Who Is Mwai Kibaki?

Focus On The Kibaki Leadership Style: Why Fence Sitting Is Dangerous

It is said that the late Tom Mboya drove all the way to Makerere University in the early 60s to fetch a brilliant economics lecturer there that they wanted to be the Kanu executive officer. His name was Emilio Mwai Kibaki.

Many Kenyans will now be wishing that Mr Mboya had not done what he did. Mboya himself must be turning in his grave with regret, if for nothing else then simply because that man he fetched said nothing when somebody violently took away his (Mboya's) life. And to date he has said nothing.

But then that is classic Mwai Kibaki. Admittedly all politicians of his generation behave the same. That is why all the current presidential front-runners, save one, were all in Kanu during the dark years and said nothing about the government's excesses then.

But let us limit this post to the President for the moment.

Who is Mwai Kibaki and what does he stand for? We know who Moi was and is and what he stands for. We know his views on most issues. With Kibaki, all we know is that he is a hands-off leader and fence-sitter on most issues. He gives power to his ministers… and all that rhetoric we have been hearing.

Sample the following;

a)

As Vice President in Moi's government, he was the main sponsor of the bill that made Kenya a de jure one party state after many years of being a de facto one party dictatorship in denial. His remarks were memorable (and confusing) in moving the bill. He said; You cannot cut a Mugumo tree with a razor blade. What did he mean? That the government was too strong to fight and that's why he had opted to sponsor the bill? Or that those fighting the government were foolish because they had "razor blades" and the government was a Mugumo tree? Honestly I don't know.

But what I know is that the same man resigned from government in 1991, not to join the opposition, but to form his own personal political party to stand for President. But his first presidential campaign proved to be a Mugumo tree (big challenge he could not match up to) and he was beaten to a distant third by one of his former junior officers in government, Kenneth Matiba. Moi won those contested elections whom many believe were won by Kenneth Matiba.

b)

During his current tour of Coast province, the President has been busy dishing out title deeds (about 30,000 of them) to the land-less at the Coast. Yet as a member of the Kenyatta cabinet, he silently looked the other way as the most massive land-grabbing in the long history of the Coastal strip took place, leaving some of his colleagues then with land that was larger than some entire provinces in the country.

c)

He told us that his government would have zero tolerance for corruption and yet he appointed Prof George Saitoti (a Goldenberg suspect at the very least) to his cabinet. Was it because the generous professor was one of the major financiers of the Narc campaign?

d)

He appointed an anti-corruption czar, John Githongo, only to frustrate and hound him out of office when the young principled man did not conform.

e)

Currently his government's position on minimal reforms before elections has changed so many times that I get dizzy just thinking about it. Here is the list of positions leading upto the current one announced by the president himself;

1) Out of question (Justice Minister Martha Karua)
2) Can work if all parties agree (same cabinet minsiter)
3) Out of question because opposition rejected the constitution last November (another cabinet Minister)
4) There is no time (another cabinet minister)
5) The President says he supports reforms but ruled out power-sharing.
(Are you feeling dizzy?)


f)

Has favored a laid back style where he does not attack his opponents. Recently his handlers have had him change to taking on his opponent's head on. Recently he has accused certain politicians (presidential candidates) of spreading lies abroad while on their funds-seeking campaigns. Then before analysts would recover from this strange, uncharacteristic behavior of the President, he followed it by stating his stand on the controversial minimum reforms before the elections.

So who is the real Mwai Kibaki? A chameleon who changes with the environment. When campaigning for the Presidency we saw a different person. When elected, he locked himself in State House and left everything to his ministers (or so we were told). The next thing we hear is the opposition making noise that there is corruption on a massive scale going on. Personally I did not believe them myself. (Remember when Uhuru Kenyatta was saying that what Kanu had stolen over many years was stolen in a few months by Narc? I remember I laughed in utter disbelief). Then the Anglo-leasing scandal broke. Soon after that, the Kibaki administration was clearly in trouble. The President called in former president Moi and we saw a government of national unity soon after that and tactics very similar to those of the former president. Now we are seeing a president out on the campaign trail more than a year to the general elections.

Will the real Mwai Kibaki please stand up?

My take is that this brilliant economics lecturer should have stayed at Makerere and out of politics.

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