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Kenyatta easily mixes with ordinary Kenyans
In 2011 Forbes magazine estimated Kenyatta’s wealth at $500 million (420 million euros).
Despite his elite background Kenyatta has a common touch. He easily mixes it up with ordinary Kenyans, eagerly gets down on the dance floor and joshes in the local youth slang and, in his younger years, earned a persistent reputation for partying hard.
A leaked 2009 US diplomatic cable described him as “bright and charming, even charismatic” but warned that “Kenyatta’s liabilities are at least as important as his strengths. He drinks too much and is not a hard worker.”
– Dynastic politics –
Kenyatta’s political career is a case study in pragmatism.
In the 1990s, he joined with the sons of other independence heroes to call for democratic reforms but then became a close ally of autocratic former president Daniel arap Moi who had him nominated as the ruling party’s candidate for the presidency in 2002.
Kenyatta lost to fellow Kikuyu politician Mwai Kibaki but then backed Kibaki’s successful re-election bid in 2007, against Odinga who at the time was allied with Ruto.
The violent fallout from the disputed result led to a power-sharing government in which Kibaki was president, Odinga prime minister and Kenyatta one of his deputies.
In 2013 the two ICC indictees, Kenyatta and Ruto, joined forces to defeat Odinga in a close and controversial election. Kenyatta won in the first round with a wafer-thin margin of 50.03 percent — a result Odinga disputed, unsuccessfully but peacefully, in court.
The same team beat Odinga this time around.
The country is now holding its breath as violent protests erupted in Odinga’s strongholds upon news of the result.
