The role of the US Department of State in the aftermath of Kenyan Election
The United States interest in Kenya is vital. Viewed up to now as the most stable East African Country, and having „trouble“ neighbouring countries like Sudan and Somalia, good relations are crucial. Like the the United Kingdom, the US has bilateral Agreements with Kenya and also Military Bases within the country.
It is no surprise that the Bush Administration favoured Kibaki. While Kibaki is considered conservative, Odinga seems to be almost a socialist from the US point of view. A closer look at Odinga’s agenda shows that he has little interest in interfering with the free market. But words like “more social justice” are enough to ring alarm bells in Washington.
The State Department’s early Congratulation to Kibaki’s victory and the almost humiliating withdrawal of the statement and denial of having said that seemed at the first like a big misunderstanding. But that is hard to believe: The United States sent their own election observers and were therefore informed at an early stage about the irregularities of the election. The German Prof. Rolf Hofmeier, Director of the Institut für Afrika-Kunde, interprets the withdrawal as an acknowledgement of the mistakes made in Ethiopia in 2005. After the US accepted the obversely unfree, unfair and undemocratic election, riots broke out all over the country, leading to many deaths, the arrest of journalists and government critics.
The US’ stakes in East Africa are high. If the situation is not solved soon, the people’s demand for free and fair election could spread to the neighbouring countries and lead to a sudden lost of influence. Ethiopia’s President Woldegiorgis, who is fighting “the war on terror” in Somalia, as well as, Uganda’s President Museveni, a member of the “coalition of the willing”, are not eager to introduce models democratic models of power sharing in their countries. How quick the Kenyan conflict can spread can be seen in the
reports of military intervention of Ugandan militia forces in Kenyan Nyanza Region. It should be in the interest of the United States not to hold on to Kibaki, before they lose their influence in the whole region.
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Your analysis sums it up well. Your blog is educational.
Comment: sam – 05. January 2008 @ 8:32 pm
Regarding Ugandan military action, I found in Siasa Duni’s blog http://siasaduni.blogspot.com/2008/01/museveni-at-pains-to-explain-that-his.html
“Museveni at pains to explain that his soldiers are not in Kenya as his minister contradicts him…
Raila Odinga has said Ugandan president Museveni has called him thrice denying there were Ugandan soldiers in Kenya. “Museveni was at pains to explain that his soldiers are not here. He asked me to clarify the issue to the Kenyan people,” said Raila.
Meanwhile, the Uganda minister of Energy, Daudi Migereko, amidst a fuel crisis, on Friday assured Ugandans that army escorts have travelled to Kenya to secure tankers bringing petroleum and other merchandise to Uganda, and the fuel crisis might soon be averted.
The current fuel crisis in the country, which is a direct consequence of the post-election crisis in Kenya, may soon see all domestic aircraft grounded, according to the Uganda Civil Aviation Authority (UCAA).”
Comment: Jannek – 08. January 2008 @ 5:00 pm
And again the Siasi Duni blog gives an update on theUgandan army issue:
http://siasaduni.blogspot.com/2008/01/uganda-sending-3000-troops-to-kenya.html
The Headline: “Uganda sending 3,000 troops to Kenya” is missleading though, since it has not been decleared yet, that they actually will send 3000 troops to Kenya.
Here the Post:
Uganda could send about 3,000 soldiers into Kenya ostensibly to secure the country’s imports and exports en route to and from the coast of Mombasa, reports Ugandan daily Red Pepper. Uganda’s economy relies heavily on the route through Kenya to the seaport of Mombasa, and imports, especially of fuel, have been affected by the post-election violence that has plagued Kenya since the 27 December disputed presidential poll widely believed to have been heavily rigged by the government.
Meanwhile, the Uganda People’s Defence Forces has refuted claims that it has deployed in Kenya. In an article published in the Sunday Vision, 13th January 2008, the UPDF spokesman Capt. Paddy Ankunda was quoted as saying, “We have no troops at all on Kenyan soil.” According to reports in the Sunday Standard, some Ugandan troops were sighted in Busia town and in Port Victoria along River Sio. The paper also quoted the Nambale MP-elect, Chris Okemo, as saying that some Ugandan soldiers crossed the “no-man’s-land” borderline. “We have received reports that a number of strangers, whose mission is unknown, have been spotted in groups. We are still investigating the claims,” Okemo said. But Capt. Ankunda said “It’s a bad lie with no iota of truth. Troops in Kenya? What for? We are not at war,” he emphasised.
Asked whether the claims could be connected to threats by the Kenyan opposition ODM party to carry out massive protests and block Uganda’s main supply route, Ankunda said deploying a foreign army could not be a solution. “If that (blockade) happens, do you have to send troops? You cannot send soldiers into another country without the permission of the international community,” Ankunda clarified. He said the only Ugandan soldiers in Kenya are training at the Karen Defence College in Nairobi.
The Standard also quoted Bondo MP-elect Dr. Oburu Odinga claiming that people in the Ugandan military landed on Mageta Island on Saturday evening. “The first batch of 12 soldiers, who spoke strange Kiswahili, arrived at Mageta Island past 5:00pm on Friday and asked for directions to Usenge and Uhanya beach,” Oburu said. However, Nyanza PPO, Grace Kaindi, denied the claims. In Nairobi, the Police spokesman, Eric Karaithe, also refuted SMS messages circulating across the region that Uganda had sent 3,000 troops to crush the opposition protest slated for Wednesday. Karaithe said Kenya had enough forces to hanlde the situation.
Posted by Amkeni Ndugu Zetu! at 13:57
Comment: Jannek – 14. January 2008 @ 2:31 pm
The U-turn
The Siasa Duni Blog, which is in general very informative and a good read, posted this today:
http://siasaduni.blogspot.com/2008/01/kibaki-lost-election-us-government-poll.html
Kibaki “lost Election”, says US government poll
In a shocking departure, the US government now concedes that Kibaki lost the 2007 General Election. The US were the first to congratulate Kibaki on his “victory”, but have since made an about-turn, and US envoy Jendayi Frazer told Kibaki to his face that the US “was congratulating the people of Kenya, not Kibaki”. It seems the US is now confirming what everyone else knew all along. Uganda remains the only other country to recognise Kibaki’s illegitimate government.
In an article appearing on Yahoo News, an exit poll carried out on behalf of a U.S. government-backed foundation indicates that Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki was defeated in last month’s disputed election rather than being re-elected as he claims, according to officials with knowledge of the document. The poll by the Washington -based International Republican Institute — which hasn’t been publicly released— further undermines an election result that many international observers have described as flawed. The outcome has sparked protests and ethnically driven clashes that have killed hundreds.
Opposition leader Raila Odinga led Kibaki by roughly 8 percentage points in the poll, which surveyed voters as they left polling places during the election Dec. 27 , according to one senior Western official who’s seen the data and requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. That’s a sharp departure from the results that Kenyan election officials certified, which gave Kibaki a margin of 231,728 votes over Odinga, about 3 percentage points. U.S. and European observers have criticized the official results, which came after long, unexplained delays in counting the votes, primarily from Kibaki strongholds. Jendayi Frazer , the assistant secretary of state for African affairs, said over the weekend that there were “serious irregularities in the vote tallying, which made it impossible to determine with certainty the final result.” The head of the International Republican Institute — a nonpartisan democracy-building organization whose work in Kenya was funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development — said the data weren’t released because of concerns about their validity.
The institute contracted an experienced Kenyan polling firm, Strategic Public Relations and Research, which had done two previous national-opinion polls for the institute last year. But on election day the institute’s staff found that pollsters weren’t gathering information in some areas. Institute President Lorne Craner said institute staffers weren’t in all areas where pollsters were working, so they couldn’t be sure which areas weren’t represented. Officials at the polling firm couldn’t be reached for comment, although outside experts said such data problems could be adjusted for statistically. Craner also said he was wary of releasing the results after protests had begun, but he added that he wouldn’t have released them even if there’d been no violence. “We didn’t think it made sense to put out what could be an invalid poll in a climate of great tension,” he said.
The senior Western official, who reviewed partial results, described them as credible. The survey included a sufficient sample of voters from around the country, and Odinga’s lead was comfortably outside the expected margin of error for a poll of that size, the official said. “What it tells me is there was an exit poll that had one candidate with a significant lead who, at the end of the day, was not declared the victor. That seems to me to be a little surprising,” the official said. The election and its aftermath have destroyed Kenya’s reputation for stability. As the country braced for more opposition protests later this week, former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan was expected to arrive as early as Tuesday for talks with Kibaki and Odinga, although several attempts to get the two rivals to meet already have failed.
Kenyan activists called on U.S. officials to release any data that would shed light on election fraud. “People want justice and truth. Part of that can only be attained if there is an independent inquiry into the election results, and that will need independent sources like the exit poll,” said Dan Juma , the acting deputy director of the Kenya Human Rights Commission.
The International Republican Institute’s work in Kenya dates to 1992, when it led an international mission to observe the country’s first multiparty elections. According to its Web site, the institute sponsors public opinion research— including exit polls— “to help strengthen political and civic institutions” in countries where it works. For last month’s election, the organization sent delegates to monitor more than 100 polling stations. Its officials initially praised voting day as peaceful and orderly, but after the disputed result they issued a statement acknowledging “serious questions about the manner in which the vote tabulation was managed.”
Posted by Amkeni Ndugu Zetu!
Comment: Jannek – 15. January 2008 @ 8:22 pm
I have just checked the site and there’s yet another update on the Uganda military situation…
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Have two candidates ever got the same number of votes in the past?
Comment: Chris Hutcherson – 03. October 2008 @ 8:29 pm