About his decision Kibaki said, “ Following the results of the Referendum, it has become necessary for me, as the President of the Republic, to re-organise my Government to make it more cohesive and better able to serve the people of Kenya ".

A new cabinet of Kibaki loyalists, including MPs from the opposition, termed the Government of National Unity ( GNU ), was thereafter appointed, but some MPs who were offered ministerial positions declined to take up posts.

President ’ s Kibaki Government was perceived as being unwilling to abide by its pre-election agreement with its partners and as retreating into an ethnic enclave.

Even though the MoU was not a legal agreement, the Kibaki Government ’ s turning away from it and removing from government the group of Ministers associated to Odinga had the effect of increasing the polarization of politics along ethnic lines.

The post election violence early 2008therefore is, in part, a consequence of the failure of President Kibaki and his first Government to exert political control over the country or to maintain sufficient legitimacy as would have allowed a civilized contest with him at the polls to be possible.

, Kenya is governed by Government of National Unity between the rival Party of National Unity of Mwai Kibaki and the Orange Democratic Movement of Raila Odinga following the 2007 presidential election and subsequent violence.

Nominated to Parliament in 2001, he became Minister for Local Government under President Daniel arap Moi and, despite his political inexperience, was favored by President Moi as his successor ; Kenyatta ran as KANU's candidate in the December 2002 presidential election, but lost to opposition candidate Mwai Kibaki by a large margin.

He backed Kibaki for re-election in the December 2007 presidential election and was named Minister of Local Government by Kibaki in January 2008, before becoming Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Trade in April 2008 as part of a coalition government.

Following the election, which proved extremely controversial when Kibaki was declared the victor despite claims of fraud from challenger Raila Odinga and his Orange Democratic Movement, Kibaki appointed Kenyatta as Minister for Local Government on 8 January 2008.

Lucy Kibaki slapped the Government Principal Administrative Secretary after he referred to her as " Wambui " during a presidential awards ceremony, independent NTV reported.

Kibaki was then wheelchair bound having narrowly escaped death in a road traffic accident on the campaign trail.

In 1962, Kibaki married Lucy Muthoni, the daughter of a Church Minister, who was then a secondary school Head Teacher.

Kibaki then helped to draft Kenya's independence constitution.

Kalonzo Musyoka then broke away from Raila's ODM to mount his own fringe bid for the presidency, thus narrowing down the contest between the main candidates, Kibaki, the incumbent, and Odinga.

Mwai Kibaki and Mrs. Kibaki with then U. S. President George W. Bush and Mrs. Laura Bush at the White House during a state visit in 2003

Musyoka served in the government under President Daniel arap Moi and was Minister for Foreign Affairs from 1993 until 1998 ; subsequently, under President Mwai Kibaki, he was Minister of Foreign Affairs again from 2003 to 2004, then Minister of the Environment from 2004 to 2005.

LDP then teamed up with the National Alliance Party of Kenya ( NAK ) of Mwai Kibaki to form NARC which won the 2003 election with Kibaki as its presidential candidate.

When Moi was succeeded by Mwai Kibaki, Awori was made Minister of Home Affairs in January 2003 and then Vice-President ( while remaining in charge of Home Affairs ) in September 2003, following the death of the previous Vice-President, Michael Kijana Wamalwa in London.

Kibaki came third in the subsequent presidential elections of 1992, when the divided opposition lost to president Moi and KANU despite having received more than two thirds of the vote.

When he came to power in 2003, President Kibaki rolled out free learning both in primary and later in secondary schools.

He subsequently came under pressure from Kenyan politicians to make public his evidence, and was reported to have provided the President, Mwai Kibaki, with a dossier containing details of corruption in the government.

In early 2003, soon after Mwai Kibaki came into power, the government gave the military leadership three days to explain why ten of their Land Rovers were given to the outlawed Mungiki sect.

After resigning as a cabinet minister in 1991, Kibaki served as an opposition Member of Parliament from 1991 up to his election as Kenya's third president in 2002 after two unsuccessful bids for the Kenyan presidency in 1992 and 1997.

After his graduation, Kibaki took up an appointment as Assistant Sales Manager Shell Company of East Africa, Uganda Division.

In early 1960, Mwai Kibaki left academia for politics when he gave up his job at Makerere and returned to Kenya to become executive officer of Kenya African National Union ( KANU ), at the request of Jaramogi Oginga Odinga ( who went on to become Kenya's first Vice President ).

Opinion polls up to election day showed Kibaki behind Raila Odinga nationally, but closing.

Furthermore, Odinga, who had run an anti – Kikuyu campaign, had won the votes of most of the other Kenyan tribes and regions, with Kibaki's victory being attained only with the near exclusive support of the populous Kikuyu, Meru and Embu communities-who had turned up to vote for Kibaki in large numbers after feeling, in reaction to the Odinga campaign, and with the covert encouragement of the Kibaki campaign, increasingly besieged and threatened by the pro-Odinga tribes.

In the run-up to the 2002 elections, Wamalwa formed a political alliance with Mwai Kibaki and Charity Ngilu to come up with a winning side.

In the first open presidential elections in a quarter century, in December 1992, Moi won with 37 % of the vote, Matiba received 26 %, Mwai Kibaki ( of the mostly Kikuyu Democratic Party ) 19 %, and Odinga 18 %.

Kibaki instead attended Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, where he studied Economics, History and Political Science, and graduated best in his class in 1955 with a First Class Honours Degree ( BA ) in Economics.

Mwai Kibaki ( standing, back right ) with Jomo Kenyatta and Zafrud Deen sitting in front

When Kibaki was the minister of Finance Kenya enjoyed a period of relative prosperity, fueled by a commodities boom, especially coffee, with remarkable fiscal discipline and sound monetary policies.

Kibaki fell out of favour with President Moi in 1988, and was dropped as Vice President and moved to the Ministry of Health.

In January 1998, Kibaki became the leader of the official opposition with the Democratic Party being the official opposition party in Parliament.

On 27 December 2002, Kibaki and NARC won a landslide victory over KANU, with Kibaki getting 62 % of the votes in the presidential elections, against only 31 % for the KANU candidate Uhuru Kenyatta.

In November 2004, in an ABC Prime Time interview with Peter Jennings, former US President Bill Clinton identified Kibaki as the one living person he would most like to meet " because of the Kenyan government's decision to abolish school fees for primary education ".

Three days later, after a protracted count which saw presidential results in Kibaki's Central Kenya come in last, allegedly inflated, in a cloud of suspicion and rising tensions, amid vehement protests by Raila's ODM, overnight re-tallying of results and chaotic scenes, all beamed live on TV, at the national tallying center at the Kenyatta International Conference Center in Nairobi, riot police eventually sealed off the tallying Center ahead of the result announcement, evicted party agents, observers and the media, and moved the Chairman of the Electoral Commission, Samuel Kivuitu, to another room where Kivuitu went on to declare Kibaki the winner by 4, 584, 721 votes to Odinga's 4, 352, 993, placing Kibaki ahead of Odinga by about 232, 000 votes in the hotly contested election with Kalonzo Musyoka a distant third.

The media captured the events and reactions at the time thus :" Previously regarded as a gentlemanly leader with a passion for golf, Kibaki has revealed a steely side. With a reputation as a mild-mannered, old-school gentleman ,... Kibaki, 76, showed a steely core by swearing himself in within an hour of being pronounced victor in an election denounced as fraudulent by opposition challenger Raila Odinga and questioned by international and Kenyan observers. Odinga's supporters said he would be declared president at a rival ceremony on Monday, but police banned the event hundreds of riot police sealed off the proposed venue, Uhuru Park for several days.

The violence continued for more than two months, as Kibaki ruled with " half " a cabinet he had appointed, with Odinga and ODM refusing to recognize him as president.

The accord, later passed by the Kenyan Parliament as the National Accord and Reconciliation Act 2008 provided inter alia for power-sharing, with Kibaki remaining President and Raila Odinga taking a newly re-created post of Prime Minister.

Though supported by Kibaki, some members of his own cabinet, mainly from the LDP wing led by Raila Odinga, and the main opposition party KANU, mobilised a powerful NO campaign that resulted in a majority of 58 % Kenyan voters rejecting the draft.

While Ruto and Odinga are both from the Orange Democratic Movement of the power-sharing government, they disagree on the issue of the proposed constitution draft with Ruto calling for rejection of the draft in the upcoming constitutional referendum, arguing that some of its clauses are unsuitable while Odinga and Kibaki campaignined for the constitution which won with a majority