Page "History of Kenya" Paragraph 67

Moi ruled using a strategic mixture of ethnic favoritism, state repression, and marginalization of opposition forces.

He utilized detention and torture, looted public finances, and appropriated land and other property.

Moi sponsored irregular army units that attacked the Luo, Luhya, and Kikuyu communities, and he disclaimed responsibility by assigning the violence to ethnic clashes arising from a land dispute.

Beginning in 1998, Moi engaged in a carefully calculated strategy to manage the presidential succession in his and his party's favor.

Faced with the challenge of a new, multiethnic political coalition, Moi shifted the axis of the 2002 electoral contest from ethnicity to the politics of generational conflict.

The strategy backfired, ripping his party wide open and resulting in its humiliating defeat of his candidate, Kenyatta's son, in the December 2002 general elections.