From: Ouko joachim omolo
The News Dispatch with Omolo Beste
JULY 1, 2013
As US President Barack Obama heads to Tanzania Monday, Mwananchi newspaper reports that the cabinet ministers who will be allowed to meet him at the Julius Nyerere International Airport (JNIA) will be screened first by the FBI. Air travellers are to reschedule their flights as the airspace is set to be closed ahead of his visit to allow maximum security.
Dar es Salaam will be a no-fly zone some hours ahead of Obama’s arrival and all flights in or out of the country will either be diverted or rescheduled. Air Force One, carrying Mr Obama, his family and entourage, is expected to land at 2:40pm local time from Cape Town in South Africa.
US military cargo planes are expected to deliver logistical supplies for Mr Obama’s visit. This includes support vehicles, limousines and trucks loaded with sheets of bulletproof glass to cover the windows of the hotel where the first family will stay.
Beggars and street children have been cleared from the city centre and the main trading centres of Kariakoo and Mnazi-Mmoja. This move has angered some Tanzanian citizens. They argue that the campaign to get rid of the beggars was meant to conceal the reality of life in the city from the US President, whose father came from Kenya. “The government is trying to hide the poverty of its people to avoid shame,” says Mr Abdallah one of the angered citizens.
In September 2000 when then US President Bill Clinton visited Arusha, former Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa could not believe that US Secret Service agents could open doors of his limousine to let in a sniffer dog hunting for “hidden bombs and grenades”. This is an abuse of the first class.
Hours later, retired President Daniel Moi, who had flown to Arusha to meet Clinton, could not communicate with Moi International Airport Mombasa after the Secret Service agents jammed all local communications in the town. Moi was scheduled to be in Mombasa for a three-day visit.
When Obama arrived in Dakar, Senegal the story was the same. The country’s systems were turned upside down. His visit was expected to cost US taxpayers an estimated $100m.
When President Bill Clinton visited the city in 1998, most small business in downtown Dakar were closed and residents were “bunkerised” — or forced to stay indoors. What a pity.
Thank God Obama did not come to Kenya. If he came all communication systems in the country would probably have been shut down as US intelligence apparatus take control of communications.
Our airspace would possibly be shut or interrupted, and roads would be cordoned off.
Thousands of Nairobi residents would be trapped in their offices, cars and homes.
Dakar is still smarting from an embarrassing scenario in 1998 following Clinton’s visit.
Already residents in downtown Dakar are reporting lost business and economists are projecting losses to the country’s economy to the tune of millions of dollars yet Obama has not arrived.
This brings us to the big question: If Obama’s trip costing the American taxpayers about $100 million, and the heightened security, what is the benefit to Tanzania of hosting Barack Obama, his family and his entourage?
Fr Joachim Omolo Ouko, AJ
Tel +254 7350 14559/+254 722 623 578
E-mail omolo.ouko@gmail.com
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Real change must come from ordinary people who refuse to be taken hostage by the weapons of politicians in the face of inequality, racism and oppression, but march together towards a clear and unambiguous goal.
-Anne Montgomery, RSCJ UN Disarmament Conference, 2002