Profile - Ex-president’s exit marks end of independence leaders’ era

For 50 years, Emilio Mwai Kibaki, who retired on Tuesday has walked the long and bumpy road in public service.

His walk started in the lecture halls of Makerere University and later in Kanu as the executive officer.

The journey has taken him to the Treasury as the country’s second Finance minister after Mr James Gichuru, a job which thrust him into international limelight.

At one time in the 1970s, he was thought of as a possible successor of Robert McNamara as World Bank chief executive.

‘Kibaki: The Rising Star’, the scream headline in the then authoritative Weekly Review magazine, made him the only choice Mr Daniel Moi had in appointing the fourth Vice-President after succeeding Jomo Kenyatta when he died in 1978.

Under his stewardship at the Treasury, he formulated landmark projects for foreign financing, laying the economic foundations of the country.

Some of the projects that stand out include Mumias and Nzoia sugar mills, Webuye Pan Paper Mill, construction of the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, the Nairobi-Nakuru-Eldoret-Malaba highway, the failed Kenya Fertiliser plant in Mombasa and Kenya Furfural in Eldoret.

His retirement on Tuesday marks the end of an era of sorts.

He is going as the last man of the pre-independence era politicians to quit public service — marking a real transition to the young generation.

But politicians never retire in politics. It can be said with almost certainty that the country’s third President will still be a political force.

And he has also travelled a bumpy road in his political career.

When he vied for presidency a second time in 1997 aged 67 and lost to Mr Moi, this writer said in a Nation column ‘Kibaki: Kenya’s President that never was’.

Time would only prove otherwise when he was elected President in 2002.

Kibaki’s low in politics has brought out the character of a decisive patient politician. He began in the highly competitive politics of Nairobi and won the then Doonholm parliamentary seat.

But he was nearly derailed from his political career by Ms Jael Mbogo, who almost beat him in the subsequent 1969 elections for the Bahati seat.

He later returned to his Othaya birthplace, which he has represented in Parliament for 40 years.

Then came his demotion as the VP after the 1988 much discredited mlolongo (queue-voting) elections.

Mr Kibaki settled in as Health minister going about his business without a bother. His decisive moment was to come with the return of multiparty politics in 1991 when he quit to found the Democratic Party, an opposition party.

Twice he unsuccessfully vied for presidency until his 2002 moment.

Mr Kibaki, 82, holds a bachelor’s degree in economics and boasts a political career spanning two eras — the Jomo Kenyatta and Moi administrations. He took power as third President at the age of 71.

The experience he gained as Finance minister for 12 years and VP for 10 years had sharpened and prepared him for presidency.

When he arrived at State House in a wheelchair after a road accident on the campaign trail, he established a new style of administration — a ‘hands off style’ in which he let his ministers to take charge.

Under his administration, more roads, privatisation of public organisations, economic growth and independence in public universities has been achieved.

The violence, which erupted after the 2007 presidential poll results, disputed by ODM, will be the only stain in a career of a man who has given the better part of his life to serving Kenyans.