(Reuters) - Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki's vast experience, with a political career as old as his nation, was put to test severely when his disputed re-election in a Dec. 27 poll triggered unprecedented violence and chaos in the East African country.     
    The 76-year-old politician was looking to extend his unbroken streak of winning every election he has contested since he won his first parliamentary seat at Kenya's independence from Britain in 1963.
   But the result released by the Electoral Commission of Kenya plunged Kenya into deep political crisis. Both the opposition and Kibaki's side have claimed rigging by the other, and violent protests broke out immediately after the announcement.
   Where Kibaki contested as the candidate for change in 2002 after 39 years of single-party dominance, this time he was the underdog in pre-vote opinion polls. Rival Raila Odinga capitalised on discontent with those who saw the president as too inactive.
   Kibaki's 2002 win was seen as a repudiation of 24 years of corruption, oppression and economic failure under Daniel arap Moi, all of which Kibaki had pledged to reverse.
   But the high expectations met mixed success.
   Critics said Kibaki was a relic of Kenya's political old guard more interested in helping his own Kikuyu tribe than delivering on his promises to the rest of the country.
   Even critics cannot dispute he has succeeded in opening up press freedom -- notwithstanding an internationally criticised raid on a media house last year -- and turned Kenya's economy from negative to forecast 2007 GDP growth of 6.9-7.0 percent.
   But on corruption, those critics say Kibaki's government has carried on the graft seen under Moi and let the guilty go free because they are political allies.
   
   'TOO CLEVER'
   Kibaki has been underestimated since he was a boy, growing up the son of a tobacco trader in the lush tea and coffee fields near Mount Kenya in the central highlands.
   "When we were in school, we never thought he could be a president. A doctor maybe," said Samuel Githambo, 80, who was in Kibaki's class in Gatuya-ini primary school in Othaya, Kibaki's hometown. "But he was too clever. He defeated everybody."
   Kibaki became the first African to earn a first-class degree from the London School of Economics, returning to Uganda's Makerere University as an economics lecturer in 1958.
   There, he tasted politics in the heady days of African independence movements, and by the time Kenya won its freedom, he was an aide to founding President Jomo Kenyatta.
    Even then, he had a reputation as an indecisive fence-sitter who was slow to act.
   "Politically, we thought he was a fool because he didn't push or shove or make noise. But he was just building himself for later," Githambo said.
   When independence came, Kibaki was elected to parliament and two years later appointed commerce and industry minister. Moi appointed him vice president in 1978.
   He also served as finance minister from 1970 until 1983 when Moi moved him to lesser ministries, part of a falling out that would eventually push Kibaki into opposition.
   "The reason he was fired as finance minister by Moi was because his equations were too good. And the international community used to listen to him," Githambo said.
   Many Kenyans are sceptical that anyone who has spent so much time in politics -- particularly as finance minister under Moi's infamously corrupt regime -- did not steal.
   Kibaki is one of Kenya's richest men with vast land holdings and business interests including farming and investments. Before a car accident in 2002, he was often found playing golf and socialising in exclusive country clubs.
   But he himself has never been accused of corruption.
   Supporters say Kibaki benefited from his political prominence and contacts -- the key to wealth in Kenya. They say he has always been a hard worker who valued education, pointing out that he bought his first property in 1953, at the age of 22.