Double standards is an art of diplomacy. But it is still a shameless thing to do.
United States Ambassador Bob Godec has visited Kenya’s State House and met President Uhuru more than any foreign envoy. Godec is right to do so, as he represents the imperialist interests of America which has just been gifted with a Ksh300 billion scandalous contract to build an expressway in Kenya. So democracy be damned!
America has learnt from China all the bad manners. Right now, America is cutting deals with the Kenya government just as dubiously as China has been doing. Increasingly, American firms are benefiting from government-to-government multi-billion shilling tenders that the Kenyan public are kept out of.
Earlier, another American company was awarded a scandalous tender to supply military aircrafts in Kenya at outrageous costs. Godec was fingered as the prime mover of the deal, which became an issue even in the US congress itself, where two congressmen opposed it, moralising that Kenya, a poor country, had been cheated.
But it is Godec’s new ploy to ensure Kenya conducts another dubious election that has surprised everyone. Of course, it had been long time coming. The United States Embassy in Nairobi is among IEBC’s most critical partners and backers. And the US spent top dollar to prop up the current commission even as the Opposition fiercely fought for minimum reforms to ensure the August 8 presidential election was not bungled.
Godec, late in the day, grudgingly supported IEBC reforms that led to the removal of former IEBC commissioners headed by Isaack Hassan. As opposition demonstrators poured in the streets of Nairobi, the US ambassador did all he could to keep people out of the streets.
Tacitly, he supported the massive human rights violations that the government committed to subdue the protests. He either turned the other eye, and when the violations became too heinous to ignore, he hid behind general statements issued by all western envoys where they timidly condemned not only the violence but also the brutalized protesters for unlawful picketing.
Godec continue to buy the IEBC dishwater that it can conduct a credible election. Never mind that it has been proven beyond any iota of doubt that top IEBC officials both commissioners and the secretariat are totally conflicted.
From impeccable sources, this blog has learnt that Godec made contacts with a number of Supreme Court judges to pressure them not to give IEBC a harsh indictment as it will jeopardize the fresh polls that the commission is preparing to conduct. This was only hours after Godec had been spotted at State House in a meeting that has not been made public. This shamelessness is the sort of stuff American democracy is now made of.
We have also been informed that Godec met opposition leader Raila Odinga several times before the Supreme Court ruled and urged him to accept the outcome. At that point, common wisdom was that the judges will uphold the fraudulent election of Uhuru. After the Supreme Court, and even as it becomes clear that IEBC as presently constituted cannot conduct a credible election, Godec is the chief patron of the commission, and continue to exert pressure for the opposition to accept the quo at IEBC even when it is clear it has lost its status!
Godec has also been accused of misleading a number of American institutions and personalities which came to Kenya as observers, including former Secretary of State John Kerry. In disingenuous unanimity, all these observers endorsed the electoral fraud of August 8, many with the rider that the loser, in this case Raila Odinga, should “accept and move and preach peace”.
Never mind that the part of the elections process that totally failed – results transmission – is also the part that had massive foreign involvement and investment. The KIEMS systems is nearly Ksh 4 billion shillings wasted on European and American technology firms. NASA has written to the French government to demand prosecution of Safran and Morpho officials whom IEBC awarded Ksh3.8 billion contract to set up the transmission system AND operate it only to collude with corrupt and partisan IEBC officials and bungle it.
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