Kisumu. 25/02/2008
By Leo Odera Omolo
   
FOR CLOSE TO TWO MONTHS SINCE THE MUCH discredited elections results were announced by the Electoral Commission of Kenya, Mwai Kibaki’s government has stepped up its attempt to mend its damaged and dented image in Africa and abroad in futility.
  
Kibaki has defiantly sent out special envoys to explain the government’s position to foreign leaders and heads of state in order to elicit support and recognition, but all in vain.
   
Last weekend, Stephen Kalonzo Musyoka made a hastily arranged visit to Dar Es Salaam where he met with President Jakaya Kikwete of Tanzania. He then moved on to the Republic of Rwanda to explain the situation to President Paul Kagame.
   
But the Rwandese leader was reported to have been bold enough and told his VIP visitor from Kenya that he was particularly concerned about the Kenyan situation. President Kagame also told Kalonzo that the other EAC member states of Burundi, Tanzania and Uganda were willing to help the Kenyan people, but he did not elaborate as to which way and how soon such help would come.
   
So far, the shuttles of diplomacy seems to have hit the hard rock. Whatever Musyoka’s mission was, Kibaki’s bid to reach out to African leaders is yet to bear any meaningful fruit.
   
Very little gains came with the three special envoys Kibaki had sent to African leaders more than one month ago to brief them on the political crisis that has consumed the lives of close to 1000 Kenyans. The envoys were fully and adequately briefed to explain “the genuine situation on the ground in the country.”
   
The first of these series of diplomatic shuttles took Kalonzo Musyoka to the Whitehall in the UK and later on to Washington to brief the US officials, especially the US Congress.
   
Musyoka and his team were received in a low-key welcome in both London and Washington. The delegation was shocked to learn that Kenyans living in the diaspora have formed various strong and influential lobby groups,which had already briefed both the UK and US governments adequately on the situation on the ground.
   
The heads of states for EAC countries, save for Uganda’s Yuweri Museveni are closely watching the events from a safe distance.
   
Museveni is the only one who hastily congratulated Kibaki upon his re-election. He is also said to have been instrumental in kick-starting the mediation talks, but he could not go far due to the suspicion which persisted within the opposition ODM. The party, according to sources in Nairobi, has never been  comfortable with his involvement on account of his poor record at home in Uganda.
   
Two weeks ago, an Intergovernmental Authority for Development (IGAD)  Heads of State summit that was to be held in Kenya and chaired by Kibaki was abruptly cancelled at the eleventh hour following the protest by  the ODM which had threatened to call for fresh mass action.
   
Currently, there is very little information on what an ealier mission to the Tanzania capital by the Kenyan Minister for Local Government Uhuru Kenyatta, former Foreign Minister Raphael Tuju, Education Minister Prof. George Saitoti and the new Foreign Minister Moses Wetangula achieved.
   
Sources have divulged that Uhuru Kenyatta’s mission to Dar Es Salaam was a big flop. Uhuru, according to these sources, is said to have been kept waiting for hours by President Jakaya Kikwete and, finally, the two did not meet at all. So Mr Kenyatta returned home a very disappointed man.
   
Wetangula made a surprise visit to Ghana where he met President John Kufuor. He later bragged that his visit to Accra was fruitful. But when Kufuor, who by then was also the reigning Chairman of the African Union (AU) visited Nairobi, the welcome which was accorded to him was not enthusiastic enough to the expectation of many Kenyans..
   
At that juncture, Kibaki hurriedly named half of the Cabinet just when it was thought Kufuor’s visit would initiate the international intervention that ODM was banking on.
   
Musyoka’s visit to Kigali came in the wake of President Paul Kagame’s suggestion that a military intervention would end the post election crisis, a remark which did not go down well with the hardliners in the Kibaki government.
   
Rwanda’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Charles Mwrigande, who also attended the meeting, said his country was economically and physiologically concerned about what was happening in Kenya.
   
The Minister was quoted by  the government press as saying that “seeing the brutality with which Kenyans were being killed in Kenya was a night mare to Rwanda because it was similar to what was happening in Rwanda during the genocide despite the difference in magnitude.
   
Upon his return to Nairobi, Musyoka will this week fly out to Kampala in yet another diplomatic mission to brief President Yoweri Museveni on the situation on the ground at home.
   
Meanwhile, fears have gripped the region that the current political instability in Kenya was likely to affect the entire region, including countries in Eastern, Central and Southern Africa as well as those in the Horn. Their concern runs the ground of political stability, economic development, relative with other nations and the world as well as the search for democracy.
   
During her brief diplomatic shuttles in Kenya last week the US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice did not mince words. She reminded PNU and ODM of America’s war on terror and of suspected Al Qaeda activities in neighbouring Somalia which is struggling to establish a central government after 17 years of civil war.
  
Ends

leooderaomolo@yahoo.com

Edited by Jaluo Press.