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 and chairman of the Economic Planning Commission in 1963, he was promoted to Minister of Commerce and Industry in 1966. In 1969, he became Minister of Finance and Economic Planning where he served until 1982. In 1974, Kibaki, facing serious competition for his Donholm Constituency seat from a Mrs. Jael Mbogo, whom he had only narrowly and controversially beaten for the seat in the 1969 elections, moved his political base from Nairobi to his rural home, Othaya, where he was subsequently elected as Member of Parliament. The same year "Time" magazine rated him among the top 100 people in the