Mwai Kibaki’s journey to opposition politics was slow but full of impact. In 1983, President Moi conducted a Cabinet reshuffle and stripped his Vice President of the Finance Ministry and gave him the less glamorous Home Affairs docket.
After the 1988 elections, Moi dropped Kibaki as Vice President and appointed him as Minister for Health. Kibaki reported to his new docket and worked until 1991 when he resigned from the Moi Cabinet and quit Kanu to launch his own party, the Democratic Party (DP), after the introduction of multi-party politics.

Kibaki officially resigned from KANU in December 1991 and two days later launched DP. Many of his former KANU allies such as Njenga Karume, Kyale Mwendwa, Eliud Mwamunga and John Keen defected to his party. The Forum for Restoration of Democracy (FORD), the dominant opposition political force in the early 1990s was critical of Kibaki’s failure to join them.  But being a political moderate, the populist politics of FORD would have been against his nature.  The split of Ford into Ford-Kenya, led by Oginga Odinga, and Ford Asili let by Kenneth Matiba played into Kibaki’s favour and solidified his reputation as a stable and principle-driven person.  

Kibaki participated in the 1992 elections as the DP presidential candidate and came third after Moi and Matiba respectively. Moi worn the elections by securing 1.9 million votes, Keneth Matiba came second with 1.4 million (26 per cent), and then Kibaki with slightly over one million votes (or 19.5 per cent). In the opposition, Kibaki distinguished himself in Parliament once again as an astute debater and a voice of reason.

In 1997, he again contested the presidency again on DP ticket and came second to incumbent President Moi, polling 1,911,742 votes against Moi’s 2,500,856 votes.  Raila Odinga was third with 667,886 votes. With brilliant debates as the Leader of Official Opposition, Kibaki defined that office and gave it credibility. As an opposition leader, Kibaki gave Kenyans the leadership they desired by putting to toe the government for its complacency in dealing with corruption in the country.

He took his role in the opposition seriously by having a shadow cabinet that highlighted the alternative leadership he would incorporate if he was president. Kibaki also immersed himself in the search for a new constitution by joining other leaders calling for a total overhaul of the Lancaster Constitution.

In September 2002, the Kenyan opposition decided to pursue electoral success using a new tact. The move was aimed at ensuring that the major opposition parties went to the elections under the umbrella of the National Alliance of Kenya (NAK) in order to offer formidable competition to the ruling party.

NAK incorporated Mwai Kibaki’s Democratic Party (DP), Kijana Wamalwa’s Forum for Restoration of Democracy-Kenya (FORD-K) and Charity Ngilu’s Social Democratic Party (SDP). Kibaki was identified as the alliance’s flag-bearer.
The dissatisfaction with the manner in which KANU picked its flag-bearer, current President Uhuru Kenyatta brought controversy and saw the emergence of a splinter group, the rainbow alliance, led by Raila Odinga who had earlier merged his party, NDP, with KANU.  

After failing to resolve the conflict with Moi over the selection, the Rainbow Alliance defected on 18th October 2002 exactly one month after NAK had been formed and entered Liberal Democratic Party, a defunct but registered party.

It is LDP that joined with the Kibaki-led alliance to form an expanded coalition dubbed National Rainbow Coalition (NARC). On 14th October 2002, at a large opposition rally in Uhuru Park, Kibaki was nominated as NARC’s flag-bearer after the former prime Raila Odinga made the famous ‘Kibaki Tosha’ declaration.  Kibaki became the natural choice for NARC .

On 3rd December 2002, Kibaki was injured in a road accident that took a toll on the NARC campaigns. He was hospitalized in London after experiencing multiple injuries in the accident. However, the rest of the NARC members took an active role in the campaigns traversing across the country.

During the 27th December 2002 general elections Kibaki was elected a clear majority as Kenya’s third President garnering over 65 per cent of the popular votes and started to initiate critical economic changes in the country even while nursing injuries sustained during the campaigns.