How international media reported Moi’s death
The international media has dedicated acres of space in eulogizing Mzee Daniel arap Moi, Kenya’s second president, who died early on Tuesday morning.
Mzee Moi took his last breath at the Nairobi Hospital aged 95, after a long illness.
He ruled Kenya for 24 years before handing over power to Mwai Kibaki.
CNN has described the departed former head of state as the country’s longest-serving president.
“His 24 years in power encompassed one-party rule through the Kenya Africa National Union (KANU), the party he controlled, and finally the reintroduction of democracy and multiparty politics which culminated in his victory in the 1992 elections,” it reported.
The BBC reports that Moi ‘asked for forgiveness from those he had wronged in 2004’.
It adds that the former president’s critics saw him as an authoritarian ruler who oversaw rampant corruption but his allies credited him for maintaining stability in the country.”
Al Jazeera has revisited some aspect of Moi’s tenure on the throne, stating;
“Political activists and others who dared oppose Moi’s rule were routinely detained and tortured.”
Reuters meanwhile summed up the Moi’s career in one paragraph which read: “Former Kenyan President Daniel Arap Moi who kept his country on a relatively stable footing during his tenure but was less successful at reining in poverty and corruption has died.”
AFP wrote “Kenya’s second president Daniel Moi took power promising peace, love and unity but ended up mirred in graft scandals, stiffling democracy and fanning dangerous embers of tribalism.”