In barely a year, Mwai Kibaki has been catapulted from a veteran MP and leader of the opposition to a national hero.
With last December's landslide victory on the ticket of the National Rainbow Coalition, Kibaki, in the words of Nairobi University lecturer Smokin Wanjala, restored the confidence of Kenyans in the future.
He comes to Uganda as leader of a proud confident nation, an epitome of the triumph of "people" over autocratic leadership.
Uganda was, in many ways, the launching pad for the man that is now Kenya's third president.
Kibaki was chairman of the Kenya Students' Association at Makerere and Vice-Chairman of Makerere Students Guild.
He became the first Makerere University student to get a first class degree in Economics in 1955.
Five years later he was lecturing at Makerere when he was involved in the formation of the Kenya African National Union that would later win independence for Kenya.
Within six months of taking power, Kibaki has re-defined the meaning of the word president to the average Kenyan.
Unlike his predecessor Daniel arap Moi, he is not the omniscient, omnipotent ruler. Yet again unlike Moi, he is a press-friendly bureaucrat.
His visit to Uganda comes hot on the heels of that East African summit that exposed potential cracks in the dreamed of regional federation.
As leader of the richer country, Kibaki's leadership is likely to be critical to how Uganda and Tanzania perceive further integration.
As regards the politics Kibaki comes to a Uganda whose leader is attempting to do the very things that Moi did and tried to do, for example, send brutal police to crash a demonstration.
Kibaki visits a President Yoweri Museveni who is trying to change the Constitution and cling on power.
Kibaki's presidency is a victory of wananchi over such and other vices.
It remains to be seen what kind of influence Kibaki will have on Museveni - and vice versa.
