Uhuru Kenyatta: Re-elected, but at what cost?

He is married with three children and regularly attends Catholic church.

In 2011 Forbes magazine estimated Kenyatta’s wealth at $500 million (423 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.

– 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 William Ruto, now Kenyatta’s deputy and running mate.

The violent fallout from the disputed result led to the deaths of over 1,100 people and, eventually, to a power-sharing government in which Kibaki was president, Odinga prime minister and Kenyatta one of his deputies.

Kenyatta and Ruto were indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for their alleged roles in orchestrating the violence.

But in 2014 the court dropped charges against Kenyatta — and later Ruto — citing the disappearance of witnesses and lack of evidence.

Despite, or perhaps because of the ICC indictment, Kenyatta and Ruto won the 2013 election, campaigning on a platform of nationalism, sovereignty and confronting imperialism in the form of the foreign court.

Kenyatta beat Odinga in the first round with a wafer-thin margin of 50.03 percent — a result Odinga disputed, unsuccessfully, in court.

With Odinga withdrawing from the October re-run, August’s vote was likely to remembered as the final act in a multi-generational political rivalry stretching back half a century to when Jomo Kenyatta and Odinga’s father, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, vied for control of the nation.

Kenyatta must stand down after one more term and, at 72, Odinga is regarded as too old to make another bid for the presidency in five years time. Both men’s children are, for now, inexperienced in politics.