Post by Onyango Oloo on Sept 13, 2017 0:18:23 GMT 3
A Digital Inquiry by Onyango Oloo
If you visit the social media sites, you may be forgiven if you concluded that a civil war-especially with a tribal tinge is about to break out in Kenya.
The supporters of NASA are glowing with triumphalism over the recent Supreme Court decision.
Those who voted for Uhuru Kenyatta are champing at the bit, eager to drive home their point about who the true victor on August 8th was.
We are starting to see a fallout in both camps.
Isaac Ruto, complaining of loneliness, has trooped back to Jubilee. Peter Munya now says he will work indefatigably for Raila. But then there is this photo where he is smiling next to Uhuru, beaming, claiming his allegiance to the Jubilee flag bearer. Hassan Omar has resigned from Wiper. Martha Karua, who supported Uhuru, has filed a petition to challenge Waiguru and wants the entire elections cancelled. David Musila, Fred Gumo, Paul Otuoma, Kenneth Marende and Cyrus Jirongo were hosted at State House recently. Even Peter Kenneth has packed his bags and headed for NASA-although one does not know what the evening news will carry.
Everyone is asking: who is going to be the next Kenyan president?
I am going to annoy the backers of both leading candidates by floating a controversial possibility.
Which is how about if the elections were determined by non-Kenyans, outsiders?
We are so tied up with the tirades of Moses Kuria, Johnstone Muthama, Wafula Chebukati and Ezra Chiloba that we forget that politically, Kenya is NOT an island.
We must factor in geo-politics.
How is the term defined?
Wikipedia tells us:
Geopolitics is the study of the effects of geography (human and physical) on international politics and international relations. Geopolitics is a method of studying foreign policy to understand, explain and predict international political behavior through geographical variables. These include area studies, climate, topography, demography, natural resources, and applied science of the region being evaluated.
Geopolitics focuses on political power in relation to geographic space. In particular, territorial waters and land territory in correlation with diplomatic history. Academically, geopolitics analyses history and social science with reference to geography in relation to politics. Outside of academia, a variety of groups offer a geopolitical prognosis, including non-profit groups and for-profit private institutions (such as brokerage houses and consulting companies).Topics of geopolitics include relations between the interests of international political actors, interests focused to an area, space, geographical element or ways, relations which create a geopolitical system. "Critical geopolitics" deconstructs classical geopolitical theories, by showing their political/ideological functions for great powers during and after the age of imperialism.
The term has been used to describe a broad spectrum of ideas, from "a synonym for international relations, social, political and historical phenomena" to various pseudo-scientific theories of historical and geographic determinism.
Kenya, as a former orthodox colony of Britain and since 1963,a virtual neo-colonial tea estate and coffee plantation of the United States, Germany, Japan, the European Union and slavish to other world powers is subject to all the vagaries of international relations.
Earlier today, I was doing some online research on bodies like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) Freedom House, NRI (National Republican Institute) and the NDI(National Democratic Institute) and other Western bodies that Kenyans rely on so heavily as “honest, unbiased arbiters” when it comes to analyze elections in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Eastern Europe and other parts of the world.
I came across some interesting insights.
Here is what Tony Cartalucci was saying about NED in late 2011:
“The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and its subsidiaries, the International Republican Institute (IRI) and the National Democratic Institute (NDI), despite the lofty mission statement articulated on its website, is nothing more than a tool for executing American foreign policy. Just as the military is used under the cover of lies regarding WMD's and "terrorism," NED is employed under the cover of bringing "democracy" to "oppressed" people. However, a thorough look at NED's board of directors, as well as the board of trustees of its subsidiary, Freedom House, definitively lays to rest any doubts that may be lingering over the true nature of these organizations and the causes they support.
“Upon NED's board of directors we first find John Bohn who traded petrochemicals, was an international banker for 13 years with Wells Fargo, and is currently serving as a principal for a global advisory and consulting firm, GlobalNet Partners, which assists foreign businesses by making their "entry into the complex China market easy." Surely Bohn's ability to manipulate China's political landscape through NED's various activities both inside of China and along its peripheries constitutes an alarming conflict of interest. However, it appears "conflict of interest" is a reoccurring theme throughout both NED and Freedom House.
“Bohn is joined by Rita DiMartino who worked for Council on Foreign Relations corporate member AT&T as "Vice President of Congressional Relations" as well as a member of the CFR herself. Also representing the Fortune 500 is Kenneth Duberstein, a board member of the war profiteering Boeing Company, big oil's ConocoPhillips, and the Mack-Cali Realty Corporation. Duberstein also served as a director of Fannie Mae until 2007. He too is a CFR member as are two of the companies he chairs, Boeing and ConocoPhillips.
“We then consider several of the certified warmongers serving upon NED's board of directors including Francis Fukuyama, Zalmay Khalilzad, Will Marshall, and Vin Weber, all signatories of the pro-war, pro-corporate Project for a New American Century. Within the pages of documents produced by this "think tank" are pleas to various US presidents to pursue war against sovereign nations, the increase of troops in nations already occupied by US forces, and what equates to a call for American global hegemony in a Hitlerian 90 page document titled "Rebuilding Americas Defenses." As we will see, this warmongering think tank serves as a nexus around which fellow disingenuous rights advocate Freedom House also gravitates…”
Still on the subject of NED,Thierry Mayson, a French commentator with the Voltaire Network, had this to add in 2016:
For 30 years, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) has been sub-contracting the legal part of illegal CIA operations. Without rousing suspicions, it has put in place the biggest network of corruption in the world, bribing trade unions and management syndicates , political parties both on both the Right and Left so that they defend the interests of the United States instead of their members.
This policy has been followed by other States who in their turn, have been labeled by the international press as “dictators”.
The US government guarantees that it is working towards “promoting democracy all over the world”. It claims that the US Congress can subsidize NED and that NED can, in turn and wholly independently, help directly or indirectly, associations, political parties or trade unions, working in this sense anywhere in the world. The NGOs being, as their name suggests, “non-governmental” can take political initiatives that ambassadors could not assume without violating the sovereignty of the States that receive them. The crux of the matter lies here: NED and the network of NGOs that it finances: are they initiatives of civil society unjustly repressed by the Kremlin or covers of the US Secret Services caught red-handed in interference?
In his famous speech on 8 June 1982 before the British Parliament, President Reagan denounced the USSR as “the empire of evil” and proposes to come to the aid of dissidents over there and elsewhere. He declared: “We need to create the necessary infrastructure for democracy: freedom of the press, trade unions, political parties and universities. This will allow people the freedom to choose the best path for them to develop their culture and to resolve their disputes peacefully”. On this consensual basis of the struggle against tyranny, a commission of bipartisan reflection sponsored the establishment of NED at Washington. This was established by Congress in November 1983 and immediately financed.
The Foundation subsidizes four independent structures that redistribute money abroad, making it available to associations, trade unions and members of the ruling class, and parties on the right and left. They are:
- Free Trade Union Institute (FTUI), today renamed American Centre for International Labour Solidarity (ACILS), managed by the trade union AFL-CIO;
- Centre for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), managed by the US Chamber of Commerce;
- International Republican Institute (IRI), run by the Republican Party;
- National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), run by the Democratic Party.
Presented in this manner, NED and its four tentacles appear to be anchored in civil society, reflecting social diversity and political pluralism. Funded by the US people, through Congress, they would have worked to a universal ideal. They would be completely independent of the Presidential Administration. And their transparent action could not be a mask for secret operations serving undeclared national interests.
Three of NED’s four peripheral organizations were formed for the occasion. However, there was no need to establish the fourth, a trade union (ACILS). This was set up at the end of the Second World War even though it changed its name in 1978 when its subordination to the CIA was unmasked. From this we can extract the conclusion that the CIPE, IRI and NDI were not born spontaneously but were engineered into being by the CIA.
Furthermore, although NED is an association under US law, it is not a tool of the CIA alone, but an instrument shared with British services (which is why Reagan announced its creation in London) and the Australian services. This key point is often glossed over without comment. However, it is validated by messages of congratulations by Prime Ministers Tony Blair and John Howard during the 20th anniversary of the so-called “NGO”. NED and its tentacles are organs of an Anglo-Saxon military pact linking London, Washington and Canberra; the same goes for Echelon, the electronic interception network. This provision can be required not only by the CIA but also by the British MI6 and the Australian ASIS.
To conceal this reality, NED has stimulated among its allies the creation of similar organizations that work with it. In 1988, Canada is fitted out with a centre Droits & Démocratie, which has a special focus first on Haiti, then Afghanistan. In 1991, the United Kingdom established the Westminster Foundation for Democracy (WFD). The functioning of this public body is modeled on NED: its administration is entrusted to political parties (eight delegates: three for the Conservative Party; three for the Labour Party; and one for the Liberal Party and one for the other parties represented in Parliament). WFD has done a lot of work in Eastern Europe. Indeed in 2001, the European Union is equipped with a European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR), which arouses less suspicion than its counterparts. This office is EuropAid, led by a high official as powerful as he is unknown: the Dutchman, Jacobus Richelle.”
There is more that you can read from the primary source.
The respected American magazine Monthly Review Press, weighed in on Venezuela:
"The NED promotes top-down, elite, constrained (or “polyarchal”) democracy. This is the democracy where the elites get to decide the candidates or questions suitable to go before the people — always limiting the choices to what the elites are comfortable with. Only after the elites have made their decision are the people presented with the “choice” that the elites approve. And the NED prattles on with its nonsense about how it is “promoting democracy around the world.”
"The other thing to note about the NED is that it is not independent as it claims, ad nauseum. It was created by the US Congress, signed into US law by President Ronald Reagan (that staunch defender of democracy), and it operates from funds provided annually by the US Government...."
And from the UK the Scottish Left Review echoes these sentiments:
The NED promotes ultra-right wing US policy objectives by identifying, funding and supporting ‘kindred spirits’. A number of large subgroups also benefit from multi-million dollar NED funding. These include the International Republican Institute and the United States Agency for International Development amongst others.
"Like any new brand, when it was first established it had a snappy marketing title, but unlike most regulated products it does almost precisely the opposite of what it says on the tin.
At its core a new approach, a new philosophy that refocused what the US means by ‘democracy’. For those countries the NED were to target (which was basically the rest of the world) that meant that whoever you voted for, the policies would be broadly the same and your country’s economy would remain ‘in-step’ with that of the United States…or else.
Washington expanded – through the work of the NED and the sub-organisations it directly funds – the ‘special relationship’ alliances with those nations who demonstrated complete subservience to US foreign policy objectives. For more read on at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyarchy.[/i]
What we have in Kenya and many countries is NOT democracy but rather, a POLYARCHY which is defined in Wikipedia as:
In Western European political science, the term polyarchy was used by Robert Dahl to describe a form of government in which power is invested in multiple people. It takes the form of neither a dictatorship nor a democracy. This form of government was first implemented in the United States and France and was gradually adopted by many other...According to Dahl, the fundamental democratic principle is “the continuing responsiveness of the government to the preferences of its citizens, considered as political equals” with unimpaired opportunities. A polyarchy is a state that has certain procedures that are necessary conditions for following the democratic principle see internet article.In his 1989 book, Democracy and its critics, Dahl gives the following characteristics of a polyarchy (which you can acess from the same Wikipedia site en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyarchy :
Apart from the explicitly governance cum non-profit entities like NED and Freedom House, even those involved in seemingly “apolitical” issues like energy, mining and infrastructure, geo-politics is not far from centre stage.
In address not too long ago, Jason Ambrose, Managing Director of Palantir Solutions, gave an "Expert Insight" at a recent meeting of the Oil Council’s World Assembly as a guest speaker to the seminar on Oil and Gas opportunities within East Africa titled, where he focused on the geopolitical influences in the region in relation to energy in current and future developments.
One a more direct route, the USA has direct political, economic, cultural, technological, diplomatic and military presence in Kenya. The American embassy in Nairobi is the largest in sub-Saharan Africa if not the entire continent. On the military front, since 2004, US troops have been stationed at a Kenyan naval base known as Camp Simba at Manda Bay in Lamu County taking part in what an AFRICOM officer called Benson portrayed as “short-term training and engagement activities.” in “military-to-military engagements with Kenyan forces and humanitarian initiatives.” AFRICOM makes use of six buildings located on Kenyan military bases at the airport and seaport of Mombasa which bolster other AFRICOM operations at the Léopold Sédar Senghor International Airport in Senegal for refueling stops as well as the “transportation of teams participating in security cooperation activities” such as training missions and Addis Ababa Bole International Airport in Ethiopia, Nsimalen Airport and Douala International Airport in Cameroon, Amílcar Cabral International Airport and Praia International Airport in Cape Verde, N’Djamena International Airport in Chad, Cairo International Airport in Egypt, Jomo Kenyatta International Airport and Moi International Airport Kotoka International Airport in Ghana, Marrakech-Menara Airport in Morocco, Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport in Nigeria, Seychelles International Airport in the Seychelles, Sir Seretse Khama International Airport in Botswana, Bamako-Senou International Airport in Mali, and Tunis-Carthage International Airport in Tunisia. All told, the US military now has 29 agreements to use international airports in Africa as refueling centers. Another little-noticed medical investigation component, the US Army Research Unit-Kenya, operates from facilities in Kisumu and Kericho.
In addition, US Africa Command has built a sophisticated logistics system, officially known as the AFRICOM Surface Distribution Network , but colloquially referred to as AFRICOM or the “new spice route.” It connects posts in Manda Bay, Garissa, and Mombasa in Kenya, Kampala and Entebbe in Uganda, Dire Dawa in Ethiopia, as well as crucial port facilities used by the Navy’s CTF-53 (“Commander, Task Force, Five Three”) in Djibouti, which are collectively referred to as “the port of Djibouti” by the military. Other key ports on the continent, according to Lieutenant Colonel Wade Lawrence of US Transportation Command, include Ghana’s Tema and Senegal’s Dakar.
The US maintains 10 marine gas and oil bunker locations in eight African nations, according to the Defense Logistics Agency. AFRICOM’s Benjamin Benson refuses to name the countries, but recent military contracting documents list key fuel bunker locations in Douala, Cameroon; Mindelo, Cape Verde; Abidjan, Cote D’Ivoire; Port Gentil, Gabon; Sekondi, Ghana; Mombasa, Port Luis, Mauritius; Walvis Bay, Namibia; Lagos, Nigeria; Port Victoria, Seychelles; Durban, South Africa; and Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. The US also continues to maintain a long-time Naval Medical Research Unit, known as NAMRU-3, in Cairo, Egypt. During the regime of President George D. Bush the US carried out an assassination of a so called Al Shabaab terrorist in Kenya. This is adds to the widely held perception that US special forces up to now regularly use Kenya for clandestine operations in Somalia.
The World Bank Group Macroeconomics and Fiscal Management Global Practice Group Policy published a Research Working Paper which came out in March 2016 titled Deal or No Deal: Strictly Business for China in Kenya? authored by Apurva Sanghi and Dylan Johnson examined China’s economic presence in Kenya and some of the popular myths surrounding Chinese economic activity.
The first myth is that Chinese companies do not employ local workers. In fact, 78 percent of full-time and 95 percent of part time employees in Chinese companies are locals. Second, although China represents a large potential market for local exporters, the study finds that China has a better chance of expanding its exports to Kenya than Kenya does to China based on existing specializations. This may change with recent oil discoveries in Kenya, increasing the space for Kenyan exports to China, as well as from China’s shift to a consumption-driven economy which will increase demand for services, a growing strength of Kenya’s economy.The paper emphasizes that Kenyan policy makers should be less concerned about bilateral trade imbalances and worry about Kenya’s overall trade balance. However, the Standard Gauge Railway and Thika superhighway experiences suggest that Chinese firms offer relatively few technology transfer or supplier opportunities for local firms and academia. Third, the popular focus of Chinese competition is on the impact on well-organized Kenyan producers and not on consumers, thereby underestimating the benefits Kenyan consumer derive from the availability of more affordable Chinese goods.
The World Bank document is useful reading for those who want to critically examine Kenya’s economic ties with China which now owns more than half of Kenya’s external debt.
Lily Kuo, writing in June 15, 2016 in Quartz Africa looked at the growing debt indebtness that Kenya has towards China after Kenya secured a $600 million loan from China to help towards paying for a $6 billion budget deficit that the Kenya government expected. The loan, one of many China had given to the country over the years, helps Kenya’s goal of bringing down its budget deficit to 7.9% of gross domestic product instead of the previously forecast 8.7%.
But it also raised the prospect of whether East Africa’s largest economy was growing too indebted to China. China is now Kenya’s largest creditor, accounting for 57% the country’s total external debt of $4.51 billion, according to the World Bank. That figure has grown quickly. Chinese loans to Kenya grew an annual rate of 54% between 2010 and 2014 while loans from other lenders like Japan and France fell.
Critics point out that Chinese loans, usually for infrastructure projects, are often contingent on a Chinese company being contracted to complete those projects. Others say that the terms are unfavorable to Kenya and that funding from the African Development Bank or the World Bank would be cheaper. “If we leave these big projects to the corrupt elite and crafty Chinese contractors, they will bankrupt us,” wrote a columnist in the Daily Nation, in March. Chinese loans to the African continent are often exaggerated. They amount to about $6.2 billion a year, a little less than the amount the United States has been spending on its HIV prevention campaign PEPFAR since 2009.
On a more unsavoury plane, some Kenyan human rights activists have charged that in the just concluded elections, the Jubilee government supplied and equipped Kenyan police and security forces with tools of repression imported from China which was used to clamp down protests. While most of these reports are anecdotal, a Kenyan newspaper, the Standard, citing an Amnesty International report made similar broad allegations a few years ago.
The paper said in part:
“Dozens of Chinese firms are producing and exporting "tools of torture", from electric stun guns to metal spiked batons, to countries with bad human rights records, rights group Amnesty International said on Tuesday. More than 130 companies are involved in producing or trading the equipment, typically marketed to law enforcement agencies, up from about 28 companies a decade ago, Amnesty said. The equipment fuels human rights abuses by law enforcement authorities in African and Southeast Asian states, the group said in a report. "While some of the exports are no doubt used in legitimate law enforcement operations, China has also exported equipment that has inhumane effects, or poses a substantial risk of fuelling human rights violations by foreign law enforcement agencies.”
The Amnesty International document produced in conjunction with the Omega Research Foundation, says in part:
Over the past decade China has significantly increased its profile as a supplier of equipment to the global law enforcement sector. There is little official data available regarding volumes and destinations of trade. However, information from Chinese companies, and the increased presence of Chinese companies at trade fairs, as well as media reports and photographic evidence of Chinese equipment being used in other countries, all point to the growth of China’s law enforcement equipment industry and China’s increasingly strong presence in the global market for such equipment.
In relation to China’s production, promotion, trade and export of “tools of torture”, Amnesty International and Omega Researc Foundation have identified:
The police and security forces committed serious human rights violations during and in the aftermath of the July 2009 protests including beatings and arbitrary arrests and unnecessary or excessive use of force.
83 companies manufacturing direct contact electric shock stun batons, 29 of which claim they export law enforcement equipment; 21 companies manufacturing spiked batons, seven of which state they export law enforcement equipment; 17 companies manufacturing weighted leg cuffs, six of which claim they produce for export; 32 companies manufacturing thumb cuffs, 15 of which say they produce for export.
China has no proper mechanism to ensure that equipment offered for law enforcement that inherently abuses human rights is withdrawn from the market and from use by law enforcers. While some of the China’s exports are of legitimate law enforcement equipment, the export control system of China lacks adequate export assessment criteria, oversight, transparency and enforcement of regulations. As a result, law enforcement equipment has been exported from China to countries where there was a foreseeable and substantial risk of serious human rights violations by law enforcement agencies. This includes:
The export of tear gas, handcuffs and electric shock batons from China to Liberia in 2008 at a time when there was a comprehensive UN arms embargo in place covering such items.
The export of a large consignment of Chinese “anti-riot” equipment - armoured vehicles with water cannons and tear gas launchers as well as pepper sprayers – to Uganda on the eve of the February 2011 elections.
The run-up to the elections had been a period of significant political unrest, with allegations of serious human rights violations leveled against the Ugandan police force. The equipment was subsequently used to violently repress political protests.
A consignment of riot control weapons, including tear gas and rubber projectiles, from China to Madagascar in 2009 at a time when the country was experiencing severe political turbulence. The imported equipment arrived in Madagascar from South Africa on board President Ravalomanana’s private jet, bypassing customs, and was subsequently used to violently repress largely peaceful protests.
The Omega Research Foundation produced a report covering the January 19, 2015 police atrocities against the Langata Primary School kids protesting the grabbing of their playground. They feature, among the bullets and the graphic photographs from the scene an individual carrying a launcher called Narg 38 Launcher which is a 38mm single shot grenade launcher (also known as a riot gun), designed to load riot control cartridges in his left hand . The weapon is made in China.
When I was doing research for this topic, I read a lot. Among the works I came across was the 311 eleven page doctoral thesis submitted by Carolien van Ham to the Department of Political and Social Sciences of European University Institute titled Beyond Electoralism? Electoral fraud in third wave regimes 1974-2009. The thesis studied the quality of elections in 97 countries in Southern Europe, Central and Eastern Europe, the Former Soviet Union, Sub-Saharan Africa, South America and Central America from 1974 until 2009.
Another article I looked at was Why The West Imposed Gen. Museveni On Uganda And Will Sustain Him
by Eric Kashambuzi which came out in November 15,2015.
Here is an excerpt:
After Obote's election and return to power the West searched and found Yoweri K. Museveni as the right man to replace him .
With external financial and media support, Museveni launched in 1981 his destructive five-year guerrilla war against Obote's second government. Museveni recruited disgruntled Baganda, Catholics, poor people and refugees.
While publicly denouncing the Obote regime for being a darling of the West that had imposed the Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) with severe social consequences (see Mission to Freedom1990), Museveni’s agents were actually negotiating with the World Bank and IMF, champions of SAP to abandon Obote and support Museveni (see G. W. Kanyeihamba 2002).
Therefore Museveni knew all along that his administration would not implement the people’s Ten Point Program (TPP) because it differed fundamentally from the SAP that he would implement with Western support. Specifically, TPP contained socialist elements that were unacceptable to the West.
Because of popular resistance in Uganda against SAP, Museveni dodged it during the first year of his administration. The West made it clear that he would not get technical and financial assistance until after he had agreed with the IMF and World Bank on the way forward.
Structural adjustment required that the economy be based on the principles of market forces, laissez-faire policies, trickle-down mechanism, export orientation and comparative advantage as well as foreign expert management to ensure efficiency. The role of the state would be minimal.
In addition Museveni was required to invite back the Asians that had been expelled by Amin in 1972.
Because the economy had to be managed by foreign experts, Museveni refused the return of qualified and experienced Ugandans and even retrenched some experienced civil servants.
Museveni's National Resistance Movement(NRM) government thus created a serious human capacity deficit in order to be able to invite foreign experts.
I could cite other sources but my essential point is this:
Whether it is the October 17th or whenever, the next Kenyan President may not be determined at the election booth.
In my humble opinion, one of the problems we have with recent Kenyan elections is that the adversaries have been very closely matched in terms of electoral support.
To make an analogy outside politics and outside Africa, for many years African-American boxers complained that the referees were biased against them mainly due to racism-losing bouts many times by majority points from the judges. Eventually the African-American boxers came up with a very simple way to decide matters- that is, simply KNOCK OUT your opponent in the ring!
I am telling NASA today in September 12, 2017 that they should focus on preparing a formidable electoral knock out punch that will make irrelevant any attempts by IEBC, Jubilee or the Western powers to manipulate the process.
Otherwise, I have a trepidation that we may have a situation where the donors, the AU and the rest of the world may force a shotgun marriage between Uhuru and Raila for the interests of "political stability."
It is with the above conclusion in mind that I said at the outset that neither the Jubilants or the Canaanites will not be cheering Onyango Oloo at the top of their voices.
Now let the debate begin.
If you visit the social media sites, you may be forgiven if you concluded that a civil war-especially with a tribal tinge is about to break out in Kenya.
The supporters of NASA are glowing with triumphalism over the recent Supreme Court decision.
Those who voted for Uhuru Kenyatta are champing at the bit, eager to drive home their point about who the true victor on August 8th was.
We are starting to see a fallout in both camps.
Isaac Ruto, complaining of loneliness, has trooped back to Jubilee. Peter Munya now says he will work indefatigably for Raila. But then there is this photo where he is smiling next to Uhuru, beaming, claiming his allegiance to the Jubilee flag bearer. Hassan Omar has resigned from Wiper. Martha Karua, who supported Uhuru, has filed a petition to challenge Waiguru and wants the entire elections cancelled. David Musila, Fred Gumo, Paul Otuoma, Kenneth Marende and Cyrus Jirongo were hosted at State House recently. Even Peter Kenneth has packed his bags and headed for NASA-although one does not know what the evening news will carry.
Everyone is asking: who is going to be the next Kenyan president?
I am going to annoy the backers of both leading candidates by floating a controversial possibility.
Which is how about if the elections were determined by non-Kenyans, outsiders?
We are so tied up with the tirades of Moses Kuria, Johnstone Muthama, Wafula Chebukati and Ezra Chiloba that we forget that politically, Kenya is NOT an island.
We must factor in geo-politics.
How is the term defined?
Wikipedia tells us:
Geopolitics is the study of the effects of geography (human and physical) on international politics and international relations. Geopolitics is a method of studying foreign policy to understand, explain and predict international political behavior through geographical variables. These include area studies, climate, topography, demography, natural resources, and applied science of the region being evaluated.
Geopolitics focuses on political power in relation to geographic space. In particular, territorial waters and land territory in correlation with diplomatic history. Academically, geopolitics analyses history and social science with reference to geography in relation to politics. Outside of academia, a variety of groups offer a geopolitical prognosis, including non-profit groups and for-profit private institutions (such as brokerage houses and consulting companies).Topics of geopolitics include relations between the interests of international political actors, interests focused to an area, space, geographical element or ways, relations which create a geopolitical system. "Critical geopolitics" deconstructs classical geopolitical theories, by showing their political/ideological functions for great powers during and after the age of imperialism.
The term has been used to describe a broad spectrum of ideas, from "a synonym for international relations, social, political and historical phenomena" to various pseudo-scientific theories of historical and geographic determinism.
Kenya, as a former orthodox colony of Britain and since 1963,a virtual neo-colonial tea estate and coffee plantation of the United States, Germany, Japan, the European Union and slavish to other world powers is subject to all the vagaries of international relations.
Earlier today, I was doing some online research on bodies like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) Freedom House, NRI (National Republican Institute) and the NDI(National Democratic Institute) and other Western bodies that Kenyans rely on so heavily as “honest, unbiased arbiters” when it comes to analyze elections in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Eastern Europe and other parts of the world.
I came across some interesting insights.
Here is what Tony Cartalucci was saying about NED in late 2011:
“The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and its subsidiaries, the International Republican Institute (IRI) and the National Democratic Institute (NDI), despite the lofty mission statement articulated on its website, is nothing more than a tool for executing American foreign policy. Just as the military is used under the cover of lies regarding WMD's and "terrorism," NED is employed under the cover of bringing "democracy" to "oppressed" people. However, a thorough look at NED's board of directors, as well as the board of trustees of its subsidiary, Freedom House, definitively lays to rest any doubts that may be lingering over the true nature of these organizations and the causes they support.
“Upon NED's board of directors we first find John Bohn who traded petrochemicals, was an international banker for 13 years with Wells Fargo, and is currently serving as a principal for a global advisory and consulting firm, GlobalNet Partners, which assists foreign businesses by making their "entry into the complex China market easy." Surely Bohn's ability to manipulate China's political landscape through NED's various activities both inside of China and along its peripheries constitutes an alarming conflict of interest. However, it appears "conflict of interest" is a reoccurring theme throughout both NED and Freedom House.
“Bohn is joined by Rita DiMartino who worked for Council on Foreign Relations corporate member AT&T as "Vice President of Congressional Relations" as well as a member of the CFR herself. Also representing the Fortune 500 is Kenneth Duberstein, a board member of the war profiteering Boeing Company, big oil's ConocoPhillips, and the Mack-Cali Realty Corporation. Duberstein also served as a director of Fannie Mae until 2007. He too is a CFR member as are two of the companies he chairs, Boeing and ConocoPhillips.
“We then consider several of the certified warmongers serving upon NED's board of directors including Francis Fukuyama, Zalmay Khalilzad, Will Marshall, and Vin Weber, all signatories of the pro-war, pro-corporate Project for a New American Century. Within the pages of documents produced by this "think tank" are pleas to various US presidents to pursue war against sovereign nations, the increase of troops in nations already occupied by US forces, and what equates to a call for American global hegemony in a Hitlerian 90 page document titled "Rebuilding Americas Defenses." As we will see, this warmongering think tank serves as a nexus around which fellow disingenuous rights advocate Freedom House also gravitates…”
Still on the subject of NED,Thierry Mayson, a French commentator with the Voltaire Network, had this to add in 2016:
For 30 years, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) has been sub-contracting the legal part of illegal CIA operations. Without rousing suspicions, it has put in place the biggest network of corruption in the world, bribing trade unions and management syndicates , political parties both on both the Right and Left so that they defend the interests of the United States instead of their members.
This policy has been followed by other States who in their turn, have been labeled by the international press as “dictators”.
The US government guarantees that it is working towards “promoting democracy all over the world”. It claims that the US Congress can subsidize NED and that NED can, in turn and wholly independently, help directly or indirectly, associations, political parties or trade unions, working in this sense anywhere in the world. The NGOs being, as their name suggests, “non-governmental” can take political initiatives that ambassadors could not assume without violating the sovereignty of the States that receive them. The crux of the matter lies here: NED and the network of NGOs that it finances: are they initiatives of civil society unjustly repressed by the Kremlin or covers of the US Secret Services caught red-handed in interference?
In his famous speech on 8 June 1982 before the British Parliament, President Reagan denounced the USSR as “the empire of evil” and proposes to come to the aid of dissidents over there and elsewhere. He declared: “We need to create the necessary infrastructure for democracy: freedom of the press, trade unions, political parties and universities. This will allow people the freedom to choose the best path for them to develop their culture and to resolve their disputes peacefully”. On this consensual basis of the struggle against tyranny, a commission of bipartisan reflection sponsored the establishment of NED at Washington. This was established by Congress in November 1983 and immediately financed.
The Foundation subsidizes four independent structures that redistribute money abroad, making it available to associations, trade unions and members of the ruling class, and parties on the right and left. They are:
- Free Trade Union Institute (FTUI), today renamed American Centre for International Labour Solidarity (ACILS), managed by the trade union AFL-CIO;
- Centre for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), managed by the US Chamber of Commerce;
- International Republican Institute (IRI), run by the Republican Party;
- National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), run by the Democratic Party.
Presented in this manner, NED and its four tentacles appear to be anchored in civil society, reflecting social diversity and political pluralism. Funded by the US people, through Congress, they would have worked to a universal ideal. They would be completely independent of the Presidential Administration. And their transparent action could not be a mask for secret operations serving undeclared national interests.
Three of NED’s four peripheral organizations were formed for the occasion. However, there was no need to establish the fourth, a trade union (ACILS). This was set up at the end of the Second World War even though it changed its name in 1978 when its subordination to the CIA was unmasked. From this we can extract the conclusion that the CIPE, IRI and NDI were not born spontaneously but were engineered into being by the CIA.
Furthermore, although NED is an association under US law, it is not a tool of the CIA alone, but an instrument shared with British services (which is why Reagan announced its creation in London) and the Australian services. This key point is often glossed over without comment. However, it is validated by messages of congratulations by Prime Ministers Tony Blair and John Howard during the 20th anniversary of the so-called “NGO”. NED and its tentacles are organs of an Anglo-Saxon military pact linking London, Washington and Canberra; the same goes for Echelon, the electronic interception network. This provision can be required not only by the CIA but also by the British MI6 and the Australian ASIS.
To conceal this reality, NED has stimulated among its allies the creation of similar organizations that work with it. In 1988, Canada is fitted out with a centre Droits & Démocratie, which has a special focus first on Haiti, then Afghanistan. In 1991, the United Kingdom established the Westminster Foundation for Democracy (WFD). The functioning of this public body is modeled on NED: its administration is entrusted to political parties (eight delegates: three for the Conservative Party; three for the Labour Party; and one for the Liberal Party and one for the other parties represented in Parliament). WFD has done a lot of work in Eastern Europe. Indeed in 2001, the European Union is equipped with a European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR), which arouses less suspicion than its counterparts. This office is EuropAid, led by a high official as powerful as he is unknown: the Dutchman, Jacobus Richelle.”
There is more that you can read from the primary source.
The respected American magazine Monthly Review Press, weighed in on Venezuela:
"The NED promotes top-down, elite, constrained (or “polyarchal”) democracy. This is the democracy where the elites get to decide the candidates or questions suitable to go before the people — always limiting the choices to what the elites are comfortable with. Only after the elites have made their decision are the people presented with the “choice” that the elites approve. And the NED prattles on with its nonsense about how it is “promoting democracy around the world.”
"The other thing to note about the NED is that it is not independent as it claims, ad nauseum. It was created by the US Congress, signed into US law by President Ronald Reagan (that staunch defender of democracy), and it operates from funds provided annually by the US Government...."
And from the UK the Scottish Left Review echoes these sentiments:
The NED promotes ultra-right wing US policy objectives by identifying, funding and supporting ‘kindred spirits’. A number of large subgroups also benefit from multi-million dollar NED funding. These include the International Republican Institute and the United States Agency for International Development amongst others.
"Like any new brand, when it was first established it had a snappy marketing title, but unlike most regulated products it does almost precisely the opposite of what it says on the tin.
At its core a new approach, a new philosophy that refocused what the US means by ‘democracy’. For those countries the NED were to target (which was basically the rest of the world) that meant that whoever you voted for, the policies would be broadly the same and your country’s economy would remain ‘in-step’ with that of the United States…or else.
Washington expanded – through the work of the NED and the sub-organisations it directly funds – the ‘special relationship’ alliances with those nations who demonstrated complete subservience to US foreign policy objectives. For more read on at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyarchy.[/i]
What we have in Kenya and many countries is NOT democracy but rather, a POLYARCHY which is defined in Wikipedia as:
In Western European political science, the term polyarchy was used by Robert Dahl to describe a form of government in which power is invested in multiple people. It takes the form of neither a dictatorship nor a democracy. This form of government was first implemented in the United States and France and was gradually adopted by many other...According to Dahl, the fundamental democratic principle is “the continuing responsiveness of the government to the preferences of its citizens, considered as political equals” with unimpaired opportunities. A polyarchy is a state that has certain procedures that are necessary conditions for following the democratic principle see internet article.In his 1989 book, Democracy and its critics, Dahl gives the following characteristics of a polyarchy (which you can acess from the same Wikipedia site en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyarchy :
Apart from the explicitly governance cum non-profit entities like NED and Freedom House, even those involved in seemingly “apolitical” issues like energy, mining and infrastructure, geo-politics is not far from centre stage.
In address not too long ago, Jason Ambrose, Managing Director of Palantir Solutions, gave an "Expert Insight" at a recent meeting of the Oil Council’s World Assembly as a guest speaker to the seminar on Oil and Gas opportunities within East Africa titled, where he focused on the geopolitical influences in the region in relation to energy in current and future developments.
One a more direct route, the USA has direct political, economic, cultural, technological, diplomatic and military presence in Kenya. The American embassy in Nairobi is the largest in sub-Saharan Africa if not the entire continent. On the military front, since 2004, US troops have been stationed at a Kenyan naval base known as Camp Simba at Manda Bay in Lamu County taking part in what an AFRICOM officer called Benson portrayed as “short-term training and engagement activities.” in “military-to-military engagements with Kenyan forces and humanitarian initiatives.” AFRICOM makes use of six buildings located on Kenyan military bases at the airport and seaport of Mombasa which bolster other AFRICOM operations at the Léopold Sédar Senghor International Airport in Senegal for refueling stops as well as the “transportation of teams participating in security cooperation activities” such as training missions and Addis Ababa Bole International Airport in Ethiopia, Nsimalen Airport and Douala International Airport in Cameroon, Amílcar Cabral International Airport and Praia International Airport in Cape Verde, N’Djamena International Airport in Chad, Cairo International Airport in Egypt, Jomo Kenyatta International Airport and Moi International Airport Kotoka International Airport in Ghana, Marrakech-Menara Airport in Morocco, Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport in Nigeria, Seychelles International Airport in the Seychelles, Sir Seretse Khama International Airport in Botswana, Bamako-Senou International Airport in Mali, and Tunis-Carthage International Airport in Tunisia. All told, the US military now has 29 agreements to use international airports in Africa as refueling centers. Another little-noticed medical investigation component, the US Army Research Unit-Kenya, operates from facilities in Kisumu and Kericho.
In addition, US Africa Command has built a sophisticated logistics system, officially known as the AFRICOM Surface Distribution Network , but colloquially referred to as AFRICOM or the “new spice route.” It connects posts in Manda Bay, Garissa, and Mombasa in Kenya, Kampala and Entebbe in Uganda, Dire Dawa in Ethiopia, as well as crucial port facilities used by the Navy’s CTF-53 (“Commander, Task Force, Five Three”) in Djibouti, which are collectively referred to as “the port of Djibouti” by the military. Other key ports on the continent, according to Lieutenant Colonel Wade Lawrence of US Transportation Command, include Ghana’s Tema and Senegal’s Dakar.
The US maintains 10 marine gas and oil bunker locations in eight African nations, according to the Defense Logistics Agency. AFRICOM’s Benjamin Benson refuses to name the countries, but recent military contracting documents list key fuel bunker locations in Douala, Cameroon; Mindelo, Cape Verde; Abidjan, Cote D’Ivoire; Port Gentil, Gabon; Sekondi, Ghana; Mombasa, Port Luis, Mauritius; Walvis Bay, Namibia; Lagos, Nigeria; Port Victoria, Seychelles; Durban, South Africa; and Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. The US also continues to maintain a long-time Naval Medical Research Unit, known as NAMRU-3, in Cairo, Egypt. During the regime of President George D. Bush the US carried out an assassination of a so called Al Shabaab terrorist in Kenya. This is adds to the widely held perception that US special forces up to now regularly use Kenya for clandestine operations in Somalia.
The World Bank Group Macroeconomics and Fiscal Management Global Practice Group Policy published a Research Working Paper which came out in March 2016 titled Deal or No Deal: Strictly Business for China in Kenya? authored by Apurva Sanghi and Dylan Johnson examined China’s economic presence in Kenya and some of the popular myths surrounding Chinese economic activity.
The first myth is that Chinese companies do not employ local workers. In fact, 78 percent of full-time and 95 percent of part time employees in Chinese companies are locals. Second, although China represents a large potential market for local exporters, the study finds that China has a better chance of expanding its exports to Kenya than Kenya does to China based on existing specializations. This may change with recent oil discoveries in Kenya, increasing the space for Kenyan exports to China, as well as from China’s shift to a consumption-driven economy which will increase demand for services, a growing strength of Kenya’s economy.The paper emphasizes that Kenyan policy makers should be less concerned about bilateral trade imbalances and worry about Kenya’s overall trade balance. However, the Standard Gauge Railway and Thika superhighway experiences suggest that Chinese firms offer relatively few technology transfer or supplier opportunities for local firms and academia. Third, the popular focus of Chinese competition is on the impact on well-organized Kenyan producers and not on consumers, thereby underestimating the benefits Kenyan consumer derive from the availability of more affordable Chinese goods.
The World Bank document is useful reading for those who want to critically examine Kenya’s economic ties with China which now owns more than half of Kenya’s external debt.
Lily Kuo, writing in June 15, 2016 in Quartz Africa looked at the growing debt indebtness that Kenya has towards China after Kenya secured a $600 million loan from China to help towards paying for a $6 billion budget deficit that the Kenya government expected. The loan, one of many China had given to the country over the years, helps Kenya’s goal of bringing down its budget deficit to 7.9% of gross domestic product instead of the previously forecast 8.7%.
But it also raised the prospect of whether East Africa’s largest economy was growing too indebted to China. China is now Kenya’s largest creditor, accounting for 57% the country’s total external debt of $4.51 billion, according to the World Bank. That figure has grown quickly. Chinese loans to Kenya grew an annual rate of 54% between 2010 and 2014 while loans from other lenders like Japan and France fell.
Critics point out that Chinese loans, usually for infrastructure projects, are often contingent on a Chinese company being contracted to complete those projects. Others say that the terms are unfavorable to Kenya and that funding from the African Development Bank or the World Bank would be cheaper. “If we leave these big projects to the corrupt elite and crafty Chinese contractors, they will bankrupt us,” wrote a columnist in the Daily Nation, in March. Chinese loans to the African continent are often exaggerated. They amount to about $6.2 billion a year, a little less than the amount the United States has been spending on its HIV prevention campaign PEPFAR since 2009.
On a more unsavoury plane, some Kenyan human rights activists have charged that in the just concluded elections, the Jubilee government supplied and equipped Kenyan police and security forces with tools of repression imported from China which was used to clamp down protests. While most of these reports are anecdotal, a Kenyan newspaper, the Standard, citing an Amnesty International report made similar broad allegations a few years ago.
The paper said in part:
“Dozens of Chinese firms are producing and exporting "tools of torture", from electric stun guns to metal spiked batons, to countries with bad human rights records, rights group Amnesty International said on Tuesday. More than 130 companies are involved in producing or trading the equipment, typically marketed to law enforcement agencies, up from about 28 companies a decade ago, Amnesty said. The equipment fuels human rights abuses by law enforcement authorities in African and Southeast Asian states, the group said in a report. "While some of the exports are no doubt used in legitimate law enforcement operations, China has also exported equipment that has inhumane effects, or poses a substantial risk of fuelling human rights violations by foreign law enforcement agencies.”
The Amnesty International document produced in conjunction with the Omega Research Foundation, says in part:
Over the past decade China has significantly increased its profile as a supplier of equipment to the global law enforcement sector. There is little official data available regarding volumes and destinations of trade. However, information from Chinese companies, and the increased presence of Chinese companies at trade fairs, as well as media reports and photographic evidence of Chinese equipment being used in other countries, all point to the growth of China’s law enforcement equipment industry and China’s increasingly strong presence in the global market for such equipment.
In relation to China’s production, promotion, trade and export of “tools of torture”, Amnesty International and Omega Researc Foundation have identified:
The police and security forces committed serious human rights violations during and in the aftermath of the July 2009 protests including beatings and arbitrary arrests and unnecessary or excessive use of force.
83 companies manufacturing direct contact electric shock stun batons, 29 of which claim they export law enforcement equipment; 21 companies manufacturing spiked batons, seven of which state they export law enforcement equipment; 17 companies manufacturing weighted leg cuffs, six of which claim they produce for export; 32 companies manufacturing thumb cuffs, 15 of which say they produce for export.
China has no proper mechanism to ensure that equipment offered for law enforcement that inherently abuses human rights is withdrawn from the market and from use by law enforcers. While some of the China’s exports are of legitimate law enforcement equipment, the export control system of China lacks adequate export assessment criteria, oversight, transparency and enforcement of regulations. As a result, law enforcement equipment has been exported from China to countries where there was a foreseeable and substantial risk of serious human rights violations by law enforcement agencies. This includes:
The export of tear gas, handcuffs and electric shock batons from China to Liberia in 2008 at a time when there was a comprehensive UN arms embargo in place covering such items.
The export of a large consignment of Chinese “anti-riot” equipment - armoured vehicles with water cannons and tear gas launchers as well as pepper sprayers – to Uganda on the eve of the February 2011 elections.
The run-up to the elections had been a period of significant political unrest, with allegations of serious human rights violations leveled against the Ugandan police force. The equipment was subsequently used to violently repress political protests.
A consignment of riot control weapons, including tear gas and rubber projectiles, from China to Madagascar in 2009 at a time when the country was experiencing severe political turbulence. The imported equipment arrived in Madagascar from South Africa on board President Ravalomanana’s private jet, bypassing customs, and was subsequently used to violently repress largely peaceful protests.
The Omega Research Foundation produced a report covering the January 19, 2015 police atrocities against the Langata Primary School kids protesting the grabbing of their playground. They feature, among the bullets and the graphic photographs from the scene an individual carrying a launcher called Narg 38 Launcher which is a 38mm single shot grenade launcher (also known as a riot gun), designed to load riot control cartridges in his left hand . The weapon is made in China.
When I was doing research for this topic, I read a lot. Among the works I came across was the 311 eleven page doctoral thesis submitted by Carolien van Ham to the Department of Political and Social Sciences of European University Institute titled Beyond Electoralism? Electoral fraud in third wave regimes 1974-2009. The thesis studied the quality of elections in 97 countries in Southern Europe, Central and Eastern Europe, the Former Soviet Union, Sub-Saharan Africa, South America and Central America from 1974 until 2009.
Another article I looked at was Why The West Imposed Gen. Museveni On Uganda And Will Sustain Him
by Eric Kashambuzi which came out in November 15,2015.
Here is an excerpt:
After Obote's election and return to power the West searched and found Yoweri K. Museveni as the right man to replace him .
With external financial and media support, Museveni launched in 1981 his destructive five-year guerrilla war against Obote's second government. Museveni recruited disgruntled Baganda, Catholics, poor people and refugees.
While publicly denouncing the Obote regime for being a darling of the West that had imposed the Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) with severe social consequences (see Mission to Freedom1990), Museveni’s agents were actually negotiating with the World Bank and IMF, champions of SAP to abandon Obote and support Museveni (see G. W. Kanyeihamba 2002).
Therefore Museveni knew all along that his administration would not implement the people’s Ten Point Program (TPP) because it differed fundamentally from the SAP that he would implement with Western support. Specifically, TPP contained socialist elements that were unacceptable to the West.
Because of popular resistance in Uganda against SAP, Museveni dodged it during the first year of his administration. The West made it clear that he would not get technical and financial assistance until after he had agreed with the IMF and World Bank on the way forward.
Structural adjustment required that the economy be based on the principles of market forces, laissez-faire policies, trickle-down mechanism, export orientation and comparative advantage as well as foreign expert management to ensure efficiency. The role of the state would be minimal.
In addition Museveni was required to invite back the Asians that had been expelled by Amin in 1972.
Because the economy had to be managed by foreign experts, Museveni refused the return of qualified and experienced Ugandans and even retrenched some experienced civil servants.
Museveni's National Resistance Movement(NRM) government thus created a serious human capacity deficit in order to be able to invite foreign experts.
I could cite other sources but my essential point is this:
Whether it is the October 17th or whenever, the next Kenyan President may not be determined at the election booth.
In my humble opinion, one of the problems we have with recent Kenyan elections is that the adversaries have been very closely matched in terms of electoral support.
To make an analogy outside politics and outside Africa, for many years African-American boxers complained that the referees were biased against them mainly due to racism-losing bouts many times by majority points from the judges. Eventually the African-American boxers came up with a very simple way to decide matters- that is, simply KNOCK OUT your opponent in the ring!
I am telling NASA today in September 12, 2017 that they should focus on preparing a formidable electoral knock out punch that will make irrelevant any attempts by IEBC, Jubilee or the Western powers to manipulate the process.
Otherwise, I have a trepidation that we may have a situation where the donors, the AU and the rest of the world may force a shotgun marriage between Uhuru and Raila for the interests of "political stability."
It is with the above conclusion in mind that I said at the outset that neither the Jubilants or the Canaanites will not be cheering Onyango Oloo at the top of their voices.
Now let the debate begin.
him when he meets their important people. They don't wanna take chances with the treacherous heart of a rat, do they?
), Kibaki had paused at the word DULY, then read the word ELECTED with question mark?
