(AP) — Daniel arap Moi, a former schoolteacher who became
Kenya’s longest-serving president and presided over years of repression and
economic turmoil fueled by runaway corruption, has died. He was 95.
Moi’s death was announced by President Uhuru Kenyatta in a
statement Tuesday. Moi, who ruled Kenya for 24 years, had been in and out of
hospital for months.
Kenyatta ordered national flags to fly half-staff from
Tuesday until sunset of the day of the burial. He said Moi, Kenya’s second
president, was a leader in the struggle for independence and an ardent
Pan-Africanist.
Despite being called a dictator by critics, Moi enjoyed
strong support from many Kenyans and was seen as a uniting figure when he took power
after founding president Jomo Kenyatta died in office in 1978. Some allies of
the ailing Kenyatta, however, had tried to change the constitution to prevent
Moi, then the vice president, from automatically taking power upon Kenyatta’s
death.
So wary was Moi of any threat during that uncertain period
that he fled his Rift Valley home when he heard of Kenyatta’s death, returning
only after receiving assurances of his safety.
In 1982 Moi’s government pushed through parliament a
constitutional amendment that made Kenya effectively a one-party state. Later
that year the army quelled a coup attempt plotted by opposition members and
some air force officers. At least 159 people were killed.
Moi’s government then became more repressive in dealing
with dissent, according to a report by the government’s Truth Justice and
Reconciliation Commission that assessed his rule.
Political activists and others who dared oppose Moi’s rule
were routinely detained and tortured, the report said, noting unlawful
detentions and assassinations, including the killing of a foreign affairs
minister, Robert Ouko.
“The judiciary became an accomplice in the perpetuation of
violations, while parliament was transformed into a puppet controlled by the
heavy hand of the executive,” the report said.
Corruption, especially the illegal allocation of land,
became institutionalized, the report said, while economic power was centralized
in the hands of a few.
In 1991, Moi yielded to demands for a multi-party state due
to internal pressure, including a demonstration in 1991 during which police
killed more than 20 people, and external pressure from the West.
Multi-party elections in 1992 and 1997 were marred by
political and ethnic violence that critics asserted were caused by the state.
By the time Moi left power in 2002, corruption had left
Kenya’s economy, the most developed in East Africa, with negative growth.
Moi often blamed the West for bad publicity and the
economic hardships many Kenyans had to endure during his rule.
As with his predecessor, Kenyatta, many government
projects, buildings and currency notes and coins were named after Moi.
Fed up, Kenyans voted for a new constitution that was
implemented in 2010 and made provisions to bar personality cults.
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