BREAKING: Chad’s Moussa Faki Mahamat is the new Africa Union Chairperson beating Kenya’s Foreign CS Amina Mohammed with 28 votes against 25
Foreign Affairs CS Amina Mohamed has lost the election for African Union Commission chairperson to Chad’s Moussa Mahamat.
Millions of tax payers funds have gone up in flames, DP Ruto did round the continent tour lobbying for Amina – the foreign trips costed hundrenss of millions in a clearly what was a white elephant move.
Amina, 56, lost to Mahamat after heads of state voted in seventh round. Mahamat had won 39 votes in the sixth round when 15 nations abstained. The country took the seventh round alone, Mahamat garnering 38 votes.
The two competed against Senegalese Dr Abdoulaye Bathily and Botswana’s Pelonomi Moitoi.
The loss is a blow to President Uhuru Kenyatta and Deputy William Ruto has they anticipated a win after investing so much..
The government reached 51 out of 53 African Union member states to back but all rejected Amina at the ballot.
Mahamat takes over from South Africa’s Dr Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma who has served for the last four years.
Dlamini-Zuma’s term as chairperson of the continental body ended in June after her term at the AU headquarters in Addis Ababa.
Her tenure had been extended by six months to give potential candidates for the position time to canvass for votes.
This was after the African leaders failed to get a two thirds majority vote for her successor in Kigali.
ON AMINA MOHAMMED’S FAILED QUEST TO CHAIR THE AFRICAN UNION.
By Michael O
Is it objectively true that CS Amina Mohammed was unqualified to be the AU president,or was she just a victim of association with this inept Jubilee regime?
I ask this because during the interviews just before her formal appointment into the cabinet,legislators from both sides of the political divide were loudly unanimous that there could never have been a better pick for the post of Kenya’s foreign affairs CS than the same Amina who I now hear is the least qualified to head the AU.
If Kenya’s best can be Africa’s worst,then surely we should all knock our heads in great shame!!!
Methinks,and this is the fact that we need to acknowledge before we can continue engaging in the ongoing childish exchange of raw bile over Amina’s candidature, that this debate on Amina’s suitability or otherwise,to head the AU is purely political and devoid of any objectivity.While it may be true that there could have been better and more qualified candidates for the said post,it’s so irritating of some social media charlatans who barely comprehend the administrative structure or even basic functioning of the AU to put forward some very obnoxious narratives against the person of Amina Mohammed and her (failed) quest to head the AU.
All we need to know is that Amina’s candidature,beyond being Jubilee’s attempts to project their deluded might on the continental scene and raise their stakes thereto as rightly argued by several Opposition bloggers,locally was purely an overt political contest which we in the Opposition,at least going by our perceived muted opposition,seem to have allowed Jubilee to win – whichever way Amina’s candidature would have gone.
Having violently frogmarched several innocent ethnic Somalis from their humble abodes in Nairobi’s Eastleigh Estate into a detention camp at Kasarani Stadium,accusing them of breeding and harbouring terrorists,coupled with several other instances of ethnic profiling and harassment on account of fighting terrorism,the Jubilee mandarins were aware that it was a potent political tool that any smart Opposition would seamlessly exploit to pluck away the ethic Somali votes from their hold.
Now all they(Jubilee) will have to do is to face and tell the Kenyan Somalis;look,we mean well for your progress that’s why we made your son the majority leader in parliament and had wanted to make your daughter the president of the AU but wale majamaa wa hadithi na vitendawili wakakataa juu hawataki muendelee blah blah blah……….
These simplistic and narrow arguments , as has been severally proved,are what win political power in Africa,and lately even in the developed West.
If I were the Kenyan Opposition leader,I would simply have publicly “thrown my weight behind” Amina’s candidature.I would have lost nothing,and wouldn’t have cared much even if I did lose something.
And with this very stupid conjecture, I step out of this debate by conveying my sincere sympathies to CS Amina Mohammed for her spectacular loss,and to fellow Kenyans for yet another loss of billions used in the futile intensive lobbying to have our Amina become the head of the AU!!!
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