Kenya: A Diplomatic Joke

According to this week's edition of The East African, Kenya is now a 'diplomatic joke'. Nick Wachira and Charles Onyango-Obbo compare the diplomatic catastrophe that is the Kibaki government with President Moi's, even when he was held in the lowest esteem by our 'foreign partners'. One of the funnier passages in their article describe how because the US President, Barack Obama is a Luo, he cannot be trusted in his relations with Kenya, especially when he uses the Prime Minister in his interactions. How e have managed to transport our tribal warfare to the distant shores of the United Stated of America, beggars belief.

Kenya is without a doubt the economic engine of the East African Community, of which Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi, and soon, South Sudan, are mere minnows. However, the challenges facing the Kibaki presidency, especially after the flawed 2007 elections, point to a critical failure to use our economic might for our own diplomatic ends. President Kibaki made poor choices in his Foreign Affairs Ministers, first with Raphael Tuju and Moses Wetangula, and today with Prof. George Saitoti. These three men have demonstrated such a failure of imagination, they should be brought up on charges of dereliction of duty, seeing that they spent most of their energies in wars with Raila Odinga than in managing Kenya's relations wit the outside world. Mr. Tuju set the ball rolling when he announced a shift in Kenya's diplomatic objectives, insisting that we had to enhance our diplomatic status in our near-abroad, while cutting back on the international bellwethers of the United States and the European Union. It was on his watch that our China policy took flight and it has only been enhanced under Mr. Wetangula and Prof Saitoti. Today, we have the Vice-President engaging in a flurry of 'shuttle diplomacy' to persuade the African Union that Kenya needs a 'deferral' over the ICC matter and that the AU should take a minute t help Kenya achieve this ignominious end. In the meantime, the Prime Minister has accepted a commission from the AU to mediate in the Ivorian crisis, even after he has publicly called for the violent overthrow of the incumbent, who has refused to cede power after another flawed African elections.The Kenyan security establishment, on the other hand, has not been left out of the picture. Gen. Gichangi's National Security Intelligence Service has been at the heart of the Juba Initiative and other geo-strategic moves. It is involved in the training of Somali security personnel to ensure that they will eventually act as a buffer between the violence rocking Mogadishu and the Kenyan border.

In all this, the President has maintained his Sphinx-like silence, refusing to engage at all in the diplomatic maneuvering taking place in his name. As a result, the Vice-President, the Prime Minister, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, and the Director-General of the NSIS have been acting as if Kenya has multiple foreign policy objectives while in truth it may have none. There was nothing wrong in the PM taking up the AU assignment to mediate in Côte d'Ivoire; after all Kenya had successfully mediated an end to violence in the Sudan and Somalia. What was unacceptable is that the Prime Minister would take his 'I-am-the-equal-of-the-President' position to the international stage, taking up the assignment without agreeing with the President on what the diplomatic objectives would be and how they would be achieved. What is unacceptable is that the Vice-President would engage in a round of shuttle-diplomacy regarding the ICC simply because the AU resolutions of years past had indicated that the Union was willing to cock-a-snook at the ICC without considering the wider ramifications on Kenya's diplomatic capital if the whole mission failed. And now we are faced with the humiliation of having to brow-beat Rwanda and Burundi on the question of who will be the next EAC Secretary-General. The current state of affairs demonstrates that the President and Prime Minister do not appreciate the poor face of Kenya they are showing in international capitals. The fact is, when we started to appoint ex-politicians without diplomatic experience or expertise to represent the country n influential capitals, we had started on the road to international shame.

Now we are faced with the near-certainty that Kenya's call for African Members to the Rome Statute to pull out of the treaty will be ignored. Regardless of what African leaders have told the Vice-President, the AU will be unable to get Kenya its deferral. Regardless of the strong-arm tactic being employed against Rwanda and Burundi, Kenya may not get to appoint the next EAC Secretary-General. If we are not careful in our relations with the Peoples' Republic of China, the US, the UK and the EU may decide to take a hard-line stance towards Kenya's relations with influential world bodies sch as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the United Nations. We will be the laughing stock of not only Africa, but of the rest of the world if we do not correct course. We must all agree that regardless of the domestic political situation, we cannot have the President and Prime Minister, and their acolytes, reading from different scripts when it comes to diplomatic matters. Otherwise, we are no better than Somalia or Myanmar!