Life after Mwai Kibaki: Where have all his power men disappeared to?

When Francis Kimemia was sworn in as Secretary to the Cabinet on June 3, he was making a first as far as the ongoing transition from the Kibaki administration goes.

He is the only influential Kibaki era stalwart who has so far landed a powerful docket in the new Uhuru Kenyatta administration.

The majority of men and women who shaped former president Mwai Kibaki’s 10-year administration have fallen by the wayside as a new crop of political deal makers begin to take positions around President Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto.

While some like Francis Muthaura opted for retirement, others have died; some are currently lobbying for appointments and a few have landed plum jobs outside the government bureaucracy. The latter include Mukhisa Kituyi, a trade guru said to have been close to the administration, tipped to be joining a key UN body on trade — Unctad as its head.

Increasingly, the ring of powerbrokers in President Kenyatta’s administration are beginning to take shape, with his nephew Jomo Gecaga, emerging as a key player.

Mr Gecaga, who has for long been Kenyatta’s personal assistant, is the new Chief of Staff and Private Secretary to the President who will be based at State House. Lawrence Lenayapa is also expected to emerge as a key figure in the administration in his position as the State House Comptroller.

Inner circle

Mr Lenayapa started off as a district commissioner serving in several parts of the country.

Kibaki’s power men and women joined his inner circle through two or three key routes: As members of the wealthy Central Kenya elite (often derisively referred to as old Kikuyu money or the Mount Kenya Mafia) that used to bankroll and advise his original party DP (the DP Council of Elders); long-time friends from the Muthaiga Golf Club; and professionals who got to the table through their perceived expertise in certain areas, especially during his campaigns.

They operated largely outside the public domain, but their influence during Kibaki’s decade-long reign is said to have been immense. They were part of a small coterie of men and women the former president bestowed the utmost trust in.

To their credit, analysts argue, the Kibaki presidency was able to survive trying times especially the post-2002 falling out with his coalition partners as well as the bungled 2007 elections and its violent aftermath. In equal measure, they are also blamed for some of the regime’s biggest mistakes and gaffes. 

Adjusting

And now, with the curtains having come down on Kibaki’s tenure last month, they have to get used to life outside the inner sanctums of power. By most accounts, most will not have problems adjusting.

Interviews with those close to the Kibaki administration show that while death has snatched away key people from Kibaki’s circles of close friends — John Michuki, George Saitoti and Njenga Karume — most others have lost favour with the new administration. Their exit was foretold after they were seen to have favoured a Raila Odinga presidency.

Others have been crafting their return to the corridors of power. Eddy Njoroge, the managing director at the power firm KenGen, in November said he would retire at the end of this month.

Political experts said it is expected that most of these men and women — by virtue of coming from Kibaki’s backyard in Central Province where President Uhuru also comes from — will make their way back into the new system as key advisors and powerbrokers.

According to political analysts, two factors defined Kibaki’s list of advisors. First, they were men and women of means.

Most of them had already made their mark in the corporate world and academia before taking on this informal role. Words like “elitist,” “posh,” “out of touch,” have been used to describe Kibaki. Perhaps it is the company he kept.

To them, proximity to power may not have been an end in itself but something of an affirmation; a means to consolidate the gains they had made during their career.

The “Muthaiga Group,” a sobriquet for Kibaki’s golfing buddies immediately comes to mind as natural members of this group. The former president is a keen golfer and a long-serving patron of the Kenya Golf Union (KGU). Handing over the green jacket to the winner of the annual Kenya Open Championship at Muthaiga Golf Club was a task that gave him great joy, those close to him intimate.

This group included Amos Kimunya and several central Kenya business magnates. Naturally, they were also highly educated, people on the same “intellectual wavelength” as Kibaki who had excelled in academics and was a lecturer at the prestigious Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, before he was head-hunted by the leaders of Kenya’s Independence movement, Kanu, to run the party secretariat.

The same cannot be said for his predecessor, Daniel arap Moi, a more earthy man who had quite a motley crowd as his unofficial advisors.

Moi’s Kitchen cabinet

As president, Moi’s kitchen cabinet had in its numbers ex-prison guards (a legacy from his long stint at the Ministry of Home Affairs), a mechanic who once fixed his car and a number of court jesters reputed to have the ability to make the big man laugh.

Back to Kibaki’s unofficial advisors, the second marker is the fact that most of them were not politicians.

Their technocratic background is often blamed for some of the perceived political mistakes of Kibaki I and Kibaki II: The costly falling out with the man many credit for his ascendancy to the presidency, ODM leader Raila Odinga; squandering of the massive public goodwill that greeted his first term and failure to turn his votes into a formidable political party.

According to sources, a think-tank made up of Mukhisa Kituyi, Raphael Tuju, Kivutha Kibwana, Peter Kagwanja among others called the shots when it came to shaping the public policy that defined Kibaki’s reign. 

George Muhoho, the former managing director of the Kenya Airports Authority is perhaps the only powerful man in Kibaki’s government who is set to be felt in the new administration by virtue of being President Kenyatta’s uncle.

Additional reporting by Mwaura Kimani