The election has been set for December the 27th and with seven weeks to go the race for the State House in Nairobi is in full swing. The contest feature three contenders, the incumbent President Mwai Kibaki, Raila Odinga and Kalonzo Musyoka and ClickAfrique takes a look at the candidates.
THE CANDIDATES
Mwai Kibaki
A veteran Kenyan politician, the 76-year old Economist has been a mainstay of Kenya politics since he joined the Kenya African National Union (KANU) the then ruling party. In 1963 he was elected MP representing the Makadara constituency in Nairobi. He rose through the political hierarchy and served as Kenya’s Vice President for ten years during the rule of President Daniel Arap Moi, a period characterised by authoritarian one-party rule.
In 1988 Kibaki fell out of favour with Arap Moi and eventually left KANU to found the Democratic Party (DP). By 1991 the Kenyan constitution had been amended restoring multi-party democracy and this gave Kibaki his first chance to run directly for President, and to do so against Arap Moi. He contested but failed to win 1992 and again in 1997. Come 2002 with Arap Moi barred by the constitution from contesting further, Kibaki seized his opportunity, forming a grand collation of political parties, the National Rainbow Coalition (NARC) he broke the 39-year dominance of KANU in a landslide electoral victory and was sworn in as Kenya’s third President on December 30, 2002.
Kibaki’s Presidency had promised a fight against corruption but little progress has been made on this front. One distinguishing achievement of the Kibaki years has been the introduction of free primary school education for all Kenyans with plans to extend this to secondary schools next year.
Raila Odinga
Riala Odinga comes from one of Kenya’s foremost political families. He is the son of Oginga Odinga, Kenya’s first Vice President and author of the seminal political memoir “Not Yet Uhuru”. Born in 1945 Odinga qualified as a Mechanical Engineer in what was East Germany. He returned to Kenya in 1975 and initially had a stint as a lecturer at the University of Nairobi before moving on to work with the Kenya Bureau of Standards.
In 1982 he was implicated in the Hezekiah Ochuka coup attempt against Arap Moi , and jailed for a total of eight years including six of which were spent in solitary confinement. He eventually fled into self exile to Sweden. On his return in 1992 he immersed himself into Kenyan politics joining the Forum for the Restoration of Democracy (FORD) founded by his father. FORD itself later split into FORD-K and FORD-Asili. FORD-K was dominated by Odinga and father and it was on this platform that Odinga won his first parliamentary seat in 1992 election. Following the death of his father in 1994 Odinga attempted to take over the leadership of FORD-K but was thwarted and left to join the National Democratic Party (NDP). It was under the auspices of the NDP that he took his first shot at the Presidency in the 1997 election but finished third behind Kibaki and Arap Moi.
After this failure, Odinga led NDP into an controversial merger with the ruling party KANU and served as the Minister for Energy. When Arap Moi finally decided he was stepping down in 2002 it was widely assumed that Odinga would become the candidate of the ruling party for those elections. His plans were scuppered when KANU instead opted for political neophyte Uhuru Kenyatta son of Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya’s first President.
Once again Odinga found himself in a political wilderness and after licking his wounds he formed a new party the Liberal Democratic Party which joined Kibaki’s NARC coalition. NARC’s victory in those 2002 elections saw Odinga join the government as Minister for Roads, Housing and Works. The harmony did not last for long as by 2005 wrangling over constitutional changes saw Odinga again out in the cold. He has however regrouped his forces under the banner of the Orange Democratic Movement the banner under which he is to contest the 2007 elections.
Odinga has faced criticism for his nomadic political career and failure to deliver when he served as the Minister for works, in particular he is seen as failing to alleviate the state of Kibera supposedly the world’s largest slum and part of his parliamentary constituency. He however remains popular across the country where is seen as capable of delivering real change and currently leads the opinion polls
Kalonzo Musyoka
For the last 22 years Kalonzo Musyoka has been a prominent part of the Kenyan political landscape. The 54 year old lawyer has had a continuous presence in the Kenyan parliament since he first got elected in 1985 as MP for Kitui North. A year later he was appointed Assistant Minister for Works and Housing.
Following his re-election victory in 1988 he became the Organising Secretary for the ruling party KANU party and after another election victory in 1992 he rejoined Arap Moi’s cabinet as Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation. In this capacity he was involved in peace initiatives across the East African region including Burundi, Somalia and Sudan. He later at various points headed the Ministries of Education, Tourism and Information.
As with Raila Odinga, Musyoka was forced to leave KANU after the imposition of Uhuru Kenyatta as the ruling party’s candidate for the 2002 elections. He joined forces with Odinga in the LDP and the NARC coalition which it became part of. NARC's victory saw Kibaki re-appoint Musyoka as Minister of Foriegn Affairs. A position he held till the 2005 constitutional crisis saw the unravelling of the coalition.
With his fellow political nomad Odinga, Musyoka was once more on the move and they ended up in the Orange Democratic Movement which they both hoped to use as their platform for the 2007 elections. The battle for supremacy between Odinga and himself soon put paid to that dream, as Odinga triumphed. Musyoka now heads a weakened faction of the ODM of which he is the Presidential candidate.