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Kenya: The Writing Was On the Wall But Moi Ignored Wise Counsel

Kamau Ngotho

13 September 2008

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Nairobi — Six years into his retirement, one-time close aides of former President Daniel arap Moi disclose why he has fast lost political grip in his Rift Valley backyard.

In the last General Election, Moi's party, Kanu, and his preferred candidate, Mr Mwai Kibaki, were overwhelmingly rejected in the larger Rift Valley Province where support for the former president has been automatic for over half a century.

His three sons, Gideon, Raymond and Jonathan, too, were rejected by voters in Baringo Central, Rongai and Eldama Ravine respectively.

Moi's walk to political irrelevance started in 2002 when he chose to ignore the wise counsel of close aides and stuck with his Project Uhuru.

Top on the list of those whose advice the former president brushed aside, sources now disclose, was his Intelligence chief, Mr Wilson Boinnet.

The parting of ways with then director general of the National Security Intelligence Service (NSIS) was so acrimonious that Moi was seriously contemplating his replacement. He however backed down for fear of a backlash in the Intelligence community here and abroad.

Moi, say sources, strongly believed Boinnet's opposition to the Project Uhuru was not based on intelligence collected on the ground but was because of Boinnet's close association with former Kanu big wigs who had crossed over to the opposition.

A key suspect in the former president's thinking was Mr George Saitoti who he had just sacked as vice-president.

As Moi's suspicions got entrenched, Boinnet resorted to giving the president raw data collected from the field as opposed to summarised briefs but still this did not help matters.

Sources in the know now disclose that whereas Moi wrongly suspected his Intelligence chief to work closely with Saitoti, the truth was that Boinnet had opened a channel of communication with Narc candidate Mwai Kibaki after realising that the latter was headed to be the next commander in chief.

The secret liaison with candidate Kibaki began in November 2002, a month to the election. The two linkmen in the liaison were Mr Stanley Murage and a retired senior Intelligence officer working for the Kibaki presidential campaign.

Secret meeting

Kibaki's first secret meeting with Boinnet was in November 2002. Boinnet personally drove himself in an unmarked car to a crowded parking of a major city hospital from where Kibaki's emissary picked him up in a battered Peugeot 504 saloon and drove him to Kibaki's Muthaiga home.

Following the meeting, sources disclose, Boinnet decided to limit the scope of intelligence reports on the opposition candidate landing on Moi's desk.

Kibaki handlers took advantage of the vital liaison to aggressively fund-raise for his campaign without fear of having to look over their shoulders.

Indeed, his trusted aide and nephew, the late Alex Mureithi, was to make three secret trips to Libya where strongman Muammar Gaddafi made generous contributions to the Kibaki campaign kitty.

Mr Murage, too, could now secretly fund-raise for Kibaki without fear of reprisals from State House. It is reliably learnt that he raised such a tidy bundle for the Kibaki campaign to a point that his exalted place in the new administration was guaranteed long before hand.

But perhaps the most important thing Boinnet did for candidate Kibaki was to use the time-honoured brotherhood of intelligence to get the Americans tell Moi to the face what he did not want to hear.

A few weeks to the December 2002 elections, Moi was invited to Washington where the White House told him that intelligence picked on the ground indicated Kanu and its candidate Uhuru Kenyatta would be trounced at the ballot.

The Americans impressed upon him to accept the voters' verdict and hand over to the opposition when the time came. Moi, ever flexible when cornered, saw the point.

Indeed, on his return home, he stopped over in London to visit candidate Kibaki, then recuperating in hospital following a road accident early in December.

It was the first clear pointer that the former president was finally reconciling with the possibility of a Kibaki presidency.

Formation commander

Back home, Boinnet went a step further and convinced a formation commander who had the president's ear to persuade the latter to accept a military farewell before the election day.

All along, Moi had insisted that his farewell as the commander in chief be done simultaneously with the swearing in of Mr Kenyatta as the new president.

In a recent conversation with this writer, the formation commander recalled everybody at State House being in a state of denial when he told Moi there was an overwhelming possibility of a Kibaki take-over.

He says: "Even with all signs that the Kanu candidate would be beaten at the ballot, State House remained in a state of denial. It was amazing."

Fresh information made available to the Sunday Nation is that even as late as three weeks to the election, Moi was still in a state of denial even trying to woo two rebel Kanu stalwarts, Saitoti and Mr Joseph Kamotho, to go back to Kanu.

Safe house

To that effect, Moi arranged two secret meetings with Saitoti at a "safe" house he frequently used for discreet meetings in the city's Kyuna estate.

Saitoti would be picked from a hotel in Westlands by the driver of a former well connected parastatal chief living in the neighbourhood of Moi's "safe" house. Moi would discreetly be driven to the venue in a convoy of three unmarked vehicles.

The less secretive Kamotho, we are informed, was invited for two breakfast sessions with the former president at his city's Kabarnet Garden home.

Mr Kamotho has since confirmed as much, saying that he and Saitoti told the former president it was too late to change course.

Mr Franklin Bett, a former State House comptroller and now Buret MP, says he knew that Moi had politically lost it when he bulldozed the Uhuru candidacy against the advice of his close aides.

He says Moi's biggest mistake was to forget that it is the wise counsel of his aides that had brought him that far and decided to entirely rely on his instincts, however wrong.

He says Rift Valley or Kalenjin voters for that matter, had parted ways with Moi as early as 2002 but voted for his candidate on account of sympathy.

He explains: "That year Kalenjins only voted for Moi's choice because he went round pleading with them in vernacular. I vividly remember two meetings, one in Bomet and another in Eldoret, where the former president spoke in a grave voice as he made a pitch for Uhuru."

The next politically fatal mistake Moi was to make, says Bett, was to assume the Kalenjin No-vote in the 2005 referendum had anything to do with him. He says the fact that the community and Moi voted the same way was mere coincidence.

Bett says Kibaki handlers were completely wrong in assuming that Kalenjins voted No in the referendum because Moi told them to, hence they would do the same in the General Election.

"That was a serious misreading of the situation. No wonder the big humiliation at the ballot in the Rift Valley last year," he says.

Diehard supporters

Another former top Moi aide and now a Cabinet minister says even Moi diehard supporters like Mr Nicholas Biwott could tell that ODM was on the rampage in Rift Valley. He discloses that Biwott personally told him as much.

Bett says the anti-Moi tide in the Rift Valley is simply because majority voters in the province are young people who have no attachment to, even care less about, the Moi legacy.

He says that "the older generation that appreciates Moi and his politics is now a diminishing minority in Rift Valley and elsewhere".

Mr Mark Too, another Moi long time top aide-turned-foe, sees it differently. "Moi's biggest problem is that he does not know how to keep friends," he says.

Bett agrees but with his own twist. "Moi's problem is actually not failure to keep friends but not knowing how to amicably part ways with them when it comes to that."

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