Clinton Urges Kenyans to Listen to Their ‘Son,’ Obama

By ODUOR JAGERO
Published August 15, 2009

During her visit U.S Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asked Kenyans to heed President Barack Obama’s message of reform political reconciliation, following last year’s post-election violence.

“Let me begin with greetings and good wishes from President Obama to the people of his ancestral homeland.” “Love him [Obama], listen to him,” Clinton said. “He is your son.”

Clinton gave the remark at the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) conference in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital, where she began a seven-nation tour of African.

The choice of the words “ancestral land” immediately elicited a huge applause from the dignitaries, but across Kenya she had hit the right cord. And to punch home Mr. Obama’s love for Kenya, she kept referring the Kenyan audience to Obama’s Ghana speech, alluding that Mr. Obama has never meant bad for Kenya as a country but that the American leader is keen on seeing impunity addressed.

Mrs. Clinton never left that assurance as an important ingredient of her message. In fact, in the open forum at Nairobi University, organized by CNN and Kenya Television Network (KTN), she made sure that her first statement strived to heal wounds that Obama left by making his maiden African trip to Ghana instead of Kenya.

“He (Obama) cares deeply about this country. And it is very touching and moving to me to see the feelings of kinship and relationship that exists between the people of Kenya and our President”, Clinton said.

Before saying this statement, Clinton made sure that she’d invoked Obama’s passionate plea which he delivered on the same podium in 2006 as a senator.

Obama had said back then, “In today’s Kenya, it is that courage that will bring the reform so many of you desperately want and deserve. I wish all of you luck in finding this courage in the days and months to come, and I want you to know that as your ally, your friend, and your brother, I will be there to help in any way I can.”

Clinton strove to capture the hearts of the students and many that were glued to the silver screen across Kenya. And keeping to that path of adroit apology, Clinton brilliantly played her joker card by defending the Kenyan populace on the ills that have dogged our country.

As to why Kenya has lagged behind countries she was at par with, at one time, such as Switzerland and South Korea, Clinton said, “The people of Kenya work very hard and the professional people in Kenya are among the best in the world. The private sector is dynamic. The government has to reform itself if Kenya will be all it can be”.

She tactically blamed the government and gave the masses a clean bill of health. In clear terms she was telling Kenyans that ‘your government has failed you’.

While this strong woman, the only one to have given a male U.S. presidential candidate a serious run for his money, was reconciling the people of Kenya to Obama, the government was under intense heat.

Clinton told Kenyan leaders, “we are waiting, we are disappointed”. The Kenyan Sunday Nation reported that the U.S. government would name and shame key perpetrators of the post-election suspects and individuals involved in corruption.

But beneath the thin veneer of assurance to the Kenyan populace that Obama still loves his country, lurked the former first lady’s scathingly attack on the government. Away from the cameras, Clinton bared the American fang to the local leaders.

“She promised to name and shame them as a demand to reforms. She also promised travel sanctions”, Parliamentary Accounts committee chairman, Dr Bonnie Khalwale intimated to the Sunday Nation.

Clinton was clearly not amused by the government’s stubbornness to retain the Attorney General Amos Wako and Police Commissioner Major General Hussein Ali, two people seen to be impeding reforms. Ali has been blamed on extrajudicial killings while some accuse Wako of blocking efforts to reform the judiciary.

Khalwale told the Sunday Nation that Clinton told President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga to overhaul the judiciary by removing key officials as gesture to true reforms.

Chief Justice Evans Gicheru and his counterpart, head of Anti-Corruption Commission, Justice (Rtd) Aaron Ringera have also been accused to be the barrier to true reforms. The two are friends of the echelons of power, and many Kenyans see them as mere puppets and a mockery to the only arm of government with the wherewithal to confront impunity.

Clinton told hundreds of students of her inner misgivings, and borrowing from a talk she had with an unidentified person, she said in an open forum, “the common parlance tragically summed up is, if you have a problem in Kenya, why hire a lawyer when you can buy a judge?”

This shows that America deeply understands the rot in Kenyan judicial system. And Clinton made sure that although she was engaging a student, it was important to say the same, in the presence of the Kenyan cabinet and permanent secretaries. In other words she was saying: my country knows how rotten it is, this is a failing state, and something has to be done!

Clinton said Kenya “hasn’t yet realized fully what it means to have a functioning, dynamic democracy, and a free press and an independent judiciary.” She further noted that the post-election violence was not a spontaneous occurrence, but was a feedback of an accumulation of bad decisions, that leaders have made over the centuries.

When asked by CNN whether post-election perpetrators should be taken to the International Criminal Court, even though the U.S. has refused to be a signatory, she tactfully referred to the poll ratings, that showed a big number of Kenyans supporting the handing over of perpetrators to The Hague.

Clinton’s Kenyan visit therefore can be summed thus: ‘to the Kenyan populace, Obama loves you, he still cares for you; but to the government, we are disappointed, and there is work to be done’.

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