((((Ping))))
The kiss of death, how Kenya could spoil it for Obama
Written by Khadija Mohammed Sunday, 13 January 2008 http://www.kenyaimagine.com/Politics-and-Governance/The-kiss-of-death-how-Kenya-could-spoil-it-for-Obama.html
If you are, as I suppose is likely, Kenyan, the content of this article may be a little bewildering. So let's start by saying that what passes for good and even holy in Kenya, is in most other places unpalatable. The topmost class of Kenyan politics is mostly peopled by persons with truly dirty histories. Many of them have hands sullied to the elbows in the filth of corruption, constituting as they do a billionaire elect that has made millions in corrupt gains off of what passes for public service within our borders. Of this same political class are several politicians, many of whose political fortunes are in no small way built on the most tyrannical and divisive politics, promoting hatred, violence, exclusion and ethnic division.
The dominance of such types in our leaderships is such that a new entrant into this group is never likely to suffer guilt by association. In fact, the opposite is true, no matter how clean such a one, he will in short order be associated into actual guilt. If he thought himself noble, and tried to run on a clean party ticket, he would be terribly lonely, hanging out at Bunge all by himself and not getting invited to any of his fellows home-coming parties. It is improbable that his fortunes would be any better with the voting public, his employers. These will look not favourably on him, they would even loath him ad think him effeminate or dull. So it is that to earn his stripes, to shimmy up the political ladder, he must steal or if we must euphemise borrow public funds, he must have public land legally allocated to him, and hire gangs of youth to intimidate his opponents or any twerps with the impertinence not to kiss his extended fist.
He must show off his masculinity, must lie and posture and threaten and bear the most aggressive nicknames. He must promise everything, to all men of his tribe and others affiliated to it, and importantly, perhaps most importantly he must seek out the company of those better schooled in public disservice than he. By this means he will win even greater power, newspaper writers will find themselves unable to resist his inane speeches, and quotations from his lips will be on the lips of every child in the land. With the blood of those standing in his way, little people them, will his star be polished to a steady brightness and when those stars smile on him, he may even get the opportunity to run for State House itself.
In Kenya, but not in many other countries. In other countries you could lose elections simply on account of the company you keep.
Our political system does not move us to appreciate this, the fact that the electorate may react unfavorably to politicians schmoozing with villainous characters. And so it is that we must not be too harsh in our judgement of an event from last week. In boasting about his relationship with the Illinois Senator Barrack Obama, and a certain phone call from the USA, ODM leader Raila Odinga has cried havoc and truly let loose the dogs of war on Obama's campaign. American politics is a most vicious enterprise, much more than the feeble attempt we put up in the last year, and already the ferrets are out, rubbing their hands in glee and ready to swift boat another politician out of the race.
At the start of this week, the Illinois Senator was fresh off winning the Iowa caucus, and was heading towards a predicted win in New Hampshire's Democratic Party primary. Competing for the headlines with the news of his triumph was the tragedy of Kenya, that little country that Obama spoke of so often, the land of his father. It was therefore inevitable, that the Illinois Senator would be asked, what do you think of what is going on in Kenya.' It was then decided that a short phone call to Nairobi could not go wrong, it could even boost his campaign .
And it all went according to plan, at first. The media reported that Obama spoke with the Kenyan opposition leader and urged that he seek dialogue with President Kibaki. It was also reported that the American Senator, whose father the media now keeps emphasising was not just Kenyan but also a Luo, promised to speak with State House and to urge the President in the same direction, dialogue, not war, an effort to treasure the ‘strong democracy'. But that was the last we heard of that call. State House it seems has not received a call from the Senator.
Even then as the story was carried across the wires, it caught the attention of the blogosphere and America's tabloids, and now it seems to be catching fire all around. The intricacies of the Kenyan electoral campaign and Senator Obama's relationship with the ODM candidate have become significant to the international media. Every last action of Raila Odinga's is now under scrutiny, his campaign financiers, his political and business partners, and with the election violence, even the sins of the ODM supporters. In the intensity of America's presidential race, any mud that can be thrown at a candidate is fair game. The candidates themselves may decide against going ugly, but there is never any doubt that their supporters will pull no punches, and the close relationship (Raila insists ) between Hon. Odinga and Senator Obama is proving fertile ground for his opponents, both among the Democrats and from the Republican party.
And this is what may be the most memorable effect of the ODM's post-election campaign for State House. The longer their protests last, and the less disciplined they are - or the more atrocities like Eldoret are conducted in the party's name- the more likely Kenya is to be stuck on the front pages of the world's media and the more embarrassment it will bring to the Senator.
Strange is it not, that the most likely corollary of all this is that a Republican wins the White House? Opinion polls conducted across the US indicate that of the Democrat candidates, Obama has an effect so unifying as to appeal to both sides of the political divide and the neutrals in the middle and is therefore the party's best bet to beat the Republican candidates.
You could never have predicted this. The Illinois Senator Barrack Obama gained a lot from his association with Kenya. His Kenyan connection showed he was not traditional African-American and so bore none of the stigma that African Americans carry as the descendants of slaves. Through him, American politics could enjoy the expiatory effect of having a black candidate at the top of its politics, one who it did not need to fear as he bore it no grudge for the sins of slavery and centuries of racism.
The Kenyan connection also served his message of America as a land of opportunity great good, and added an exotic air to his campaign. His rousing One America campaign theme was one that a native African-American could not have promoted, and his foreign connection represented the increasing number of Americans with foreign-born parentage. Americans would be happy and so would the world. Here, in an age where Americans felt they had lost the goodwill of the world, was an American politician whose centrist policies could bring together not just Americans across the Democrat-Republican divide but also heal the America's rift with the world. And the relationship had also done Kenya much good. Obama's ‘Yes We Can ' speech, given after he lost the New Hampshire primary served to raise Kenyan spirits as they looked to rise out of the darkness of the post-election difficulty. The mere prospects of so great a success for a Kenyan 'son' overseas brought with it an air of aspiration and endless possibility, a triumph over the greatest odds.
It would be a calamity, for many of us, if this previously mutually beneficial relationship would cause Obama's prospects to flounder. But not for all of us. The increased interest in Raila Odinga may serve to redeem the foreign media from their fixation on a paradigm long gone, one in which President Kibaki plays the role of a brutal corrupt dictator and Raila Odinga an almost angelic crusader for the wider good. There is a noticeable shift in the announcements in foreign media, with a greater acknowledgement of the corruption in the ODM, the vote rigging in ODM areas and the very violent and intransigent histories of some of the party's leaders. With the pressure that this will bring, we may yet reach a faster resolution of our crisis and a little good may be extracted out of this association after all.