Our eagle eye has spotted something which State House protocol officials might need to rectify. All official programmes of presidential functions indicate that President Kibaki will be accompanied by First Lady Lucy Kibaki.
The latest such gaffe was during Monday’s launch of the IEBC electronic voter registration at Kenyatta International Conference Centre. The programme said ” His excellency the President Honourable Mwai Kibaki, CGH, MP, accompanied by First Lady Mrs Lucy Kibaki, EGH, escorted by PC Nairobi area Njoroge Ndirangu, EBS arrives at KICC”.
Those responsible for printing the programmes may have to change the template as the First Lady has not attended any public functions—or indeed been seen in public—since August 2010
Source:The Star
Profile: Kenya’s controversial first lady
For more than two decades, Kenyans were desperate to have a first lady.
Then, in 2002, voters went to bed with one Mwai Kibaki and to the pleasant surprise of everyone, woke up in the morning with him and his wife Lucy Kibaki.
They had the first glimpse of their new national bride, donning a blue and white African dress, as Mr Kibaki was sworn in as the third president of Kenya in the capital, Nairobi.
Two years on, a series of night-time rampages through Nairobi last weekend by the first lady has left her once adoring fans appalled and wondering loud about the leadership ability of her husband, who is now seen to have failed to keep his own house in order.
In the course of four days, Mrs Kibaki launched verbal attacks on diplomats, journalists and policemen she believed had not treated her with sufficient respect.
This was the latest outburst from the first lady whose antics have led to her short life at state house being likened to a soap opera, causing a mounting scandal that is threatening to undermine the president.
Undignified
The latest episode started when Mrs Kibaki stormed into the house of her neighbour, the World Bank’s country director Makhtar Diop, in a tracksuit at midnight last Friday and demanded he turn his music down at a private party to mark the end of his posting in Kenya.
It happened when Kenya was trying to rebuild good relations with the World Bank, which had criticised the country’s widespread corruption.
The following evening, Mrs Kibaki went to the local police station in shorts – seen by many Kenyans as a rather undignified choice for a stout, African grandmother – and demanded that Mr Diop and his guests be arrested for disturbing the peace.
Then on Monday night, she burst into the offices of the Nation Media Group with her bodyguards and demanded that the reporter who had written about her confrontation with Mr Diop be arrested.
She slapped cameraman Clifford Derrick who was filming her and refused to leave the offices until 0530 the next day.
By Tuesday morning, the story was front page news in all newspapers and footage of her public outburst ran for hours on local television stations.
Shy and reserved
All this was in stark contrast to the image of a woman born in 1940 to a Presbyterian prelate and a devoted Christian mother in the Mount Kenya region.
Close family friends speak of a shy and reserved young woman in her early days, who performed well in school to become one of the first African women in Kenya to tutor in teacher training colleges.
Lucy met Mr Kibaki, a dashing bachelor who had just quit his teaching job in neighbouring Uganda’s Makerere University, in 1960 and their romance led to a marriage that has lasted for 35 years and included five children.
Like many other politicians’ wives in Kenya, Lucy Kibaki stayed in the shadows as Mr Kibaki rose from an MP after Kenya’s independence in 1963 to become a minister and vice-president under Mr Moi, and finally the president of Kenya in 2002.
From then on, it was quite clear that Mrs Kibaki was no ordinary first lady.
Just months after her husband became president, she is reported to have shut down a bar inside state house that was a watering hole for ministers and close allies of the president.
Ministers and president’s advisers who crossed her path were ordered, in quick succession, out of the building.
In one public row, Mrs Kibaki’s turf war with the president’s former powerful personal secretary saw him being removed from state house.
‘Second lady’
In 2003, she skipped a New Year’s Eve party after Vice President Moodi Awori referred to her as a “second lady”, which she interpreted as an insult.
Soon Kenyans were to learn that they didn’t only get their first first lady in 24 years, but in fact they had two – a woman called Mary Wambui who had maintained a 30-year-old friendship with the president and was now receiving protection from government security agents.
For some time now, most of her ire has been directed at politicians and journalists who have continued to acknowledge the fact that her husband has a second wife, something that is legal and socially acceptable in Kenya.
A few weeks ago, her husband watched helpless as Mrs Kibaki told a political rally in western Kenya that her husband would stand for re-election in 2007 – still a taboo subject as rival factions in the coalition government tear at each other.
Her supporters say she is fiercely protective of her husband following a car crash in later 2002 that left him with a broken arm, a dislocated ankle and a neck injury.
She was by her husband’s side campaigning vigorously in the run-up to the 2002 presidential polls.
And the forceful woman has also been widely admired in Kenya as a vigorous anti-Aids campaigner and crusader against female genital mutilation.
Although many Kenyans took her to their hearts at the dawn of new era of democracy, the love affair is now over.
Source-http://news.bbc.co.uk/
