How Kibaki staged a one-month reelection campaign

After the ruling Narc party had been hijacked by Health minister Charity Kaluki Ngilu and the new Narc-Kenya assembled by Martha Karua was branded a Mt Kenya party, President Mwai Kibaki appeared set to kick off his 2007 second-term campaigns on a flat foot.The wrangles in the ruling party started manifesting after the 2005 referendum, with Kibaki’s Cabinet splitting into two – one wing dubbed Orange was led by Prime Minister Raila Odinga and the other, Banana, by the President himself.Ms Ngilu had maneuvered through the ruling party registration and owned it, leaving Kibaki at her mercy for a contest ticket.“It was a moment of reckoning and we were running out of time to stage our campaigns. The Defence and Interior ministries became the last resort to help us bail out our campaigns from the factional capture…,” a senior security officer who ‘clandestinely’ served in the Kibaki reelection campaigns and is now retired, revealed to the Nation.“And the then National Intelligence Service (NIS) strategists recommended strongly that we form a party that would beat the tribal tag, and the Party of National Unity (PNU) was birthed.”The two ministries were at the time under Kibaki’s buddies – Njenga Karume (Defence) and John Michuki (Internal Security).With the party deal done, it was time for Kibaki to launch his campaigns – a month before the General Election. The Gatundu South MP Moses Kuria, who was then a strategist in the Kibaki administration, says the campaigns were launched in an atmosphere of pure panic but one man remained cool and unperturbed. That man was Kibaki.Three months before the December 27 elections, Mr Odinga, then 62, was rated by opinion polls to have opened a 10 percent gap against the incumbent.Mr Odinga had been on the campaign trail for a full year, enjoyed huge grassroots support and dominated media coverage as Kibaki worked in State House. The Orange Democratic Movement had been formed in 2005 and was to compete with Kibaki’s PNU that was barely a month old.“He used to say that all was well, will be well and the best ballot verdict would prevail. He used to insist that Kenyans were not fools and were already sure where their future was best secured, even when opinion polls were working against us at the time,” Mr Kuria said.At 75 then, Kibaki’s main challenger was Mr Odinga, whose foot soldiers had been quoted extensively dismissing the President as an old horse that was timid about launching his campaigns.“Let the old man stay safe on his final days in power…You should not trouble him with overexertion on the campaign trail. Let him relinquish power as smoothly as possible without subjecting him to the obvious shame of losing while fighting,” said Otieno Kajwang’ at Mr Odinga’s campaign rally at Uhuru Park.But the moment of reckoning came when Kibaki unleashed a campaign drive that left his competitors shocked.Mt Kenya turnout mobilisation committee member Elias Mbau, who was then the MP for Maragua constituency, says “even those of us in his team were amazed at the energetic campaigns that Kibaki launched”.Mr Mbau says the strategy was secretly being coordinated by ‘loyal forces’ within the security apparatus “and ours was to implement their think tank directives”.Mr Mbau says that “there existed a common consensus amongst security formations that Kibaki was the ideal candidate to win and I was also privy to intelligence information that the developed economies were also rooting for his reelection”.His then vice-president (September 25, 2003 to January 9, 2008) was Moody Awori – another elderly sage who was 79 then and who nearly got trapped in campaign violence in Nyanza as he drummed up support for Kibaki’s re-election.Mr Mbau says the reality of Kibaki’s win was emerging to be hinged on ensuring all registered living Mt Kenya voters in the country voted. That would then be topped up with the few patriots who believed in the politics of prosperity as opposed to those of power grabbing.Long career administrator Joseph Kaguthi, a mobiliser and coordinator of ‘disciplined campaign teams’, reveals that Kibaki started by receiving regional delegations in the State House.“He did this on a daily basis for one week and we were sure that we had established loyal pockets across the country. We favoured the delegations coming to State House, since the political mood across some areas was so poisoned and we had to bypass ugly incidents,” Mr Kaguthi says.He said delegations were a controlled audience and it was easy to recruit loyal foot soldiers from them from the dignity and war chest of the State House as opposed to going for them in the village terraces.“But at one time we had to move out and hit the campaign trail. We had to be seen addressing rallies and dancing with our voters. We had to come out and behave like ordinary politicians where we had to be there in the doorsteps of the lowly, don religious garb and make those speeches out there for our supporters to solidify their resolve for us,” Mr Kaguthi said.He reveals that the Kibaki re-election plan mostly relied on the security vaults’ goodwill, as well as ganging together professionals, jua kali and the clergy into loyal groups.“We also had to package the lifestyle world into a support base and that is how we ended up coming up with groups like Wamama and Warembo na Kibaki slogans,” he added.Mr Kaguthi reveals that they figured out that the President only needed to hype his track record that had transformed the economy and lives in his first term.With free education, an improved economy and wider democratic space embedded in the hearts, his handlers postured that he could only be beaten criminally but not through the ballot.Former Rift Valley Regional Commissioner George Natembeya, who at the time was Michuki’s personal assistant, reports that “it was a security nightmare when Kibaki launched his campaigns to a point in some instance in Kiambu he campaigned in darkness and had done 10 public rallies”.He was 36 years old then and says Kibaki inspired him to start thinking that he had the whole life ahead of him if the President at 75 was oozing such energy. Mr Natembeya said "we went into the election with our cast right...we knew there would be some monkey business from our competitors in their strongholds...without compromising the dignity of our service to the nation, ours was to minimise the damage of vote corruption to our candidate...we did not steal a single vote, we only protected what was ours."Mr Natembeya says a big lesson from the 2007 elections is that peace is the dearest treasure to safeguard.Eventually, the electoral commission announced Kibaki winner with 4,584,721 (46.42 percent) against Mr Odinga’s 4,352,993 (44.07 percent). The outcome sparked post-election violence that killed 1,500 and displaced tens of thousands, leading to six prominent Kenyans being charged at the International Criminal Court (ICC). The cases collapsed.Security officers involved in the Kibaki re-election drive confess that they were aware of the building up of tensions and had briefed their candidate accordingly.“That is why Kibaki’s re-election campaign messages were full of violence-conscious lines … It was a permanent feature in his public addresses that he wanted a peaceful election, that there was no need for violence, reminding Kenyans that the elections were only a one-day affair and there were years ahead to be lived,” one of the officers told the Nation.[email protected]