When the National Rainbow Coalition collapsed in 2005, Mwai Kibaki needed a new political vehicle. The original NARC, the multiethnic alliance that had delivered him to power in 2002, had fractured beyond repair. Raila Odinga and the Liberal Democratic Party had defected, taking Luo, Coastal, and other constituencies with them. What remained was a shell. Kibaki's response was to form Narc-Kenya, a new party built around his Democratic Party base and loyalists who had stayed with him through the 2005 constitutional referendum. Narc-Kenya was not a coalition. It was a Kikaki vehicle, ethnically narrower and politically weaker than the original NARC, but it was his.
The immediate trigger was the defeat in the 2005 constitutional referendum. Kibaki had campaigned for a "Yes" vote on his proposed constitution, using the banana as the campaign symbol. Raila led the "No" campaign under the orange. The result, 58% to 42% in favor of "No," was a humiliating repudiation. Kibaki fired Raila and the entire LDP faction from cabinet. The coalition was dead. Kibaki needed a party to contest the 2007 election, and the NARC brand was too damaged and too contested.
Narc-Kenya was registered in 2006. It absorbed the remnants of Kibaki's Democratic Party and attracted politicians who calculated that staying close to the incumbent president offered better prospects than joining the opposition. The party had no national footprint. Its strength was in Central Province, Nairobi, and scattered areas where Kikaki-aligned politicians held seats. It was a patronage party, organized around access to state resources rather than ideology or policy.
The leadership was familiar. Kibaki was the party leader. Uhuru Kenyatta, by then firmly in Kibaki's camp, became a key figure. Other Central Province politicians, including Kikuyu MPs and businesspeople, filled the ranks. The party machinery was efficient enough to deliver votes in Kikuyu heartlands, but it had little appeal beyond. This ethnic concentration would become a liability in the 2007 election.
Narc-Kenya's 2007 campaign relied on Kibaki's record: the economic growth, free primary education, and infrastructure projects. The message was: Kibaki had delivered development; he deserved a second term. In Central Province, the message worked. Kikuyu voters turned out in overwhelming numbers. But in the rest of the country, Raila's Orange Democratic Movement had momentum. The election was tight, and the disputed results triggered violence.
After the Kofi Annan mediation and the formation of the Grand Coalition, Narc-Kenya remained Kibaki's party, but its relevance diminished. The coalition government meant power was shared between Kibaki's side and Raila's ODM. Narc-Kenya MPs held cabinet positions, but the party itself was less central. It became one of many parties in Kenya's fragmented landscape, held together by patronage and proximity to the presidency.
By the 2013 election, Narc-Kenya was absorbed into the Jubilee Alliance, the coalition that brought Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto to power. Kibaki, stepping down after two terms, did not contest the election. Narc-Kenya's infrastructure and personnel were folded into Uhuru's campaign. The party persisted on paper but ceased to be a meaningful force. It had served its purpose: keeping Kibaki in power through the turbulent second term.
The trajectory from NARC to Narc-Kenya illustrates the fragility of Kenyan political coalitions. The original NARC was a multiethnic alliance built on a desire for change. It won decisively in 2002 but collapsed within three years because the underlying power-sharing agreement was never honored. Narc-Kenya was narrower, more ethnically defined, and less ambitious. It could not deliver a national mandate, but it could deliver Kikuyu votes. In Kenya's ethnic arithmetic, that was often enough to matter, though not enough to govern without a coalition.
See Also
- NARC Coalition Formation
- Kibaki and Raila - The MOU Dispute
- Kibaki 2002 Election Victory
- 2007 Election Disputed Results
- Uhuru Kenyatta
- Kikuyu
- Grand Coalition Government
Sources
- Kagwanja, Peter, and Roger Southall. "Introduction: Kenya - A Democracy in Retreat?" Journal of Contemporary African Studies 27, no. 3 (2009). https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/cjca20
- Hornsby, Charles. Kenya: A History Since Independence. I.B. Tauris, 2012.
- "Kenya's Political Parties: A Fragmented Landscape," Institute for Education in Democracy, 2012. https://www.ied.or.ke
- Branch, Daniel. Kenya: Between Hope and Despair, 1963-2011. Yale University Press, 2011.