For Kenya's new leader, it's been a long road to the top

Many thought he would never make it. Coming in third and second in Kenya's two previous presidential elections, Mwai Kibaki was this country's "nearly man."

But on Monday, this mild-mannered economist is Kenya's new No. 1. After years steadfastly plugging away - first as a member of the ruling party and later, with the advent of multipartyism, in the opposition - Mr. Kibaki won in a landslide and ousted the party which has ruled since independence 39 years ago.

Kibaki has come a long way from his small village on the slopes of Mount Kenya to the presidential residence on State House Road, home to only two men before him. His victory - and his promises to reform Kenya's government and clean up corruption - indicate that after 24 years of President Daniel arap Moi's absolute rule, Kenya is entering into a new, more prosperous, more promising era, say supporters.

"He is clean and wise and experienced," extols John Odhiambo, an enthusiastic Kibaki supporter, as he prances around his transistor radio in Kibera, Nairobi's largest slum, listening to the poll returns. "So he's a businessman and plays golf and sends his children to school overseas. But he is still one of us. He has felt our frustrations over the years, and he is here to help us."

Kibaki, who is from Kenya's largest tribe, the Kikuyu, was born in 1931 in a rural coffee-producing village called Othaya. Education was his ticket out. He excelled at his all-boys primary school, was top of his class at the Mang'u boarding school, and finally was packed off by his parents - with one little suitcase and wearing shorts and a ratty sweater - to the only institute for higher education in East Africa at the time, Makerere University in neighboring Uganda.

There, he studied economics and political science, and served as chairman of the Kenya Students Association and vice chairman of the student's guild. He also acquired a taste for jazz, graduated top in the department, and won a scholarship to the London School of Economics.

A few years later, armed with a first-class degree in public finance, an educated English accent, and a crush on his future wife, Lucy Muthoni (the couple has been married for 42 years and have four children and three grandchildren), he returned to Makerere to teach economics.

But he was itching to come home. It was the end of the 1950s, the Mau Mau struggle for independence against the British was still raging, and Kibaki wanted to be part of the action.

While he never fought - unlike his brother, who died commanding a Mau Mau unit at the time - Kibaki took the secret oath of the Mau Mau and was one of the original members of the nascent Kenya African National Union (KANU), which began ruling the country at independence in 1963.

"Some friends and I visited the African Corner Bar along Race Course Road for a drink," recalls Kibaki of one hot evening in early 1960. "During our conversation ... one of us suggested that we draw a constitution for the future. So, we borrowed stationery from the counter and started drafting.... The exercise eventually led to the birth of KANU."

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