UHURU Kenyatta has barely begun his second term as president of Kenya when the Supreme Court invalidated his re-election on Friday. At the time of the poll four years ago, candidate Kenyatta was facing an indictment by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on crimes against humanity charges. Things have changed so drastically that Kenyatta almost felt compelled to remind his supporters what had changed when his Jubilee party launched its manifesto in June.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey told us that the world will shun us, but today no country in the world avoids meeting the president of the republic of Kenya.\u201d The US and British governments had warned Kenyans that it would not be business as usual if Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto, who was also facing crimes against humanity charges at the ICC, were elected.<\/p>\n
Digital president <\/strong><\/p>\n Four years ago, Kenyatta crafted a narrative that his main challenger, then and now, Raila Odinga was a project of foreign governments doing the bidding of former colonial powers via the ICC. He called on Kenyans to reject Odinga and assert their sovereignty. This message resonated with his base mostly from the Kikuyu ethnic group and Ruto\u2019s Kalenjin community, leading to the pair\u2019s victory.<\/p>\n He also portrayed the older generation of politicians, such as Odinga, now 72, as \u201canalogue\u201d and said they needed to hand over to the young, the \u201cdigital generation\u201d. Kenyatta matched his rhetoric with the glitz and colour. He was fun, fresh and suave. He was down to earth, approachable and his ardent supporters said he was \u201cdemystifying the presidency\u201d.<\/p>\n However, while in power, critics have accused Kenyatta of limiting freedom of expression. His government has passed laws that have been seen as curtailing press freedom. In 2016, a journalist from the Daily Nation, the country\u2019s biggest newspaper, was fired for writing an editorial critical of the president\u2019s economic record.<\/p>\n Gaddo, the country\u2019s top cartoonist, was also reportedly sacked for drawing a caricature that showed the president tethered to a ball on chain to depict his ICC troubles. Kenyatta\u2019s claim to be the digital president in 2013 was a metaphor for his youth but also a political strategy to reach out to Kenya\u2019s young population and embrace the country\u2019s ambition to become the centre of digital innovation on the continent.<\/p>\n In keeping with his image, he has kept his pre-election promise to deliver laptops to primary school children despite some major hiccups. His administration has also launched e-centres – \u201conestop shops\u201d to access and pay for government services electronically in order to cut corruption and bureaucracy. Kenyans can now file their taxes and apply for passports, drivers licence, ID cards and access other government services online, cutting hours spent queuing for these services.<\/p>\n His administration also set up an online portal to track government projects and another to report corruption directly to him. His critics have said that these initiatives are for show and have not helped bring transparency to his government nor helped fight corruption. Kenyatta boasts very active Facebook and Twitter accounts and has not been shy to join in social media trends. He once famously did a dab dance.<\/p>\n \u00a0Corruption<\/strong><\/p>\n Kenyatta promised to tackle corruption on coming to power but anti-corruption campaigner John Githongo said his administration was \u201cthe most corrupt in Kenya\u2019s history\u201d. In its 2016 report on perceptions of corruption, Transparency International ranked Kenya at 145 out of 176 countries. It blamed Kenya\u2019s ranking on the incompetence and ineffectiveness of anticorruption agencies, saying that the failure to punish individuals implicated in graft had been a major stumbling block. Kenyatta said his anticorruption efforts had been undermined by the courts, who were slowing prosecutions and the anti-corruption agency, which he said was \u201csluggish\u201d.<\/p>\n In 2015, Kenyatta did act – he suspended and eventually removed five ministers and other high-ranking officials over corruption allegations. Another minister resigned after public pressure.<\/p>\n Political journey<\/strong><\/p>\n As the son of Kenya\u2019s founding father, Kenyatta has the name, the wealth – and the burden that comes with his heritage. His father Jomo Kenyatta was the first president of Kenya. When he was growing up, the young Kenyatta always shied away from politics, wanting to be seen as an ordinary person at ease with ordinary Kenyans.<\/p>\n As a child born to a rich and powerful family, he went to one of the best schools in Nairobi before attending Amherst College in the US where he studied political science and economics. Kenyatta does not have a natural flair for public speaking but has a powerful voice and can be persuasive when fighting his corner.<\/p>\n He has his mother to thank for ensuring that he mastered the local Kikuyu language, which helps him to connect with his countrymen in rural areas. They love to call him \u201cKamwana\u201d, which means \u201cyoung man\u201d – and he made history in 2013 by being sworn in as Kenya\u2019s youngest president.<\/p>\n Former President Daniel Moi took him under his wing and named him as his successor in 2001, a decision that led to rebellion in the ruling party Kanu with top members joining other opposition parties to form the National Rainbow Coalition which won the 2002 election.<\/p>\n Media mogul<\/strong><\/p>\n He is ranked by Forbes Magazine as the 26th richest person in Africa, with an estimated fortune of $500m (\u00a3320m). He is also a media mogul – the Kenyatta family owns TV channel K24, The People newspaper and a number of radio stations. The family also has vast interests in the country\u2019s tourism, banking, construction, dairy and insurance sectors. They also own huge parcels of land in the Rift Valley, central and coastal regions of Kenya.<\/p>\n It is the land question that haunts Kenyatta and the rest of his family wherever they go in Kenya. In an interview with BBC\u2019s HardTalk programme in 2008, he was asked how much land his family owned. He replied: \u201cI don\u2019t need to answer that question because that\u2019s not the issue. Land reform is not about a person; land reform is about a nation. It\u2019s not that I won\u2019t tell you. It\u2019s that I don\u2019t need to tell you.\u201d<\/p>\n Land is the source of nearly all ethnic clashes that bedevil the Rift Valley. It is so divisive that during the last election the inspector general of police told political candidates not to make it a campaign issue. There have been similar calls in this election. In 2013 candidate Kenyatta, faced with the ICC indictment, rallied his supporters to vote for him against what he called outsiders who he said were supporting his opponent. This year, it was his record in government that became a key campaign issue. And he may have to do more of it.\u2014BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" UHURU Kenyatta has barely begun his second term as president of Kenya when the Supreme Court invalidated his re-election on Friday. At the time of the poll four years ago, candidate Kenyatta was facing an indictment by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on crimes against humanity charges. Things have changed so drastically that Kenyatta almost […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":52876,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52874"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52874\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52878,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52874\/revisions\/52878"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}