KENYA Nairobi Letter: Good tidings have been sparse for Kenya's president, Mwai Kibaki, in this new year. Dogged by frail health and a fractious cabinet of pugilistic ministers, now the smiling septuagenarian finds himself enmeshed in a sex scandal of a kind rarely seen in African politics, writes Declan Walsh
The fireworks kicked off as 2004 dawned. The Kibaki family, like many monied Kenyans, was enjoying a seasonal break on the Indian Ocean coast. All was merriment and cheer at a party to see in the New Year until the gentlemanly Vice-President Moody Awori opened his mouth, spectacularly inserting his polished shoe inside.
At a state dinner party Mr Awori turned to Mr Kibaki's wife, Lucy, and raised a glass to Kenya's "second lady". The blunder ignited a Semtex box of simmering passions. The president, it turned out, had been married for years to a "second wife" called Mary Wambui.
Previously unheard of but no secret in the Kibaki family, Ms (or Mrs) Wambui quietly followed Mr Kibaki after he swept to power 13 months ago. She left her country home in Nyeri for a plush house in Nairobi where state bodyguards kept watch, apparently at taxpayers' expense.
In the months before Christmas tensions with Lucy, a strong-willed woman famously protective of her husband, were rising steadily.
Mr Awori's festive slip of the tongue triggered a volcanic outpouring of rage. Lucy stormed from the party, and no amount of cajoling by the president, his aides or his grovelling deputy could convince her of the mistake.
Since then a very public and "unAfrican" spat has played out among the ménage à trois, with a rather gormless Mr Kibaki caught in the middle.
Kenyans, unused to seeing their president's private affairs publicly exhibited like one of the cheap American soaps that fill daytime TV, have lapped up the escalating war of the wives.
First Lucy demanded the resignation of her husband's chief aide and longtime confidant, Matere Keriri, apparently on grounds of favouring her rival. Mr Keriri was dispatched to London for unknown "urgent" business, where he remains.
She cemented her primacy through a terse State House statement insisting that Mr Kibaki had only one wife and imploring the press to "kindly refrain from making references about any other purported member of my immediate family". Naturally, the flames leapt even higher.
Chat shows, cartoons and opinion columns have been alight with opinions of Mr Kibaki's plight. Some see him as an unfortunate man trapped between two strong women; others paint him as a spineless wimp unable to bring them into line.
Ms Wambui's family rowed in, producing photos of a young Mr Kibaki paying a dowry to her family. It was, they said, a normal African arrangement.
Ms Wambui herself maintained a dignified silence. A recent shopping trip, however, was covered by a phalanx of journalists who had been mysteriously tipped off.
The following day photos of a composed Ms Wambui, flanked by her bodyguards, plastered the front pages. Intrigued readers were spared no detail, right down to the contents of her €50 basket - beef sausages, bananas, watermelons, flour, bread and cooking oil.
The revelation of Ms Wambui shocked few Kenyans - polygamy is illegal yet flourishes through a loophole allowing traditional second marriages - but many were dismayed by Mr Kibaki's handling of his quandary.
Men still rule the roost in this mostly conservative society, and many feel the president should have imposed domestic harmony, by whatever means necessary.
As one woman put it to me, "How can he run a cabinet if he's not even in charge of his own kitchen?" Newspapers are full of comparisons with Nancy Reagan, Hillary Clinton and even the wife of King Louis XIV. Meanwhile the Roman Catholic church, of which Mr Kibaki is a member, has kept a deafening silence.
For sure, the unseemly spat would never have occurred under Kenya's last two presidents, strongmen Jomo Kenyatta and Daniel arap Moi, whose private lives were treated with great circumspection by the press.
The flap has also raised more serious doubts about Mr Kibaki's managerial abilities. Long-running health problems - he was hospitalised last year, reportedly due to a stroke - have combined with deep cabinet divisions to undermine public confidence. A year after his election, many are disappointed at continuing corruption reports and economic stagnation.
Also the sudden closure of the "independent" press - which revelled in the scandal, and racy stories about philandering ministers - has worried free-speech advocates. Still, their stories could be extreme. A recent front-page splash of the eight-page Dispatch (circulation unknown) read: "Police Nab He-Goat Minister in Hot Sex with Greedy Slut".
Reflecting a widely held view, columnist Lucy Oriang recommended that the fiery Mrs Kibaki step back from the limelight, not as a matter of choice but as "a step she needs to take pronto".