Kenya’s third President, Mwai Kibaki blew candles to celebrate his 89th birthday at his hometown in Othaya. – By Gerald Gekara
As the leader inches closer to near century of existence, Kenyans showered social media with messages of goodwill, and nostajia from his 2002 – 2013 tenure.
What sticks out most in the flurry of messages, is how the former president was able to recover an economy that was on the brink of collapse.
The Kibaki presidency set itself the main task of reviving and turning round country after years of stagnation and economic mismanagement during the Moi years.
President Kibaki, the economist whose term as Finance minister in the 1970s is widely celebrated, did much as president to repair the damage done to the country’s economy during the 24-year reign of his predecessor, President Moi.
Compared to the Moi years, Kenya was much better managed, with by-far more competent public sector personnel to date.
Kenya’s economy in the Kibaki years experienced a major turnaround. GDP growth picked up from a low 0.6% (real −1.6%) in 2002 to 3% in 2003, 4.9% in 2004, 5.8% in 2005, 6% in 2006 and 7% 2007, then after the post election chaos and Global Financial Crisis—2008 (1.7%)and 2009 (2.6%), recovered to 5% in 2010 and 5% in 2011.
Development was resumed in all areas of the country, including the hitherto neglected and largely undeveloped semi-arid or arid north.
Numerous state corporations that had collapsed during the Moi years were revived and have begun performing profitably.
The telecommunications sector boomed. Rebuilding, modernisation and expansion of infrastructure began in earnest, with several ambitious infrastructural and other projects, such as the Thika Superhighway, which would have been seen as unattainable during the Moi years, completed.
Constituency Development Fund (CDF)
The country’s cities and towns also began being positively renewed and transformed.
The Constituency Development Fund (CDF) was also introduced in 2003.
The fund was designed to support constituency-level, grass-root development projects. It was aimed to achieve equitable distribution of development resources across regions and to control imbalances in regional development brought about by partisan politics.
It targeted all constituency-level development projects, particularly those aiming to combat poverty at the grassroots.
The CDF programme has facilitated the putting up of new water, health and education facilities in all parts of the country including remote areas that were usually overlooked during funds allocation in national budgets.
CDF was the first step towards the devolved system of government introduced by the 2010 Constitution, by which Local Government structures were Constitutionally redesigned, enhanced and strengthened.
President Kibaki also oversaw the creation of Kenya’s Vision 2030, a long-term development plan aimed at raising GDP growth to 10% annually and transforming Kenya into a middle income country by 2030, which he unveiled on 30 October 2006.
The Kibaki regime also saw a reduction of Kenya’s dependence on western donor aid, with the country being increasingly funded by internally generated resources such as increased tax revenue collection.
Relations with China, Japan and other non-western powers improved and expanded remarkably in the Kibaki years.
China and Japan especially, the Asian Tigers such as Malaysia and Singapore, Brazil, the Middle East and to a lesser extent, South Africa, Libya, other African Countries, and even Iran, became increasingly important economic partners.
The ugly scar
His biggest setback will forever be the deadly 2007-2008 post election turmoil that claimed thousands of lives and displaced hundreds of thousands more.
The violence spread into two months, as Kibaki ruled with “half” a cabinet he had appointed, while Odinga and ODM failed to acknowledge him as president.
When the election was eventually investigated by the Independent Review Commission (IREC) on the 2007 Elections chaired by Justice Johann Kriegler, it was found that there were too many electoral malpractices from several regions perpetrated by all the contesting parties to conclusively establish which candidate won the December 2007 Presidential elections.
Such malpractices included widespread bribery, vote buying, intimidation and ballot stuffing by both sides, as well as incompetence from the Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK), which was shortly thereafter disbanded by the new Parliament.
Corruption
Though president Kibaki was never personally accused of corruption, he was unable to adequately contain Kenya’s widely entrenched culture of endemic corruption. However, Kibaki was able to control massive grabbing of land witnessed in the Moi Era.
Kibaki’s tenure saw scandals where hundreds of millions of shillings were siphoned from public coffers. Kibaki’s National Rainbow Coalition.
Most notorious of scandals was the multi-billion shilling Anglo Leasing case, which emerged in 2004. The controversial tender involved public cash being paid to a complicated web of foreign companies for a range of services—including naval ships and passports—that were never delivered.
