President Kibaki walked out of a top-level reconciliation meeting he was meant to co-chair without uttering a word at the height of coalition tensions in 2009, according to a new book.
The walkout underlined what the author claims was a troubled and unequal relationship between the President and Prime Minister Raila Odinga who lead a coalition of the Party of National Unity and Orange Democratic Movement, which often teetered on the verge of collapse.
Mr Miguna Miguna, the prime minister’s former advisor on constitution and coalition affairs, in his book paints a picture of the President as a coldly aloof and inflexible man who in private does not treat Mr Odinga as an equal partner.
He, for example, recounts one occasion when President Kibaki would not come out of his suite at Kilaguni Lodge in Tsavo West National Park to speak to Mr Odinga and addressed him from behind a curtain.
He also projects Mr Odinga as having failed to get the best deal for the Orange Democratic Movement in his negotiations with the President after the disputed 2007 General Election.
Peeling Back the Mask: A Quest for Justice in Kenya, Mr Miguna’s no-holds-barred account of his time as a top advisor to Mr Odinga, goes behind the scenes to examine the intrigues, power plays and personality rivalries that have characterised the unity government since it was brokered by peace envoy Kofi Annan in 2008.
Mr Miguna, who fell out with the Prime Minister in dramatic fashion after he was fired from his post in Mr Odinga’s team last year, paints the relationship between Mr Kibaki and Mr Odinga as an unequal marriage in which the President comfortably dominated Mr Odinga.
He claims that Mr Kibaki, who was better briefed and had a more disciplined team around him, frequently got the better of the Premier in one-on-one meetings.
The principals’ troubled relationship nearly hit breaking point at the Kilaguni retreat which at the time was portrayed as a successful attempt at healing the cracks in the coalition but which Mr Miguna reveals to have been a failure characterised by quarrels and antics which bordered on the comical.
Insisted on reshuffle
The meeting, on April 4, 2009, started with a familiar standoff after Mr Miguna discovered that President Kibaki, Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta and then National Security minister Prof George Saitoti had been allocated bigger and better rooms than those booked for the premier, ODM deputy leader William Ruto and Deputy Prime Minister Musalia Mudavadi, who skipped the meeting.
Mr Miguna took the position that this sent the message that one of the coalition partners was superior to the other and insisted on a reshuffle.
Mr Miguna’s stance was consistent with another occasion where he had stopped a coalition management meeting from starting at Harambee House until the seating arrangement was revised to reflect the fact Mr Kibaki and Mr Odinga were equal partners in the coalition.
More drama was to follow at Kilaguni. The ODM team arrived three hours before the PNU team came to the scene and were huddled discussing the fact PNU had not agreed on an agenda for the talks by the time Mr Kibaki and his team arrived.
“That first night Raila went to see Kibaki in his room and subsequently made us fall about with laughter at his bizarre description of what had happened there,” he writes.
“According to Raila – and we believed him – Kibaki spoke with him from behind the curtains, which were fully drawn. They didn’t see each other. There was no face-to-face meeting as such.
“At first, Raila thought the old man was dressing up or using the washroom and that he would join him in the spacious living room. However, after 30 minutes of odd ‘communication’ Raila politely excused himself and left.”
Mr Odinga told the ODM team that President Kibaki had told him that the team should see the retreat as a “well deserved holiday”, summarising the difference between the PNU and ODM viewpoints.
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