Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki opened parliament yesterday facing feuding ministers, outrage over sleaze and attempts to curb his powers. Kibaki hopes his fragile coalition will pass laws demanded by his critics, as he battles a popular perception that since election in 2002 he has betrayed promises to clean up graft and enact constitutional reforms.

?There are going to be fireworks,? said political analyst Mutahi Ngunyi who writes a column in the Sunday Nation. ?Kibaki needs to rein in his ministers and come up with a plan of action to tell us when we will get a new constitution.? Kibaki?s popularity suffered last year when he failed to deliver on a self-imposed June deadline to enact constitutional reforms, long demanded by Kenyans who say the sweeping powers of the presidency foster graft and misrule.

Protesters had pledged to picket parliament on yesterday to demand a draft constitution, already drawn up, be put to a referendum rather than being amended and passed by parliament. Kibaki also faces a challenge from within the chamber in a bill seeking to clip his powers by allowing parliament to stay in session even if it dismisses the president with a vote of no confidence.

The draft bill has highlighted ethnically tinged fault lines in Kibaki?s coalition, hastily assembled ahead of the 2002 polls to overturn almost four decades of rule by the Kenya African National Union (KANU) party of ex-president Daniel arap Moi. Finance Minister David Mwiraria, a member of Kibaki?s Kikuyu tribe, Kenya?s largest, said on Sunday ministers should back Kibaki or quit, remarks widely seen as an attack on ministers from the big Luo tribe and the Maasai and Kamba communities.

?During this session the cabinet must unite and speak with one voice,? Vice-President Moody Awori said on Tuesday. ?Talk on corruption is occupying 90 percent of the people?s time.? Deputies took some pressure off Kibaki on Monday when they said they would amend the proposed bill to ensure a two-thirds majority is needed in the 222-member parliament to remove the president, changing an initial clause in the document that would have put the bar at a simple majority.

<B>Wangui KANINA</B>