A request by the Mwai Kibaki family for politicians to keep off politics was ignored by Deputy President William Ruto and former Prime Minister Raila Odinga as they turned his funeral in Othaya into an election campaign rally.
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Presiding Archbishop Anthony Muheria had made it clear from the onset that the family had requested that the former Head of State be honoured by avoiding politics. From the protocol that saw the Nyeri Catholic head become the master of ceremonies and even picking speakers, it was clear that politicking was not welcome.
President Uhuru Kenyatta played ball, unprecedentedly keeping his speech short and confining it strictly to condoling with the Kibaki family.
But DP Ruto and Mr Odinga had other plans of advancing their political agenda in thinly veiled political speeches and nuances. The two front-runners in the August 9 presidential race took turns in attempting to link their plans for the country with some of the achievements of the third president, who has widely been described as the best Kenya has ever had.
The undertones were also evident as supporters of the pair took turns to cheer them in what turned out into a popularity contest.
Mr Odinga turned to historical rhetoric, focussing on the 2002 decision to back Kibaki under the now famous ‘Kibaki tosha’ slogan.
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“I was last to speak on that day and posed to the crowd if Kibaki anatosha and the crowd responded with Kibaki tosha,” Mr Odinga said, adding, how he continued with Kibaki’s presidential campaigns following his near fatal accident two months to the 2002 General Election.
“I said our captain is injured, but the match goes on. And we went on with the campaign and he won.”
He went on to recount how he worked with Kibaki under the grand coalition government that was preceded by chaos after the disputed 2007 election.
And when DP Ruto was called on to eulogise the former president, he too seized the moment as an opportunity to advance his bottom-up economic agenda.
As he constantly brands himself a political outsider who rose from nothing, he referred to Kibaki as one who rose from nothing but went on to become president.
“Our father, Kibaki, was from Thunguri, a village like Bethlehem that was not known, yet he accomplished many things. From here, he became a great scholar, economist, leader, and, of course, a great president and father of the nation. If there is a demonstration of bottom-up model, we can learn from Mwai Kibaki.”
The DP threw a veiled jab at the former premier by stating that the country needs peaceful polls in August to avoid another “handshake”. The Raila ‘handshake’ with Mr Kibaki in 2008 formed the grand coalition government following the disputed polls, before the former premier had a similar rapprochement with President Kenyatta in 2018 after the highly charged polls.
The second in command eulogised the former president as the father of modern Kenya. He went on to introduce all politicians at the funeral, going against the protocol that had been set to recognise only the president, Mr Odinga and him. Interestingly, he did not recognise Cabinet secretaries and speakers of Parliament.
