This is a six-part KSB series aka KSB-leaks on why the United States government (through Ambassador Michael Ranneberger) congratulated President Mwai Kibaki soon after election rigging in December 2007 and why the Bush Administration insisted that Raila Odinga, the winner, had to work with Kibaki, the thief who was installed President in the night!
Why did US-Imperialism Congratulate Kibaki after Raila Odinga’s Presidency was Stolen?
Immediately after elections were rigged in Kenya, the US Ambassador to Kenya, Michael Ranneberger, was confronted by journalists at Kenyatta International Conference Centre and asked what he thought about the results. To the utter shock of Kenyan viewers who were watching the event live on TV, Ranneberger accepted the results, congratulated Kibaki and asked the losers to go to court to seek redress. The Ambassador was speaking the “court language” of Samuel Kivuitu, Martha Karua, Moses Wetangula, Alfred Mutua, John Michuki et al., who repeated severally that ODM should “go to court” following the stealing of Raila’s Presidency.
After the Ranneberger comment, Rob McInturff, Spokesman of US State Department, released a statement that said in part:
“…we obviously congratulate the President on his election.” The statement added, “Again, we would call on the people of Kenya to accept the results of the election and to move forward with the democratic process”.452
The statement was posted at the department’s website but as opposition to the announcement of results began to build and as riots erupted across Kenya following the swearing in of President Mwai Kibaki at State House, the US State Department pulled down the congratulatory statement in a change of tact to replace it with a new one, which said:
“The Kenyan people exercised their right to vote on December 27 and turned out to vote in record numbers. The United States has concerns about irregularities in reporting the results, which should be resolved promptly through constitutional and legal remedies. We call on the Kenyan people to avoid violence. We urge all parties to restrain their supporters and reach out to each other to find a peaceful resolution in the interest of continuing to advance Kenya’s democracy and development. The United States is working with all parties to this end”.453
The press statement was released by Tom Casey, Deputy Spokesman at Washington DC on December 31, 2007, a day after Kibaki was sworn in as President. Ranneberger, the US Ambassador to Kenya, was at the KICC press briefing room during the crisis with tallying of results and thus he witnessed almost every critical point of the struggle between ODM agents/leaders and Kivuitu.
In fact, the fake results from Molo were announced in the presence of the Ambassador so the question that has to be asked and that needs a comprehensive answer is why the United States was quick to congratulate Kibaki despite massive evidence that election had been rigged. Was the United Sates privy to the rigging of elections in Kenya by giving PNU a go-ahead to manipulate the votes, announce the results and advise ODM to go to court, or did Ranneberger simply make a terrible mistake at the individual level by putting an official stamp on an election result that Kenyans believed was rigged and that was under clear dispute? Since the US State Department itself released a Statement congratulating Kibaki soon after the Ranneberger debacle, it is unlikely that the US Ambassador was mouthing his own confused policy on the rigged election. The Statement followed a ban on the release of an exit poll by the Republican Institute, a Washington think-tank, whose finding was that Raila Odinga would win the Presidency. Commenting on a paper presented to the US Policy committee on March 14, 2008, Michelle D. Gavin, Adjunct Fellow for Africa at the Council on Foreign Relations and former Senior US Senate Staffer wrote:
“At the same time, it is important to recognize that early in the crisis, the United States was suspect in the eyes of ODM supporters due to a series of events including the transmission of an early congratulatory message following the elections, the International Republican Institute’s decision not to release a disputed exit poll, and the decision of President Kibaki to make unilateral cabinet appointments shortly after meeting with Assistant Secretary of State Frazer”.454
These suspicions, that Michelle was alluding to, partly contributed to Jendayi Frazer’s inability to influence ODM leaders and to convince them to dance to the tune the United States government was singing — that ODM accept a “Government of National Unity” by dropping all other demands including the stepping down of Kibaki whom ODM constantly accused of having stolen election. Consequently, Frazer returned to Washington empty handed, just before the Koffi Annan option surfaced. My thesis is that the congratulatory message sent by the US government was based on the Bush Administration’s resistance to Raila Odinga rising to the all-powerful position of President of the Republic of Kenya because of reasons I have outlined below.
Supporting Kibaki represented U.S government’s Intelligence failure
I wish to argue that the US Ambassador made no mistake by congratulating Kibaki while the US State Department, which backed Ranneberger’s position, made no errors either. A decision must have been reached at the highest level in Washington that Raila would not be President of Kenya. The turnaround when the situation turned ugly came too late, when the damage had already been done. It must be remembered that after he took power in 1978 right up to the time Moi left State House in January 2003, the former dictator had either been making his way to power unopposed under the one-Party dictatorship or rigging elections then gaining recognition from Washington. In 1978, 1983 and 1988 general elections, Moi returned to power unopposed because he was the sole Presidential candidate on the ballot paper after converting the country into a one-Party dictatorship in 1982 with the help of Charles Njonjo (the best ally imperialist Britain has ever had in Kenya) and Mwai Kibaki, who seconded Njonjo’s motion in Parliament. The United States government endorsed all these elections and looked to the other way as Moi presided over a government that thrived on murder, intimidation of opponents, torture of innocent civilians, imprisonment of dissidents and forced exile in its dealings with the opposition that was clamoring for a return to political pluralism. In 1992, after the country reverted to multi-Party politics, Moi faced opposition candidates who presented themselves for Presidential elections but the former dictator used the State machine to rig himself back to power.455 He got the support of Western imperialism, (especially the United States) which recognized his government immediately.
When the second multi-Party election came by in 1997, Moi rigged himself back to power once again.456 The leading imperialist powers — Britain and the United States — recognized his government this time around then encouraged losers to accept the results.457 The reason was that Moi was delivering what imperialism wanted while at the same time keeping exploited Kenyans peaceful thereby creating an environment where exploitation of Kenya’s human and natural resources through various imperialist conduits could proceed without interruption. Imperialism trusted Moi, the devil it knew, and could not risk the angels in the opposition who were seeking to occupy State House. A common feature in all of these recognitions is that imperialism always used carefully worded phrases meant to recognize Moi while encouraging both the opposition and Kenyans to “accept the results.” In some instances, such as in 1992 and 1997, the opposition was consoled by imperialism to the effect that they needed to accept the results because they could “fight Moi in Parliament,”, now that Kenya had gone multi-Party. Part of the cajoling that was spear-headed by imperialistfunded civil society institutions and church groups included phrases in the direction of “The elections were generally free and fair although there were some irregularities which, collectively, might not have impacted greatly on the general outcome of the results.”458
The losers were then told what to do — fight Moi through the open democratic channels available and mobilize for the next elections in five years. This is the same line the US government attempted to take after the rigging of the December 2007 election, unaware that political consciousness among the masses of the people of Kenya had grown to an extent that the views of the US Ambassador to Kenya could be set aside if they were deemed irrelevant, inaccurate or out of touch with reality. In retrospect, it appears as though the US Ambassador to Kenya who was at KICC during the time the election was being rigged was there to await the announcement, recognize the results, call for their acceptance and support the strategy that losers should go to court. What is more? When the US government congratulated Kibaki, it was catastrophic because despite its intelligence capabilities, the US government did not know or understand the main stakes in the December 2007 elections. For Kenyans who voted for ODM, the agenda was to get the thieving Kikuyu ruling class from power and anybody who did not understand this agenda was simply out of touch with the thinking at the grassroots. Getting back to the point, why did the United States congratulate Kibaki when evidence existed that PNU rigged the elections through ECK before the local and international media, local and International election observers and, most importantly, before the Kenyan people?
Raila Odinga’s Stolen Presidency (pages: 307-310)
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About the Author
WikiLeaks was the work of a disaffected army private and an eccentric on-the-run Australian political radical, aided by a handful of anonymous volunteers.
The technology involved was very basic: servers and a thumb drive. Yet WikiLeaks has done large and enduring damage to the United States. It has put at risk the lives of U.S. allies and informants in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Middle East.
WikiLeaks is more like an improvised explosives device aimed at a high-ranking convoy. WikiLeaks did not require genius, but the people it kills are just as dead.
The future of cyber war is likely to be as asymmetric as the future of conventional war. While a “cyber Pearl Harbor” is a terrifying scenario, it’s also probably unrealistic: Ultra-sophisticated cyber attacks are likely to be launched by advanced economies rather than aimed against them. That’s because adversaries and enemies of Western countries will either lack the capability to launch Stuxnet style attacks or will be deterred by the threat of even more massive retaliation. (We’re talking to you, Beijing.)
But what those adversaries and enemies of Western countries will be able to do is launch localized, small-scale, non-existential attacks that inflict opportunistic damage, including to public relations.
It is said that the computer changes everything. Not so. The computer creates new battlefields, new modes of waging war. It creates new targets and opens new vulnerabilities. But the computer does not change the most fundamental reality of the international system: differentials in power and wealth exist between states, and are even more pronounced between state and non-state actors. Despite the nihilistic murderousness of al Qaeda, despite the apocalyptic aggression of Iran, and for that matter despite the adolescent recklessness of WikiLeaks, you still gotta like our cards better than theirs.
By David Frum