2002 Kenyan general election 2002 Kenyan general election General elections were held in Kenya on 27 December 2002. They saw the end of the long-standing dominance of the Kenya African National Union, which had governed the country since independence in 1963, including 23 years as the only legal party. Mwai Kibaki of the National Rainbow Coalition was elected president, while the National Rainbow Coalition won a majority in the National Assembly. They were the first truly free general elections held in Kenya since independence in 1964; a number of by-election were held in 1966 before the onset of de facto one-party rule in 1969.
Mwai Kibaki before multi-party politics were introduced in 1992, he infamously declared that agitating for multi-party democracy and trying to dislodge KANU from power was like "trying to cut down a fig tree with a razor blade". It was therefore with great surprise that the country received the news of Kibaki's resignation from government and leaving KANU on Christmas Day in December 1991, only days after the repeal of Section 2A of the Constitution, which restored the multi-party system of government. Soon after his resignation, Kibaki founded the Democratic Party (DP) and entered the presidential race in the upcoming multi-party elections of