George Saitoti

Top decision-makers in government had recognised Saitoti as a policy thinker and technocrat, of whom the KANU desperately needed to fix its institutions, politics and the economy. His seminal book, The Challenges of Economic and Institutional Reforms in Africa was widely praised by leading officials as providing practical policy proposals to deal with the various challenges facing Kenya and Africa.[20] The book drew from Saitoti's experience as a seasoned scholar, consultant and experienced policy-maker/thinker, presenting a rigorous and multidisciplinary analysis of strategies for poverty alleviation, sustainable development, poverty reduction, combating HIV/AIDS and peace diplomacy. Saitoti also emphasised the importance of institutional reforms and sound public policies to sustainable economic growth in Africa.[21]

Kenya Poverty Index by Constituency 2009

In October 1983, President Daniel arap Moi nominated Saitoti as a member of parliament and subsequently appointed him to the Cabinet as Minister for Finance. He held the position until 1989.[23] During the 1988 general elections, Saitoti took the plunge into competitive politics and won the Kajiado North parliamentary seat that was previously held by Philip Odupoy. Prior to the tenure of Adupoy and Saitoti, the Kajiado North multi-ethnic constituency was held by the popular politician, John Keen, another half-Maasai who champion a nationalist vision and worked over the years to ensure the advancement of his mother's people.[24] For more than 25 years, Professor George Saitoti has represented Kajiado North since 1988, recapturing the seat in consecutive elections in 1992, 1997, 2002 and 2007. Building on John Keen's legacy of a cosmopolitan constituency, Saitoti transformed Kajiado North into Kenya's most ethnically integrated multi-ethnic legislative area that also provided a safe haven to Kenyans, forcibly displaced by the 1991–2008 cycles of ethnic violence in neighbouring areas.[25]

The area is also ranked among the top ten wealthiest, economically dynamic and fastest growing regions in Kenya. According to figures released by the Government of Kenya in 2009, Kajiado North has had an average poverty index of 10.66 per cent for the last three years, making it one of the richest constituencies in Kenya (see table 1).[26]

After the 1988 General Election, President Moi appointed Saitoti as Kenya's sixth Vice-President. Saitoti became Kenya's longest sitting vice-president serving for 13 years under President Daniel arap Moi between May 1989 and January 1998 and again between April 1999 and August 2002 (see table 2).[27] At the same time, he served as Minister for Finance. In 1990–1991, Saitoti was the Executive Chairman of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In 1999–2000, Saitoti also served as president of the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States, becoming instrumental in helping negotiate a new development partnership agreement to succeed the previous Lomè Convention that expired in February 2000 between the ACP and the European Union.[28] The hallmarks of Saitoti tenure as Vice-President were efficiency, sobriety and loyalty as President Moi's most trusted lieutenant. Even when President Moi dithered in naming a new deputy after the 1997 elections, Saitoti was still his favoured choice 14 months down the line.[29] The same traits of efficiency, patience and loyalty would make him one of President Mwai Kibaki's trusted Ministers.

When Saitoti was appointed vice-president on 1 May 1989, KANU was back-pedaling on re-democratizing the country. At the same time, the party was fragmented over the succession divide between a sit-tight "KANU-A" and a more pro-change "KANU-B" led by Saitoti. The new vice-president was, therefore, compelled to walk the tightrope between being the face of change in the ruling party and remaining loyal to his principal who, after re-election as president in 1988, had amended the constitution to increase his power to dismiss judges and widened police powers. On New Year's Day 1990, the vocal cleric Rev. Timothy Njoya called on all Africans to demand a multiparty system of government. Following the Saba Saba riots on 7 July 1990, President Moi announced the formation of the KANU Review Committee under the chairmanship of Prof George Saitoti, popularly known as the Saitoti Committee.[30]

The Saitoti Review Committee was mandated to investigate the party's internal electoral and disciplinary conduct.[31] The committee traversed the country collecting people's opinions on the party, astounding foe, friend and critics alike and offering a rare forum for direct criticism and outbursts.[32] In January 1991, KANU's executive committee adopted the recommendation by George Saitoti, that critics of the party cease being expelled but suspended for one or two years.[33]

The recommendations of the report were open for debate during the National Delegates Conference at Karasani in Nairobi. President Moi backed the adoption and implementation of the report in toto, against what many speakers at the conference had expected. This opened the reforms gates, eventually setting the stage for the repeal of Section 2A in 1991 that returned Kenya to back to a multiparty system of government.[34] The Saitoti Review Committee thrust the party on the reform path, but also widened internal ideological schisms between "KANU-A" conservatives and "KANU-B" pro-reformers over the Moi succession question.[35]

Saitoti was in the eye of a nasty succession storm that rocked KANU before and after the 1997 elections. Maasai purists led by Minister William Ole Ntimama and senior Maasai elders 're-Kikuyunized' Saitoti's dual ancestry, amplifying his Kikuyu family linkages as a scheme to weaken his political base and to challenge his status as a Maasai elder. Despite his steadfast loyalty to KANU and President Moi, Saitoti was frequently ignored, humiliated and frustrated by the party and its top echelons. Around the same time Foreign Affairs Minister Robert Ouko was murdered in February 1990, Saitoti claims that attempts were made on his life.[36] After the 1997 general elections, he was dropped as Vice-President, although no replacement was appointed. Even as President Moi reappointed him in April 1999, on the roadside in Limuru, Kiambu he made a scathing remark to the effect that: "I've given back Prof Saitoti the seat of Vice-President, hopefully now your sufurias (pots) will be full of food."[25] Months before the general elections of 2002, Saitoti's name was deleted from the list of KANU delegates and his ascendancy to the presidency blocked by 'unknown' party members.[37] On 18 March 2002, when KANU held its national delegates conference at the Kasarani sports complex, the move to block Saitoti from the succession game was manifest.[38] The meeting amended the party constitution to allow for the merger between KANU and Raila Odinga's National Development Party (NDP) to create the "New KANU". But it also introduced four new positions of party Vice-Chairmen primarily to water down Saitoti's position as Vice-President and Moi's most likely successor as president.[39]

It was clear that Moi did not even want him as one of the four vice-chairmen posts reserved for Uhuru Kenyatta, Kalonzo Musyoka, Katana Ngala and Musalia Mudavadi. Moi told Saitoti to his face that he was not "presidential material".[29] As a "Maasai-Kikuyu," Saitoti lacked the ethnic numbers he needed in the political horse-trading in Moi's power game. Instead, Moi finger-pointed as his heir Uhuru Kenyatta, perceived to have a large ethnic base as a pure-bred Kikuyu with the "Kenyatta" mystique. Saitoti gracefully bowed out of the race, living to fight another day, but not without his famous line: There comes a time when the nation is much more important than an individual.[40][41] But the KANU-NDP marriage came to a tragic end when Moi named Uhuru rather than Raila Odinga as his successor.[42] In August 2002, Odinga left KANU to defeat Moi's "use and dump game,"[43] and joined a group of KANU rebels" coalesced around the "Rainbow Alliance" lobby that later transformed itself into the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Saitoti also walking out of KANU and became a key LDP figure. In October 2002, LDP joined the National Alliance of Kenya (NAK) of Mwai Kibaki, Charity Ngilu and Wamalwa Kijana to form the National Rainbow Coalition (NARC).[43] Saitoti became a member of the NARC Summit, the highest organ of the coalition.

After 2004, as the NARC consensus crumbled, Saitoti left the agitating LDP camp and threw his lot behind President Kibaki.[45] He canvassed for the government-sponsored draft Constitution, which lost to a combined KANU-LDP campaign during the November 2005 referendum.[46] During the 2007 elections, Saitoti defended his Kajiado North parliamentary seat on the Party of National Unity (PNU) ticket, Kibaki's re-election vehicle, launched three months to the election on 16 September 2007. The courts ordered a vote recount in Kajiado North, but Saitoti beat his closest competitor, Moses Ole Sakuda with close to 20,000 votes.[47] Saitoti blamed his re-election glitch on intrigues of power by KANU forces within the PNU campaign which underwrote his rivals to knock him out of politics and potentially out of the 2012 Presidential elections. But he had remained reticent about it.

British Foreign Office Minister Henry Bellingham meeting George Saitoti, the Kenyan Minister of State for Provincial Administration & Internal Security in London, 21 November 2011

Saitoti's traits of patience, efficiency and loyalty to Kibaki paid off. On 8 January 2008, he was appointed Minister of State for Internal Security and Provincial Administration in the Office of the President, a position previously occupied by a Kibaki confidant, John Michuki.[48] Saitoti retained the Internal Security docket even after President Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga established the power-sharing government that ended the 2008 post-election crisis. Between October 2010 and August 2011, Saitoti was appointed Minister for Foreign Affairs on an acting capacity after the incumbent, Moses Wetangula, stepped aside to allow investigations on alleged corruption.[49]

In July 2009, Saitoti was appointed to head a special cabinet sub-committee formed to oversee the affairs of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in Kenya.[50] Members of this bi-partisan committee include; George Saitoti, Mutula Kilonzo and Moses Wetangula (PNU) and James Orengo, Otieno Kajwang and Amason Kingi (ODM). (Following a cabinet reshuffle in April 2012, Eugene Wamalwa and Prof. Sam Ongeri have replaced Kilonzo and Wetangula). The role of the sub-Committee as a liaison and co-ordination body between the ICC and the Kenyan government took a center-stage from December 2010 when the ICC Chief Prosecutor, Luis Moreno Ocampo, indicted six prominent Kenyans for alleged crimes against humanity relating to the 2008 post-election violence.

As the Minister of Internal Security and the chairman of the Cabinet Sub-committee on ICC on YouTube and security matters, Saitoti is the guarantor of the government's commitment to the ICC process. Arising from this, several analysts have claimed the suspects' fate lie with the sub-committee.[51] Saitoti came out strongly criticising the invocation of President Kibaki in the ICC debate, calling for sobriety from politicians.[52] Saitoti has maintained a legal interpretation on whether the suspects can vie for presidency in the coming elections, stressing that only the constitution can bar or let them free to enter the race.[53]

On 19 December 2008, President Mwai Kibaki who was unanimously endorsed as Party Leader at the PNU National Delegates Conference (NDC) held at Kasarani sports complex in Nairobi.[54][55] In accordance with the Political Parties Act (2008), Saitoti was elected PNU chairman, becoming the second-in-command in the party hierarchy since he lost as KANU Vice-President in the battle for the Moi succession in March 2002.[56] His elevation, however, complicated coalition politics and raised the stakes for the Kibaki succession in PNU.[57] Other presidential hopefuls, Uhuru Kenyatta and Kalonzo Musyoka, shunned the party and embarked on consolidating their respective parties. In November 2010, Musyoka, Kenyatta and Saitoti signed a protocol to form and transform the PNU Alliance into a common political vehicle for the 2013 presidential race.[58] But the imperative to comply with the Political Parties Act (2011) forced them to abandon the Alliance and shift attention to their respective parties.[59]