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FinalCall.com News
World News
Kenyan president names rival as PM
By Tom Malti
Associated Press
Updated Apr 23, 2008 - 11:54:00 AM
NAIROBI, Kenya - President Mwai Kibaki named Raila Odinga as prime minister on April 13, implementing a long-awaited power-sharing deal that the two rivals signed more than a month ago to resolve a protracted political crisis.
President Kibaki unveiled the 40 Cabinet ministers a day after holding closed-door talks with Odinga, leader of the opposition Orange Democratic Movement.
The two leaders had agreed in February to share power after a dispute over who won Kenya’s December presidential elections erupted in deadly violence that killed at least 1,000 people and displaced hundreds of thousands from their homes.
They had pledged to announce a joint government April 6 after parliament approved their power-sharing accord in March but could not agree on the makeup of the Cabinet, with both sides trying to secure the most powerful portfolios.
Kenyans also protested the size of the proposed Cabinet, objecting to having 40 ministers in the government.
But Pres. Kibaki, in a speech broadcast live on television presented a Cabinet in which the ministries are split equally between his Party of National Unity and its allied parties, and Odinga’s Orange Democratic Movement.
He named Musalia Mudavadi, the second in command in Odinga’s party, as deputy prime minister. Also named as a deputy prime minister in the new Cabinet is Uhuru Kenyatta, a Kibaki ally who is a son of Kenyan independence hero and its first president, Jomo Kenyatta.
The public had grown increasingly impatient with Kibaki and Odinga. For three days earlier in the week, scuffles broke out in Kenya’s largest slum, Kibera, between police and residents protesting the delay.
Kibera was the scene of some of the worst post-election violence in January and February.
