Editing History of Kenya (section)

====Multi-party politics====
[[File:Daniel arap Moi 1979c.jpg|thumb|right|President [[Daniel arap Moi]] in 1979]]
After local and foreign pressure, in December 1991, parliament repealed the one-party section of the constitution. The first multiparty elections were held in 1992.<ref name=":2" />

The Forum for the Restoration of Democracy (FORD) emerged as the leading opposition to KANU, and dozens of leading KANU figures switched parties. But FORD, led by [[Oginga Odinga]] (1911–1994), a Luo,  and Kenneth Matiba, a Kikuyu, split into two ethnically based factions. In the first open presidential elections in a quarter century, in December 1992, Moi won with 37% of the vote, Matiba received 26%, Mwai Kibaki (of the mostly Kikuyu Democratic Party) 19%, and Odinga 18%. In the Assembly, KANU won 97 of the 188 seats at stake. Moi's government in 1993 agreed to economic reforms long urged by the [[World Bank]] and the [[International Monetary Fund]], which restored enough aid for Kenya to service its $7.5&nbsp;billion foreign debt.<ref name=":1" />

Obstructing the press both before and after the 1992 elections, Moi continually maintained that multiparty politics would only promote tribal conflict. His own regime depended upon exploitation of inter-group hatreds. Under Moi, the apparatus of clientage and control was underpinned by the system of powerful provincial commissioners, each with a bureaucratic hierarchy based on chiefs (and their police) that was more powerful than the elected members of parliament. Elected local councils lost most of their power, and the provincial bosses were answerable only to the central government, which in turn was dominated by the president. The emergence of mass opposition in 1990–91 and demands for constitutional reform were met by rallies against pluralism. The regime leaned on the support of the Kalenjin and incited the Maasai against the Kikuyu. Government politicians denounced the Kikuyu as traitors, obstructed their registration as voters and threatened them with dispossession. In 1993 and after, mass evictions of Kikuyu took place, often with the direct involvement of army, police and game rangers. Armed clashes and many casualties, including deaths, resulted.<ref>{{Cite journal|vauthors=Klopp JM|date=2001|title='Ethnic Clashes' and Winning Elections: The Case of Kenya's Electoral Despotism|journal=[[Canadian Journal of African Studies|Can. J. Afr. Stud.]]|volume=35|issue=3|pages=473–517|doi=10.2307/486297|jstor=486297}}</ref>

Further liberalisation in November 1997 allowed the expansion of political parties from 11 to 26. President Moi won re-election as president in the December 1997 elections, and his KANU Party narrowly retained its parliamentary majority.

Moi ruled using a strategic mixture of ethnic favouritism, state repression and marginalisation of opposition forces. He utilised detention and torture, looted public finances and appropriated land and other property. Moi sponsored irregular army units that attacked the Luo, Luhya and Kikuyu communities, and he denied his responsibility by attributing the violence to ethnic clashes arising from land dispute.<ref>{{Cite journal|vauthors=Roessler PG|date=2005|title=Donor-Induced Democratization and the Privatization of State Violence in Kenya and Rwanda|journal=Comparative Politics|volume=37|issue=2|pages=207–227|doi=10.2307/20072883|jstor=20072883}}</ref> Beginning in 1998, Moi engaged in a carefully calculated strategy to manage the presidential succession in his and his party's favour. Faced with the challenge of a new, multiethnic political coalition, Moi shifted the axis of the 2002 electoral contest from ethnicity to the politics of generational conflict. The strategy backfired, ripping his party wide open and resulting in the humiliating defeat of its candidate, Kenyatta's son, in the December 2002 general elections.<ref>{{Cite journal|vauthors=Steeves J|date=2006|title=Presidential succession in Kenya: The transition from Moi to Kibaki|journal=[[Commonwealth & Comparative Politics|Commonw. Comp. Politics]]|volume=44|issue=2|pages=211–233|doi=10.1080/14662040600831651|s2cid=154320354}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|vauthors=Kagwanja PM|date=2006|title='Power to Uhuru': Youth Identity and Generational Politics in Kenya's 2002 Elections|journal=[[African Affairs|Afr. Aff.]]|volume=105|issue=418|pages=51–75|doi=10.1093/afraf/adi067}}</ref>