How Raila tricked Nyachae with the Kibaki Tosha remark

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Simeon Nyachae had had his own disagreements with President Moi earlier and resigned from the Cabinet in a huff.

He had formed Ford People, a political party of which he was now a designated presidential candidate. He was extremely upset with Kanu and he wanted us to work together to teach Kanu a lesson.

The night before the rally, Charity Ngilu and GG Kariuki, as emissaries of NAK, visited us at the Serena Hotel and floated the idea of us working together.

DRAMATIC ENTRY

They were ready to join the Rainbow Coalition, they said. After discussing their proposal, we agreed to consider the matter as we proceeded with our deliberations.

The morning of September 22, 2002 dawned bright and beautiful and we met at Nairobi Serena Hotel at 10am. Simeon Nyachae joined us that morning to enjoin his party in our agreement to work together as the Rainbow Coalition.

The meeting was attended by Kalonzo Musyoka, Raila Odinga, Nyachae, Moody Awori, Prof George Saitoti and William ole Ntimama. After lengthy discussions, we agreed to hold several meetings that would help us agree on who our principal flag bearer would be.

Ironically, only an hour before our departure to Uhuru Park, Mwai Kibaki arrived and requested to be invited to the talks.

Some of us were perplexed but nevertheless, went into a room to discuss his request. We were keen to front one opposition presidential candidate because that was the only way we could dislodge Kanu.

We left the room, having welcomed Mwai Kibaki on board. Nevertheless, we were emphatic that we continue meeting to deliberate on our single presidential candidate.

The Uhuru Park rally that Sunday was one of the biggest masses of people assembled in one place in Kenya since independence. I thought the news people were right. We strode together from Serena and made a dramatic entry into Uhuru Park.

CROWD ROARED

To our delight, both the leaders from NAK and Ford-People joined us for the public meeting. The message was clear; a united opposition to Kanu was in place. However, we could not ignore the urgency of the need to know who would be our flag-bearer.

The multitude was anxious. No one had an answer to that question. When it was Raila Odinga’s turn to speak, he suddenly shouted his now famous Kibaki Tosha (Kibaki suffices) slogan.

The crowd roared back its approval, with their voices thundering across the city and reverberating in waves across Kenya. The riddle was now solved. This announcement came as a shock to all of us! As the Uhuru Park rally ended, everyone in the country knew that Kibaki would be the opposition presidential candidate.

The international media also picked up the news and it was relayed across the world. Unless something dramatically strange happened, there was no doubt that this man was destined to become the third president of Kenya.

Immediately after the Uhuru Park rally, we retreated to Serena Hotel to discuss the new developments and chart the way forward. Unfortunately, the meeting this time was a far cry from the previous one.

The exchanges in the room were acrimonious and we did not seem to agree on anything. Some leaders felt cheated by the turn of events since the Kibaki Tosha rally.

Frankly, there had been no time to organise the right frame of mind and digest the fact that Kibaki was now our joint presidential candidate. It was impossible to discuss anything at that meeting. So we agreed to meet at Awori’s house in Lavington the following morning.

UNHAPPY MAN

Only a selected number of key leaders representing diverse political parties and other interest groups were invited to the meeting, but a few politicians could not resist the chance to bring their associates along putting pressure on the available space that was soon bursting at the seams.

Everybody at the meeting wanted to be heard, but Awori was a gracious host. He employed great wisdom and tact with his natural charming personality to ensure the meeting did not evoke as much acrimony as the previous one.

I have never known what prompted Raila to say Kibaki Tosha. His announcement, however, did not go down well with the other presidential contenders. Nyachae, for instance, was very angry. He felt that he had been duped into signing an agreement the previous morning when in fact a presidential candidate had already been decided upon.

At Awori’s residence, Nyachae was clearly an unhappy man. He expressed his anger at the turn of events. He said he would not agree to the choice of a presidential candidate until his party delegates had approved and passed a resolution to that effect. He excused himself and left the meeting accompanied by the then Ford People Secretary General Farah Maalim. The intrigues in the ruling coalition began as soon as Kibaki was sworn in as the third President of the Republic of Kenya on December 30, 2002.

According to the pre-election MoU, the Coordinating Committee was to meet immediately after the president’s inauguration to ensure its implementation.

We convened the committee soon after the elections with the agenda of advising the Summit about recommendations for the nominees to the Cabinet.

NO ACTION

LDP had drawn up its own list of persons to be appointed ministers and assistant ministers which was presented to the committee at the Milimani Hotel in Nairobi. There were no disputes in our party regarding the list.

The President-elect was still unwell and we did not know who would be the Cabinet nominees from the NAK side of the coalition. Finally, there was proposal by LDP to have a post of Chief Minister in the Cabinet, which we had proposed for Raila Odinga.

We had expected our NAK counterparts to adhere to the MoU since it had been signed in an atmosphere of goodwill and trust. To our great disappointment, when the LDP list was taken to the President-elect it was sent back to us with no action taken. We were informed that Kibaki wanted only the names of our proposed ministers and assistant ministers.

The President-elect argued that the work of assigning portfolios was his sole responsibility. He refused to accept that there would be a post of Chief Minister in his government. This was the first sign that all was not well and that things would not go in accordance with the spirit and letter of the MoU. The President-elect further advised that our proposal should only be sent to him by Moody Awori, who was the Chair of the Summit, and not a group of us sitting as the Coordinating Committee.

This was yet another surprise. However, we complied and gave the list to Moody Awori to deliver to the President-elect.

UTTER DISBELIEF

Many of the senior officials in LDP were on that list. They included Omino by virtue of being chair of LDP and I as the deputy chair. Others included Raila Odinga, George Saitoti, Kalonzo Musyoka and Moody Awori. We had no reason to suspect that Kibaki would fail to honour the MoU regarding nominations and appointments until the day he constituted his Cabinet. To our utter disbelief, Kibaki discarded our list and inserted on the LDP side the names of people who had not worked with us during the campaigns. These included Raphael Tuju and Linah Jebii Kilimo. The Only LDP members on Kibaki’s list of Cabinet appointees were George Saitoti, Raila Odinga, Moody Awori and Kalonzo Musyoka.

Linah Jebii Kilimo’s inclusion was the most shocking. She had never featured anywhere near our plans. LDP felt it was dishonest on the part of NAK to put her name on our list and indicate that she came from the LDP side. At best, we had at one time met Tuju and had a function together.

Emotions ran high and confusion set in. It was clear that something was terribly wrong and we could not understand the unfolding scenario. That we felt betrayed is an understatement.

Immediately after the news of the Cabinet line-up was announced, the LDP Executive Committee convened at the Nairobi Club. After lengthy deliberations we decided to summon Summit members to State House that same Friday evening to take up the matter with the President.

Our disappointment was cemented when our delegation was turned away at the gates of State House. We called a press conference at the weekend and denounced the President for not honouring our pre-election MoU.

IMPENETRABLE WALL

We also called upon the LDP MPs who had been appointed to the government to resign with immediate effect. This marked the start of rebellion within the Narc government long before it settled down to the business of delivering on its pledges to the electorate.

Kibaki was inaccessible and the irony was not lost on many of us. It was as though an impenetrable wall had been erected around him. Although he had given an impressive speech at his inauguration, the new President was still not fully recovered from the complications of the road accident. A week after his inauguration, he was taken ill and rushed to the Nairobi Hospital.

While at the hospital, his new Cabinet continued running the country as well as the civil service. The LDP Brigade, as the media aptly christened us, waited until the President had been discharged from the hospital before we resumed our demands for our rightful place in government. It was not lost on us that Kibaki had started treating us with contempt. When we held a crisis meeting as LDP, Raila was furious at the shabby treatment by our coalition colleagues. He decided to go on his own to see the President.

Saitoti, who was the new Minister for Education, had been to see the President on a routine visit and on his way out he found Raila at the gate and asked him what he was doing there yet the President had already left.

Raila had been waiting for two hours but without his knowledge that the President had already gone to his home in Muthaiga. I empathised with Raila and remembered with a sense of déjà vu all those many years ago when Moi gave me the slip at State House when I went to see him about my transfer to North Eastern Province as a PC. The lack of courtesy from our partners was very disturbing.

It gradually dawned on us that we had been short changed and sidelined in a game of deception. In the meantime, Kalonzo Musyoka and I devised a plan to visit the new President at his home in Muthaiga.

HUMILIATED AGAIN

Fortified by our shared history as colleagues and the long years of mutual respect and friendship, we arrived at his Muthaiga residence at about 10am. Only Kalonzo was allowed inside the residence. I was made to wait outside the gate. The security people argued that they could allow only Kalonzo because he was a Cabinet minister. After a lengthy period, Kalonzo emerged to tell me that he was not able to see the President. He had been informed that the President would be going to State House later in the day, and we should go there instead. We left straight for State House, although the man we wished to see was still at Muthaiga. I could not help telling Kalonzo that I knew how a President behaves when he does not want to see people. I had been through this nasty experience before during the presidency of Daniel Moi and I was not prepared to be humiliated further. I left Kalonzo waiting at the gate and I never got round to asking him whether or not he succeeded in seeing the President.

As soon as we in LDP started to demand our rights within the Narc coalition government, we suffered a terrible setback in the form of waning public support for our cause.

It started with the media. For reasons I have never been able to fully comprehend, the media were hostile to our demands and condemned us as power hungry individuals. We were cast in an unfavourable light as undermining the popularly elected government of Mwai Kibaki. We, therefore, took the decision to beat a retreat and see how things would pan out.

The President was still in ill health and it was not until April 2003 that he was able to officially open the 9th Parliament. His doctors and physiotherapists had done a good job of getting him back on the road to good health. I met him after the official inauguration of Parliament and I was genuinely pleased to see him looking well, save for a slight limp. He gave a very long speech. He later told me that although his handlers wanted him to read a shorter version of his speech, he had insisted on reading the whole of it.

Next: Read about Mulu Mutisya, the illiterate kingmaker who influenced Moi’s politics in Ukambani