Quotes of the Day

As hundreds of thousands of jubilant Kenyans poured into Nairobi's Uhuru Park for the inauguration of their new President on Dec. 30, joy threatened to turn to chaos. Frustrated at the three-hour wait for Mwai Kibaki, the crowd crushed forward, causing dozens of people to faint from suffocation. When outgoing President Daniel arap Moi stood, Kenyans angry at his 24 years of corrupt and autocratic misrule pelted the dais with mud and drowned out his speech with chants of "All is possible without Moi" and, simply, "Go Away." Street urchins took advantage of the confusion to snatch wallets, cell phones and cameras. "I have no clue who's in charge of the security operation," said a harried policewoman. "The army shoves people in our direction and we push them back again."

Kenyans have been pushed around by their leaders for years. But the election of Kibaki, 71, who served as Moi's Vice President before quitting and setting up the first opposition party more than a decade ago, offers hope for a new type of leadership. When Kibaki was finally wheeled onto the stage in Uhuru Park — a car crash on the campaign trail has put the former economics professor temporarily in a wheelchair — the crowd let out a roar. "I promise not to let you down," he told them. "I will be your servant with all humility and gratitude." After a harsh appraisal of his predecessor, he spelled out his alternative. "There has been a wide disconnect between the people and government," he said. "Corruption will now cease to be a way of life in Kenya ? The era of anything goes is gone forever."

Making good on those promises will be difficult. Once ranked a middle-income country, Kenya is now a pauper. More than half of Kenyans scrape by on less than a dollar a day. Much of the blame for the country's decline can be pinned on Moi and his Kenya African National Union party (KANU), which ruled, until last week, since independence in 1963. In the early years, under the father of independence President Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya thrived. But since Moi took power following Kenyatta's death in 1977, Kenya has succumbed to a pernicious combination of corruption and mismanagement. Moi held onto power by playing on tribal rivalries within the opposition and the population. Constitutionally obliged to step down, he promoted Kenyatta's son, Uhuru, as the next best man to rule Kenya. But this time the Professor of Politics, as Moi calls himself, faced a united opposition and an electorate set on punishing anyone associated with him. Kibaki won 62% of the votes.

He hopes to woo back disgruntled donors, who have frozen hundreds of millions of dollars earmarked for Kenya, by rooting out corruption — within 12 hours of the inauguration a policeman was arrested for taking a $1.20 bribe from a bus driver. That's a symbolic move; it will be much harder for Kibaki to go after the powerful, moneyed and corrupt. If he does, donor money will help pay for free primary school education and better access to health care. "Kibaki has promised to declare his wealth. That is not the whole remedy but it shows that he is serious," says John Githongo, executive director of the Kenyan chapter of Transparency International, an anticorruption watchdog. First, though, Kibaki must clean up his party, an amalgam of 15 groups under the banner of the National Rainbow Coalition. It is stacked with former KANU members, many of them accused of the corruption Kibaki promises to fight.

The new President was born in the shadow of Mount Kenya, the son of a tobacco and cattle farmer. After excelling at his high school, Kibaki studied at Uganda's Makerere University, one of Africa's best, and at the London School of Economics. He helped draw up the first Kenyan constitution and then served as Kenyatta's Finance Minister. A serious and clean technocrat, he can still sound as if he's addressing a class of economics students. He fell out with Moi in the 1980s and quit KANU to run for the presidency in Kenya's first real multiparty elections in 1992. Given to colorful shirts much like Nelson Mandela's, Kibaki stood out among the staid besuited politicians around him on the campaign trail. A golf fanatic, he laments that a year of campaigning has led his handicap to fall from 24 to 28. If he can curb corruption and improve their lives, Kenyans won't mind if his game gets even worse.

• SIMON ROBINSON
• Does Kenya new president have what it takes to run a clean government?