President Mwai Kibaki was my appointing authority when I first became an ambassador. I have always felt deeply indebted to him for the honour to serve. I also worked with him and for him on critical files over the years that made me admire him greatly for his calm genius, resolute and principled nature.
His leadership and service to our country since independence in various portfolios is truly unmatched. His sophisticated management style, which many misunderstood for being hands off, meant that he picked those he assigned duties for their skills and abilities and then expected them to perform and to get on with it.
At one critical time in the most sensitive of moments in our political history, in the face of my own hesitation, he asked me if I understood what it meant to be “ambassador extraordinary plenipotentiary”. And when I answered in the affirmative, he told me that I should not wait to be hand-held or micro-managed, but should rather get on with what I knew I had to do.
Three incidences stand out in my memory. The first revolves around why I was appointed ambassador in the first place. UNEP was under threat from within the organisation and from European countries that sought to have the organisation’s head offices relocated from Nairobi to Europe.
President Kibaki recognised the immediate danger to the prestige and honour of Kenya. And, as an economist, also recognised the huge impact that would have had on the economy, with the loss of tens of thousands of jobs related to the presence of international organisations in Kenya.
He immediately put us to work to save the organisation and to remind the world of Kenya’s stewardship of the institution, and its contribution to the environmental agenda in the world. This culminated in victory at the Earth Summit, otherwise known as the UN Conference on Sustainable Development held in Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil.
President Kibaki personally attended, despite ill health at the time, and made a successful pitch for not only retaining UNEP in Nairobi, but for bringing back to front and centre the global agenda on environment.
Shortly thereafter, in 2010, another hugely impactful moment in Kenya’s history arrived. The government needed to make the crucial decision as to how to engage with the international community with regard to the post-election violence of 2008.
Elements in the US and the UK administrations of the time wanted to make an example of Kenya in the context of matters of political transition and democracy with little regard for the clarity of facts, attribution of responsibility, and the practice of international institutional jurisprudence.
It was a political minefield of competing international and domestic emotive narratives around the events of the 2007/2008 violence. But what President Kibaki would not stand for was the hijacking of the democracy that Kenyans had worked for, for so long and the usurping of the popular will of the Kenyan people by elements in the so-called international community and institutions of United Nations system, and in particular the International Criminal Court (ICC).
My moment of self-actualisation as ambassador extraordinarily plenipotentiary arrived in full measure. And the rest is history.
The third great experience for me came in 2011 when, as a result of Kenya’s rising status in the world as a country that had original ideas and that was capable of thought leadership on global matters, I was elected by my peers among all the Permanent Representatives to the United Nations in New York, to lead the process of the development of the global goals for sustainable development, known as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG)
My confidence and inspiration to undertake this daunting task came from President Kibaki himself, with his direction for economic development in our own country and the power of his narrative for social and economic transformation driven and manifest in Kenya’s Vision 2030, his brain child.
Many do not know but it was this vision around which I structured my engagement and leadership of the Open Working Group (OWG) of the United Nations. The OWG worked towards the realisation of the global sustainable development goals and the Agenda 2030 of the United Nations that was ultimately adopted in 2015 by all nations of the world in New York, with Kenya celebrated for its contribution and leadership.
President Kibaki’s vision for this country, both at the onset of our economic journey at independence and as the instigator of our Vision 2030, means that his legacy and genius has been with us and will be with us for a very long time. Our nation is truly indebted to this great man and icon of our democracy and our economy. I feel a personal great loss at his passing. May his soul rest in eternal peace. Amen BY DAILY NATION