Listen With his unmistakable picture of calm and serenity even in stormy political meetings, Wycliffe Ambetsa Oparanya became President Mwai Kibaki’s alter ego in the tumultuous Government of National Unity formed after the disputed 2007 elections. In the days of performance contracting in government during the President’s final term, the now 64-year-old Governor of Kakamega […]
Listen Njenga Karume and Mwai Kibaki were the best of friends. But how Karume, a Standard 4 primary school dropout, could hobnob with an economist, who had not only lectured at the prestigious Makerere University but also passed all his exams with a distinction at both Makerere and at the London School of Economics, was […]
Listen If ever the Mwai Kibaki administration that swept to power in 2003 needed a face to symbolise a new beginning, then Najib Balala, the former Mayor of Mombasa, fit the bill perfectly. In picking the Member of Parliament (MP) for Mvita, Mombasa’s inner city, President Kibaki chose a performer and an early bloomer who […]
Listen William Samoei Ruto’s entry into Mwai Kibaki’s Cabinet is one more instance proving that politics in Kenya is a spectacle of continuous experiments with various combinations and permutations of strange bedfellows. Indeed, as strange bedfellows go, none could be stranger, at first blush, than Kibaki and Ruto. In his first term, Kibaki presided over […]
Listen There is something steely about Naomi Namsi Shaban’s demeanour. It is as if underneath her trademark colourful head wraps lies an impenetrable steel helmet made to deflect missiles directed at her in her decades long career in politics. This was not just a character attributed to her, but to the Mwai Kibaki Presidency and […]
Listen Described by critics as a carryover from a bygone era, William Ronkorua ole Ntimama was another unlikely member of the Kibaki Cabinet. A self-educated man who used his power of the tongue and warlike posturing to sustain himself at the top of Maasai land political hierarchy, Ntimama was one of only three ex-KANU (Kenya […]
Listen Samuel Losuron Poghisio joined the Cabinet in 2008, during President Mwai Kibaki’s second term. He was appointed following the National Accord that established a coalition government after the disputed presidential election of 2007, in which Kibaki had been declared the winner. Poghisio was given the influential docket of Information and Communication, which was surprising […]
Listen When he was born to Ngina Muhoho and Mzee Jomo Kenyatta in the dying days of the colonial administration in October 1961, it was Mwai Kibaki, then the Kenya African National Union (Kanu) Executive Officer, who suggested that he be named ‘Uhuru’. That was in commemoration of the imminent dawn of uhuru or independence […]
Listen In Kenya, Cabinet positions cannot be said to carry equal weight – or that they are one and the same. Each portfolio has its own influence and clout, and this perhaps explains why appointments to certain Cabinet positions have been a scramble. Of note are ministries of finance, internal security, health, energy and power […]
Listen As the biblical story goes, Noah was chosen to perpetuate the human race, leaving his wicked contemporaries to perish in a deluge. Tasked with building an ark to house the chosen few, the patriarch also let in all animals, male and female, according to God’s commandment. Fast-forward to the story of the National Rainbow […]