Writes Leo Odera Omolo In Kisumu City
WHEN it became obvious that the US President Barrack Obama has excluded Kenya during his African tour next month, local leaders have reacted angrily, though putting up brave faces to conceal their disappointment.
Government leaders in Kenya, however, put up brave faces saying they were not worried President Obama would not be visiting due to some unforeseen complications and due to impending crime cases against humanity cases against its leaders.
This would the second time when the US President Obama snubbed Kenya, the birth place of his biological father.
The US President is schedule to start his first African tour since he was re-elected the US President for the second five year term. The planned itinerary would take President Obama to Senegal South Africa and Tanzania, but the itinerary will bypass Kenya, the country where his biological father the late Barrack Hussein Obama Snr was born.
The US President has a sizeable number of his family and relatives living in Western Kenya County of Siaya in Nyanza Province.
The Obama planned latest African tour has elicited a lot of controversies among the Kenyan political class and also among the senior African diplomats in Nairobi.
Among those who commented over the matter included President barrack Obama elder half brother Malik Abong’o Obama who is still smarting from a devastative election defeat of March 14 general-election in which he had contested for the plum elective position of the Siaya governor and came the second to last. Abong’o contested the election as an independent candidate.
Malik Obama told newsmen in Siaya ‘As a family including our grand mother Mama Sarah Obama we do not want to comment on the matter.He {the President} has not informed us of his visit to other African counties, a strong indication that the forthcoming visit is not family affair.”
President Uuru Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto who were voted in on March 14, 2013 this year both face trial at the International Criminal Court [ICC} at he Hague for their alleged role in orchestrating deadly post-election violence in 2007/2008.
The US administration officials have unofficially stated on condition of total anonymity that President Uhuru Kenyatta election had been the complicating factor in setting President Obama’s schedule in Africa. But the government spokesman in Nairobi dismissed the reports.
There has been a strong rumor that President Obama is avoiding Kenya because of the on-going ICC cases at the Hague said the government spokesman Machai Kariuki adding that these are all unfounded rumors.
President Obama visited Kenya in 2006 shortly after he was elected to the US Senate.He was elected the US President in 2008.
HE VISITED Ghana and South Africa after his election for the first term of five years, but did not come anywhere near Kenya during the tour.But this time around the US would be visiting Tanzania, which is next door to Kenya. Bloggers writing in the social media and websites have written a lot of controversial comments over the visit.
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