Broad-based or ‘handshake governments’ are not a new phenomenon. Kenya’s governance system – from independence, the advent of multi-party politics, to the present times – has been a series of ‘broad-based,’ ‘political handshake’ arrangements. To understand the history of broad-based governments, we need to take a journey through the past. In that journey, we must make a stopover in Gatundu, Kiambu County. The year is December 25, 1963, and a Cabinet meeting chaired by Jomo Kenyatta, then Prime Minister before becoming president the following year, has just declared of state of emergency in North Eastern Province. Northern Kenya wants to secede,…