president who squandered the opportunity to fix Kenya

Emilio Stanley Mwai Kibaki, who has died at the age of 90, was born on November 15, 1931 in Othaya, Nyeri, in the central highlands of Kenya. He put in a life time in community provider.

He served as president of Kenya – the 3rd just after independence – from 2002 to 2013, a critical period in Kenya’s changeover from a just one social gathering point out to democracy. He also served as the fourth vice-president (1978 to 1988) under President Daniel arap Moi.

To his buddies and admirers, Kibaki was a gentleman who survived the murky Kenyan politics unscathed. The attributes he was respected for provided getting a consensus builder and a guy of integrity.

He was recognised for being an successful economist who assisted steer Kenya’s economic system to increased heights and, as president of Kenya, experienced a second in history to positively improve the region.

To Kibaki’s detractors, however, he was a coward and indecisive politician who, in the deal with of political storms, hardly ever saw a fence he did not want to sit on. He was derided as a conformist and loyalist who never lifted a finger in opposition to the gross excesses of the political method, which he served to the hilt.

It was Kibaki, for occasion, who moved the motion that designed Kenya a single-celebration point out by law in 1982. In the same way, at the peak of the clamour for political pluralism in 1991, Kibaki remarked that making an attempt to remove the Kenya African National Union (KANU) from electrical power was tantamount to attempting to slice a mugumo (fig) tree using a razor blade. Yet a number of months right after this assertion, he jumped ship from the govt to established up an opposition party.

This component of his character gained him the sobriquet ‘Standard Kiguoya’ (Typical Coward) amongst his have Kikuyu contemporaries.

Early many years

Kibaki was educated at Makerere College, the place he studied economics, history, and political science, and at the London School of Economics, exactly where he examined general public finance. Kibaki served a limited stint as assistant lecturer in the office of economics at Makerere University in advance of resigning in 1961 to acquire up the situation of government officer of the Kenya African Nationwide Union (KANU).

In 1963, he was elected member of parliament for Donholm constituency in Nairobi (now Makadara). But following rigid opposition emerged, he moved his political base to his indigenous Othaya constituency in Nyeri in 1974, which he represented until his retirement in 2013.

Kibaki served in different federal government capacities. From assistant minister for finance in 1963, he rose to full minister in 1966, serving in many portfolios amongst 1966 and 1991. These incorporated commerce and sector, finance and economic scheduling, dwelling affairs, and well being.

As early as 1974, Time journal ranked Kibaki between the best 100 individuals all around the planet likely to develop into head of state.

When Moi succeeded Jomo Kenyatta as Kenya’s president in 1978, he appointed Kibaki his vice president. He was quickly dropped 10 a long time afterwards.

Kibaki quietly settled in his demoted position as minister for health and fitness from 1988 to 1991. Subsequent the reintroduction of multiparty politics in 1991, he give up the Kenya African Nationwide Union and his ministerial position on Xmas eve in 1991 to found the Democratic Social gathering. He ran – unsuccessfully – for president in 1992 and 1997.

He was lastly elected president in December 2002 on a grand coalition ticket.

Successes

Kibaki’s management, particularly as a two-time period president, had a selection of noteworthy successes.

The very first big 1 was infrastructural advancement, especially street construction. Emblematic of this was the design of the Thika superhighway. The 44.5km freeway that hyperlinks Nairobi to Thika, an industrial city in Kiambu County, central Kenya.

Second was the introduction of cost-free principal university education and learning. An believed 1 million youngsters enrolled in college who would if not not have been capable to find the money for to do so.

Third was the introduction of the Constituency Progress Fund. Through this a slice of the national profits is distributed on a yearly basis to parliamentary constituencies to fund enhancement initiatives and programmes decided at the constituency level. If managed properly, the concept has the opportunity to revolutionise rural enhancement.

Fourth, and probably most crucial, was the revival of the overall economy from a long time of mismanagement. All through his initial term, the country’s GDP advancement rate rose from .6% when he took in excess of to 7% at the close of his to start with expression.

Failures

But Kibaki’s presidency was also tempered with a sequence of monumental failures.

He assumed the presidency underneath situations which could have dealt with the scourge of detrimental ethnicity. The Nationwide Rainbow Coalition that assured his electoral victory was overseen by an organ identified as the Summit.

The membership of this Summit represented the country’s areas and significant ethnic groups. These bundled Mwai Kibaki (Kikuyu), Moody Awori and Wamalwa Kijana (Luhyia), Raila Odinga (Luo), Kipruto Kirwa (Kalenjin), Charity Ngilu and Kalonzo Musyoka (Kamba), and Najib Balala (Mijikenda).

Before long just after electoral victory, the Summit was shunted aside. An assortment of the central figures of the Jomo Kenyatta routine – all of them Kikuyu – were reconstituted as Kibaki’s major advisers. This led to the reemergence of the so-termed Mount Kenya Mafia that dominated the Kibaki presidency.

2nd, and a corollary to the previously mentioned, was the dishonouring of the memorandum of knowing that experienced laid the basis for the National Alliance Rainbow Coalition and opposition unity.

This provided the promise that Kenya would have a new constitution in just the very first 100 days of the Kibaki administration. But the endeavor was abandoned. As a substitute, 3 several years down the street, Kenyans had been presented with a draft structure so mutilated and watered down that they rejected it in a referendum in 2005.

Inside of two several years the euphoria that had accompanied Kibaki’s ascension to the presidency swiftly dissipated into gloom and disenchantment. The criticism that this brought on was that the Kibaki routine was bent on self-destruction.

The third failure was the deficiency of commitment to genuinely battle corruption in spite of owning campaigned on a reform and anticorruption system. Instead, Kibaki abetted and condoned corruption by an internal circle of his cupboard ministers.

In just one case of questionable procurement contracts in the ministry of defence and phone calls for the sacking of the minister in cost, Kibaki basically transferred the errant minister to a different portfolio.

In a different scenario wherein a minister was accused of conflict of fascination and abuse of place of work for non-public acquire and amid an uproar against the minister, Kibaki is described to have rhetorically asked, of no a single in specific, whose goat the minister experienced eaten! He evidently didn’t see the misdemeanour in phrases of resources that experienced been stolen from the Kenyan individuals.

The last, and probably the most ignominious legacy on the part of President Kibaki was the blatant rigging of the 2007 presidential election.

The violence that the stolen election triggered pushed the country to the brink. Extra than 1,300 individuals were killed and more than 500,000 displaced. Experienced the international group not quickly intervened to aid a ability sharing agreement, there is no declaring what may have grow to be of Kenya.

Arguably, therefore, his in a position stewardship of the financial state notwithstanding, Kibaki will be remembered as the president who squandered a historic opportunity to remake Kenya and ended up plunging the region into unmitigated chaos, all for the sake of clinging onto electricity pursuing an clear electoral reduction.