President Daniel Moi was a revered man, and the people close to him can attest to that.
KTN News, in May 2018, described Martha Karua as a woman of firsts, having run for a parliamentary seat via a relatively new Democratic Party (DP) ticket and won, making her among the first-ever women elected under multiparty politics.
Despite the many surprises she had pulled in the past, no one had envisioned what she did in 2001, in a packed stadium, with the bewildered President looking straight at her.
Karua, then MP for Gichugu, stormed out of the stadium just as the president rose to address the people at the Moi Kerugoya stadium.
Everyone fell silent and stared at her as she trooped past the red carpet and to the exit, waving her fist in the air, a symbol of the rebellious opposition, Democratic Party, through which she had been elected.
She alleged in an interview on KTN in 2018 that the leaders around her saw her rise up when Moi stood to speak, and JJ Kamotho, the then Kanu Secretary-General, and other leaders attempted to convince her not to go through with her plan in vain.
Due to security concerns, she stated that she would not have approached Moi from behind since it would seem like she was threatening to attack him.
She thus looked for a path a little bit farther from where Moi was standing and made sure that he had a front-row view as she walked out.
In her defense, Karua claimed that she had sought an audience with the President briefly after the MP for Kerugoya Matere Keriri was given chance to speak on behalf of all local MPs.
She further stated that she had been incensed by the manner the fundraising was being conducted, with the leaders taking every chance to drag the opposition legislators through the mud between bouts of vain praises of Moi.
"We are in the era of competitive politics and all leaders should be given a chance to defend their policies, especially when they are provoked by rivals," she explained.
Moi, despite his seemingly bruised ego, is alleged to have never mentioned anything about the incident in public.
