Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) leader Raila Odinga and his team wanted retired President Daniel Moi to extend his term by six months.
Mr Odinga, who had folded his NDP in 2002 for KANU, was one of the key players in Moi's impending retirement, which was to come in December that year.
Former Head of Civil Service Sally Kosgei says Mr Odinga asked Moi to cling on for another six months to allow constitutional reforms.
According to Mr Odinga, Moi's presence would have given the exercise non-partisan leadership since he was retiring.
However, Moi outrightly rejected the proposals, arguing that he had pledged to smoothly hand over power without delay.
“They wanted six more months so that the Constitution could pass. In their reasoning, Moi was the best bet to deliver the Constitution given that he did not have a personal stake in the proposals that were flying around. Mzee wouldn’t have it,” Kosgei recalls as quoted by the Standard.
Ms Kosgei, who would later be elected as Aldai MP, said that Moi and his team had started planning transition when he took over in 1997 for the second term.
“We did not want the politicians to confuse Moi. As the technical wing running the transition, we kept the focus and Mzee was determined to leave. You will remember that in his 1997 inauguration speech which I drafted, he himself kept repeating that he would be serving his last term,” says Kosgei.
Mr Odinga would leave KANU with a host of ministers forming Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) which entered a coalition with Ford Kenya and DP.
The team formed government in 2002 under the Narc team.
Odinga later left the government in 2005 after falling out with Mwai Kibaki.