Daily Inspiration Quote by Mwai Kibaki

A constitution isn’t just paperwork in Kibaki’s framing; it’s a vault. Calling it the “ultimate custodian of social will” turns a legal document into an institution of memory and restraint, charged with holding a society’s ambitions steady after the campaign rallies end. The phrase is doing quiet work: it elevates the constitution above any single leader’s mandate and suggests that legitimacy is not self-renewing. Power has to be periodically re-licensed through rules that outlive personalities.

The subtext sits inside “social will.” Kibaki is gesturing at a plural public, not a monolith, which matters in a country where ethnic blocs, regional inequalities, and class interests can compete to define “the people.” By insisting the constitution is the custodian of that will, he implies that politics must be translated into institutions that can’t be easily captured by whoever happens to win next.

Then he pivots to process: “its making should be accorded all due diligence.” That’s lawyerly language with political teeth. “Due diligence” warns against rushed, winner-take-all constitution-making that bakes temporary majorities into permanent structures. In Kenya’s constitutional history - from the centralized executive power of the post-independence era to the long struggle that culminated in the 2010 Constitution - speed and secrecy were often tools of control. Kibaki’s sentence reads like a bid to legitimate reform by emphasizing deliberation, consultation, and procedural cleanliness.

It works rhetorically because it offers a disciplined ideal - the constitution as a careful, collective act - while also policing the stakes: get the process wrong, and you don’t just draft bad clauses; you mishandle the public’s future.