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Kibaki: 'Has-been' turned hero
NAIROBI, Kenya -- Kenya's new president Mwai Kibaki has been voted in on a ticket of change -- alongside being promoted by his NARC party as a "tried and tested" politician. The 71-year-old political veteran's career has spanned four decades during which he has held many high posts of power. Electors wanted a man who would dig the country out of the corruption and economic malaise suffered during President Daniel arap Moi's regime over his near quarter century of power. Kibaki has pledged to revive the economy and end Moi's patronage-based style, but critics say NARC represents only an illusion of change, and point out the many recent defectors from KANU that are now among its ranks. Critics have also drawn attention to the decade Kibaki spend as vice president under Moi during one of the most intolerant periods in recent Kenyan history. Kibaki is a late convert to democracy, having once likened campaigners seeking to end the one-party system in the 1980s to daydreamers trying to fell a tree with a razor blade, Reuters news agency reported. But he was chosen to lead the umbrella group of opposition parties in an attempt to get rid of Moi. In so doing, he defeated a much younger man, and son of Kenya's first president, Uhuru Kenyatta, who suffered from being seen as a Moi's protege as head of the KANU party. Kibaki began his political career in 1963 within the ruling KANU party, rising steadily through the ranks to become finance minister and vice president -- the latter between 1978 and 1988. He gradually fell out of favour with Moi and was demoted to health minister before being pushed further to the edges of the government and a position of isolation within the party. He defected on Christmas Day, 1991, with the advent of a multi-party system, and formed the Democratic Party in time to fight the 1992 election. Educated at Uganda's Makerere University and the London School of Economics, Kibaki is known as an articulate and intelligent politician, with a penchant for witticisms in Swahili, English and Kikuyu, the language of his tribe, Reuters said. He also has a reputation for indecisiveness. Married with four children, he has interests in hotels, insurance and farming. He is thought to be one of Kenya's richest politicians and enjoys playing golf.
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