the desired coalition, to meet at Aberdare Club to craft a manifesto and see how power would be shared should we win the elections.
We thought this process was important so that we could make as many “luminaries” as possible to feel at home in the proposed coalition. This conspiracy was hatched by three people: Noah Wekesa, Kipruto arap Kirwa and myself.
Kirwa and I came up with the idea that all stakeholders would be given some “envelop” containing proposals on how parties would share positions and power in government.
We decided to leave out the issue of who would be president, although there was a consensus among us that Kibaki was the obvious choice. We would campaign quietly across opposition parties for Kibaki to be the flag bearer. He needed not campaign for himself; in fact, we suspected, he would not.
Some time in September or October 2002, Matere Keriri approached me with the request to draft a speech for Kibaki that he would give at an opposition fund raising meeting/dinner at the Grand Regency Hotel. The speech, Matere noted, would have to spell out very clearly what the National Alliance Party of Kenya would do when it came to power within the context of what our manifesto committee had been discussing.
I crafted the speech, and included, among other things, our commitment to build an electricity powered standard gauge railway from Mombasa to Busia/Malaba, complete with a double carriage way road.
I also emphasized our commitment to universal health coverage, the revival of vital state-owned enterprises such as Kenya Cooperative Creameries and the Kenya Meat Commission. The necessity for free primary school education was central to our manifesto, so was the need to care for senior citizens through a social protection program.
Kibaki must have read the speech thoroughly before he mounted the podium that evening. When he came to talk, though he had the speech at the podium, he never opened any page whatsoever. He spoke, as it were, off the cuff but articulated clearly and powerfully everything that was in that speech. He had owned the speech and internalised it.
The ideas therein were actually no different from what he had frequently talked about in our rallies. No wonder that within the first week of the eventual Narc government, the urgency of implementing these policies were not lost to President Kibaki.
There was no doubt in our minds that when the LDP brigade stormed out of Kanu to join us in the opposition in late 2002, the issue of opposition leadership was going to be problematic. And indeed it was.
After the stalemate on the leadership issue at that crucial meeting in Serena Hotel in the morning before the famous rally at Uhuru Park that gave birth to Narc, one man came to the rescue of the near leaderless opposition. This man was Raila Odinga.
I don’t know whether Raila remembers this but the two of us were crossing Kenyatta Avenue with the other leaders heading to Uhuru Park. All of a sudden, Raila held my hand and asked me in our language: Owadgi Mary, gini kata ka wamiyo Kibaki iparo ni nitie gima rachgo? (the brother of Mary, do you think there would be anything wrong if we give this leadership to Kibaki?)
There is a famous hymn from the Christian song book, Songs of Praise, that says: “Once to every man and nation, comes a moment to decide. Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside.”
The brave man (Agwambo) had indeed decided to break the Serena stalemate, and he only needed some reassurance from a friend and comrade. And I concurred with his instinctive feeling.
All I didn’t know was how he would do it. But as Master of Ceremonies that morning, he performed a feat nobody could have performed. “Wananchi watukufu. Nikisema Kibaki Tosha nyinyi mtakubali?!”
The rest, as the famous saying goes, is now history.
I never knew that Kibaki was such a strong feminist until one day at a Cabinet meeting of the coalition government discussing a bill that dealt with gender parity within the context of the new constitution was being discussed. The President told off a colleague in a rather irreverent language.
Our colleague, a polygamist in real life, argued, rather nonchalantly, that women cannot possibly claim equality with men.
“You see Mr. President, in African tradition, women know their places. In fact, this particular bill is very much against our culture. We simply cannot accept it,” he said.
Looking the minister straight in the eye, the President shouted back: “You can’t say that. You cannot simply speak like that. It is foolish to speak like that. I mean in this day and age which human being can possibly say a foolish thing like that. No, no, no.”
Then the President simply looked around looking for any other sensible contribution as we looked rather sheepishly at each other.
Rest in peace our beloved President.
