Newsmaker: Kibaki, giant of Kenyan politics, wins last fight

By C. Bryson Hull

OTHAYA, Kenya (Reuters) - With a political career as old as his nation, President Mwai Kibaki made history on Sunday with the closest presidential victory ever in his east African nation after a hotly-disputed vote.

With Sunday's result, the 76-year-old politician extended his unbroken streak of winning every election he has stood in since he won his first parliamentary seat at Kenya's independence from Britain in 1963.

But the result released by the Electoral Commission of Kenya is likely to face numerous challenges as both sides have claimed rigging by the other, and violent protests broke out immediately after the announcement.

Where Kibaki contested as the candidate for change in 2002 after 39 years of single-party dominance, this time he was the underdog in pre-vote opinion polls. Rival Raila Odinga capitalized on discontent with those who saw the president as too inactive.

Kibaki's 2002 win was seen as a repudiation of 24 years of corruption, oppression and economic failure under Daniel arap Moi, all of which Kibaki had pledged to reverse.

But the high expectations met mixed success.

Critics said Kibaki was a relic of Kenya's political old guard more interested in helping his own Kikuyu tribe than delivering on his promises to the rest of the country.

Even critics cannot dispute he has succeeded in opening up press freedom -- notwithstanding an internationally criticized raid on a media house last year -- and turned Kenya's economy from negative to forecast 2007 GDP growth of 6.9-7.0 percent.

But on corruption, those critics say Kibaki's government has carried on the graft seen under Moi and let the guilty go free because they are political allies.

'TOO CLEVER'

Kibaki has been underestimated since he was a boy, growing up the son of a tobacco trader in the lush tea and coffee fields near Mount Kenya in the central highlands.

"When we were in school, we never thought he could be a president. A doctor maybe," said Samuel Githambo, 80, who was in Kibaki's class in Gatuya-ini primary school in Othaya, Kibaki's hometown. "But he was too clever. He defeated everybody."

Kibaki became the first African to earn a first-class degree from the London School of Economics, returning to Uganda's Makerere University as an economics lecturer in 1958.

There, he tasted politics in the heady days of African independence movements, and by the time Kenya won its freedom, he was an aide to founding President Jomo Kenyatta.

Even then, he had a reputation as an indecisive fence-sitter who was slow to act.