Mwai Kibaki - Shortcomings

Shortcomings

Criticisms of the Kibaki presidency include the president's performance in the areas of political reform; constitutional reform; containment of Corruption in Kenya; addressing the fundamental problem of the country's wealth, income and development inequalities; eliminating tribalism, and fostering national unity and cohesion; reduction of youth unemployment and crime; and facilitating generational change. Tribalism and corruption still remain major tools of acquiring and maintaining political power in Kenya. As a result, all the good work the president has done remains at risk of being all undone, as it was to a significant extent by the post- 2007 election violence, and Kenya remains at risk of becoming a failed state.

The President has been criticized for poor political management of the country, and apparent failure to unite, and amply manage the competing interests of, Kenya's various tribes. As a result, the country remains at the risk of tearing apart, and the President and his allies need to do more to prevent the country's balkanization into ethnic enclaves especially after benefiting from tribalism during elections.

He has also been accused of ruling with a small group of his elderly peers, mainly from the educated side of the Kikuyu elite that emerged in the Kenyatta years,usually referred to as the "Kitchen Cabinet" or the "Mount Kenya Mafia". There is therefore the perception that his is a Kikuyu presidency . This perception was reinforced when the President was seen to have trashed the pre- 2002 election Memorandum of Understanding with the Raila Odinga led Liberal Democratic Party, and was further reinforced by his disputed 2007 election victory over the Raila Odinga led ODM Party being achieved nearly exclusively with the votes of the populous Mt. Kenya Kikuyu, Meru and Embu communities.

The Commission of Inquiry Into Post Election Violence put it thus:

The post election violence therefore is, in part, a consequence of the failure of President Kibaki and his first Government to exert political control over the country or to maintain sufficient legitimacy as would have allowed a civilized contest with him at the polls to be possible. Kibaki’s regime failed to unite the country, and allowed feelings of marginalization to fester into what became the post election violence. He and his then Government were complacent in the support they considered they would receive in any election from the majority Kikuyu community and failed to heed the views of the legitimate leaders of other communities.”

The President, who was elected in 2002 on a reform platform, is also yet to deliver long clamored for fundamental reforms and a new constitution, instead maintaining the status quo ante which he helped to establish and was a major part of, and thus keeping the overwhelming presidential powers granted by Kenya's current constitution. It does also seem that his template is the presidency of Kenya's first president, Jomo Kenyatta, and that a major aim of his presidency is the preservation of the elite that emerged during the Kenyatta years, which he is part of, along with the system that made that elite and so much preserves and favours it. The general feeling of disappointed Kenyans, so optimistic after the 2002 “revolution” is amply captured by the following quote from T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom “... when we achieved and the new world dawned, the old men came out again and took our victory to re-make in the likeness of the former world they knew.”

Though the President has never personally been accused of corruption, and has managed to virtually end the grabbing of public land rampant in the Moi and Kenyatta eras, he is yet to adequately contain Kenya's endemic corruption. Elected on an anti-corruption platform, one of President Kibaki's first acts a president was to appoint John Githongo, a prominent anti-corruption activist, as Permanent Secretary for Governance and Ethics, reporting directly to him. Three years later, a frustrated Githongo resigned this position, citing the impossibility of his position in a situation of such widespread and high level corruption, and went into exile in London. In the Anglo-Leasing scandal, which Githongo played a major role in uncovering, senior politicians including several Ministers and the Vice President Moody Awori were alleged to be closely involved. Githongo has also highlighted the unwillingness of President Kibaki to address these allegations, suggesting that Kibaki himself is therefore personally implicated. To date despite the efforts of John Githongo and the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission (KACC) through numerous investigations and prosecution of cases, no high-profile figures have been convicted in court on corruption charges. On 15 November 2006 Kiraitu Murungi, who had "stepped aside"to allow for independent investigations of corruption allegations in the Anglo-Leasing scandal, was reappointed as Energy Minister, and George Saitoti, who had been previously accused in connection with the Goldenberg scandal, was reinstated as Education Minister.Both ministers were said to have been exonerated in the resultant investigations. Michela Wrong, in her book on Githogo, describes the situation thus:-

Whether expressed in the petty bribes the average Kenyan had to pay each week to fat-bellied policemen and local councillors, the jobs for the boys doled out by civil servants and politicians on strictly tribal lines, or the massive scams perpetrated by the country’s ruling elite, *** had become endemic. ‘Eating’, as Kenyans dubbed the gorging on state resources by the well-connected, had crippled the nation. In the corruption indices drawn up by the anti-graft organisation Transparency International, Kenya routinely trail near the bottom ..., viewed as only slightly less sleazy than Nigeria or Pakistan..."

The President's style of a seemingly aloof withdrawn technocrat or intellectual makes him come across as a seemingly snobbish upper class urbanite who is out of touch with the ordinary Kenyan. The President's aloof "delegation style" also makes his governments,especially at cabinet level, seem dysfunctional and chaotic.

Another major problem that the President is only just beginning to adequately address youth unemployment, and soaring crime mainly perpetrated by frustrated youth on the wrong side of the wide poor-rich divide in the country.

The president has from time to time addressed the above issues, as he did for instance, in his Madaraka Day speech delivered to the nation on 1 June 2009.

Currently Kibaki is being faced with something most political analysts call Legacy crisis. People are eagerly awaiting to see his legacy summed up after 10 years as President.