Guest Post: Why I Will Vote For An Uhuru Kenyatta-William Ruto Presidency at 6:00 am On Monday, 4th March 2013
This is Mr. Wanaruona’s Message to the Supporters (and Would-be Supporters) of the Jubilee Alliance Presidential and Deputy Presidential Candidates Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto
Image via Google Images
Let me first confess that I am one hundred percent partisan in relation to the presidential race in 2013. I unequivocally support the Uhuru-Ruto ticket. I have fundamental reasons for this support. The aim of this post is to share those reasons with fellow travellers—and also with would-be supporters of the Uhuru-Ruto ticket.
I feel I need to share those thoughts not because I underestimate the wisdom or resolve of registered voters who support the Uhuru-Ruto ticket—how can you underestimate the resolve of millions of voters who on their own volition presented themselves at registration centres to register themselves?—but because we are daily being bombarded with anti-Uhuru-Ruto propaganda, and indeed international intimidation. This propaganda and intimidation and warnings, targeted at the supporters of these two candidates, are aimed at weakening our resolve and weakening our faith in our good judgment.
We, therefore, need to face up to the forces arrayed against Kenyatta and Ruto.
You become acutely aware of those forces when you watch television, when you listen to the radio, when you read the newspapers, when you listen to people who oppose a Kenyatta-Ruto presidency. Let me give examples. There is a local TV station whose news anchors would invariably introduce news about opinion polls: “Hon Raila Odinga is the man to beat!” This was drummed into viewers over and over again—until “political analyst” Mutahi Ngunyi came up with his theory of the “tyranny of numbers,” claiming that the supporters of the Jubilee ticket had registered enough voters to win the elections. Then the voice of the anchors of this TV station became subdued.
There have been polls, especially from Infotrak, going over years, consistently showing Raila Odinga’s “unassailable” lead. Stories are repeated over and over again about the crimes against humanity charges against Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto at the International Criminal Court. Elaborations are often published about what particular charges these accused persons face. To paraphrase an English saying: Give a man a bad name—and hang him!
Then it is the stories of the dire consequences Kenya faces if people dare elect Kenyatta as president and Ruto as deputy president. Some of the more recent threats have come from Johnnie Carson, US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, from British High Commissioner Christian Turner, from French Ambassador Etienne de Poncins. Earlier veiled threats came from US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who came to Kenya primarily to make threats; and, of course, the threats have come from Kofi Annan, who imagines that the destiny of Kenya is in his hands—and certainly not in the hands of the millions of Kenyans whom he perceives as “benighted natives.”
“US restates stance on Uhuru and Ruto,” the Daily Nation’s front page headline (Friday, February 8, 2013) reads, supposedly to excite shivers of fear in benighted natives’ spines. “Choices have consequences, says US envoy,” reads the headline of the actual story at page 4. In other words, Kenyans will face consequences if they elect the pair who are facing crimes against humanity at the ICC. And the Nation does not leave the meaning of Carson’s words to guesswork. They get a scholar, who obviously has no sympathy for Uhuru or Ruto, to tell it as it is. And so the scholar explains that although US president Barack Obama had earlier given a “friendly” assurance that the US would accept any outcome of fair and free elections, “Obama was talking as the President and his speeches are regulated by certain restrictions. Mr. Carson doesn’t have these restrictions. It is diplomatically clear that the US realized there was a need to clarify the President’s message,” Prof. Maria Nzomo said. (Saturday Nation, February 9, 2013)
Kenya, the professor warns, is facing serious economic restrictions, like those slapped on Mugabe’s Zimbabwe and Omar al-Bashir’s Sudan if Uhuru and Ruto are elected. And so-called civil society operatives (really mercenaries seeking money from Western donors) and Raila Odinga partisans have started to shout themselves hoarse about how Kenya is staring economic sanctions in the face with a possible (probable) election of the Uhuruto duo.
We are going to continue being bombarded with these frightening scenarios. And polls showing Odinga’s unassailable lead. And the opinions of “communication analysts” contrasting Odinga’s perfected, kingly, convincing body language in personal presentation, with the poor performance of his opponents. And into the mix will be thrown court cases initiated by “civil society” types to bar Uhuru and Ruto from running for president because of their alleged integrity issues.
And yet in spite of all these things, I have affirmed that if God takes care of me until polling day, I will walk to my polling station at 6:00 am and with a clear conscience vote for Uhuru and Ruto.
Let me tell you why.
The most fundamental reason is that the Western powers are doing a great injustice—the equivalent of their imposition of slavery on Africa in the seventeenth century, the equivalent of their imposition of the “civilizing mission” on African peoples in the late nineteenth century using mass murder committed with fire arms and the Maxim gun, despoliation of planted farms, and seizure of livestock—by trying to force millions of voters not to vote for their preferred candidates, but instead to vote for the preferred candidate of the NATO powers. It is William Ruto who challenged the Western men of power to clearly and unequivocally indicate who they wished Kenyans to vote for. In the current presidential field of candidates, it is obvious that the two top contenders are Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga. What the NATO Imperialists are, therefore, telling us is: do not vote for Uhuru; vote for Odinga. Odinga is the NATO Imperialists’ Knight in Shining Armor. The Imperialists are doing what they have been doing to Africa since earliest contact between white and black in the fifteenth-sixteenth centuries: determining what is good and proper for Africans, abrogating the free will and right to self determination for the black man—in a word, denying the right to sovereignty of black peoples.
It has nothing to do with justice or fighting impunity. It only has something to do with racial contempt and the white impulse to control. How can it have anything to do with justice when the greatest crimes against humanity have been committed by the same people who are now arrogating to themselves the right to judge us? During the slave trade championed by the British, Africa suffered great atrocities and lost 15 million souls over 4 centuries. More recently, in the 1950s, Britain visited terror and murder and torture and crimes against humanity upon the Mau Mau. In 2005 an American historian Caroline Elkins documented the unspeakable crimes—castrations, insertion of broken bottles in women’s birth canals, mauling to death of people by British dogs, displacement of populations, rape and mass murder—in her book Britain’s Gulag: The Brutal End of Empire in Kenya. And as recently as 2011, the NATO powers participated in the murder of tens of thousands of civilians in Libya, and oversaw unspeakable atrocities done against the human dignity of the Libyan leader Muammar al Gaddafi as he was murdered by NATO lackeys. I have it on impeccable authority (the Guardian newspaper and this CBS News clip) that Hillary Clinton joked before TV cameras about the inhumane treatment Gaddafi underwent.
And then you hear Christian Turner yapping about how the British never have contact with people indicted by the ICC! This same Turner—these people are so racially arrogant they’ve lost a sense of irony—is defending his government for refusing to pay reparations to Mau Mau victims of British crimes against humanity in spite of the fact that a British court has acknowledged such crimes were committed and Britain should accept responsibility!
Let us state it in a nut shell: these NATO imperialists have no moral right to judge us or to tell us what to do.
Am I by any chance saying that I do not acknowledge that terrible crimes were committed in 2007/2008 or—God forbid!—that I do no care that they were committed and am not revolted by those crimes? No. I acknowledge the ugliness of the crimes, and I am revolted. But I do not see how the ICC process or for that matter NATO imperialist bullying will help us to address our ugly past and seek to heal the wounds. And I am convinced the Western countries in fact do not give a damn about justice and about healing the wounds. If they had been impartial, compassionate arbiters, they would have assisted us to really interrogate in a comprehensive manner what actually happened in 2007/2008, rather than encouraging selective identification of alleged wrong doers. If they had done so, they would have realized that the violence of 2007/2008 was not simple post-election violence, but the culmination of a political campaign carried out on an ideology of hate against a particular community; the slogan did really exist: “Forty-one [tribes] against one.” And then after the election results were announced, one political party called upon its supporters to make the country ungovernable. How do you make a country ungovernable? By uprooting the railway, by erecting burning tyre roadblocks and getting passengers travelling in buses to ethnically identify themselves, with all the horrendous consequences for passengers belonging to the wrong tribes.
Stark Choices
We have stark choices which we must define for ourselves. To my understanding, we either choose a presidency that will protect our national sovereignty than a presidency dictated to us by the NATO Imperialists. In the first instance, we’ll have to face threats of economic sanctions. These threats may or may not be carried out. But by accepting this choice we will have sent a clear message that our minimum demand from the rest of the world is to be allowed to protect our right to self-determination. We must be ready to face any pain that goes with the need to protect the basic right of self-determination. But we must warn the NATO imperialists that if they go through with their policy of intimidating the people of Kenya, there will be consequences for them also—including a backlash of resentment that could turn generations of Kenyans against the West. Let the West also realize that the present world is also a plural world—with considerable economic power devolved to new economies in China, India, Brazil and South Africa. India has already weighed in on the current debate—and has given assurances that India will work with any presidential team duly elected by Kenyans. Similarly, the Foreign Ministers of all the East African countries—Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi and Rwanda—have asked the Western powers to keep their hands off Kenya (Sunday Nation, February 17, 2013).
The other choice is a choice to be dreaded by any self-respecting Kenyan who believes that every nation has the God-given right to self-determination. The NATO Imperialists, as I have already said, have adopted Odinga as their Knight in Shining Armor. Let me give only one example: after the horrors of the so-called post-election violence in Kenya, without interrogating his role in the breakdown of civil order although it was universal knowledge that his party had called supporters to make the country ungovernable (after the disputed election results), Odinga was invited by the Western powers to go and mediate in the electoral dispute in the Ivory Coast!
So if we elect Odinga he’ll save us from Western economic sanctions. But at what price? At the price of facilitating the entrenchment of the NATO Imperialists in our country. Believe you me, before two years are over, the NATO Imperialists will be dictating Kenya’s policy. They’ll be running the Kenyan state. They’ll work hard to ensure that Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto are imprisoned on trumped up charges. The lowliest American soldier is not subject to ICC jurisdiction; but our respected leaders are, including the very son of our revered Founding Father Mzee Jomo Kenyatta. They’ll ensure that this country will never again chart an independent course like the one charted under President Mwai Kibaki. Local banks competing with Barclays will be smothered. China will be shut out of beneficial contracts with the Kenya government. Indigenous enterprise will be smothered. Kenya’s Independence bought with thousands of litres of Kenyan blood will be lost. We will lose our sovereignty and our God-given right to self-determination.
I have made my choice: I’ll vote for self-determination and Independence; I’ll vote for the Uhuru-Ruto presidential ticket. I’ll be ready to face any consequences. I’ll want to be a worthy son of our fathers who fought for Independence and faced down the White Rage.
Kenyatta and Ruto have shown moral courage and leadership
The coming together of Kenyatta and Ruto was an act of great moral courage. Their respective communities had fought one another at several periods. They have assured us, over and over again, that Kenyan communities will never again shed blood over political contests. Why does any self-proclaimed well wisher want to give their venture of reconciliation and peace building a chance? Shouldn’t the so-called International community be encouraging the two leaders to extricate Kenya from the unfortunate legacy of communal feuding and conflict?
Their work for reconciliation is not a legal acceptance of guilt. The International Criminal Court has done a very shoddy job legally. The most senior judge, Justice Peter Kaul, gave his dissenting view against committing the suspects to trial. We all saw Kenyatta appear in the Pre-Trial Chamber as his own witness and demolish the case against him; and subsequent to that appearance, his Defence counsel Steven Kay, QC, has publicly expressed his opinion that the judgement of the Pre-Trial Chamber committing Uhuru Kenyatta to trial was rigged; recently, Witness 4, relied on in confirming charges against Kenyatta, has confessed to lying and has been withdrawn. So let that Talking Head of the ICC, Makau Mutua, stop intimidating us about how unstoppable the ICC is, as if it was a divine force. There’s nothing divine about the ICC, and the Kenya cases may yet so discredit this white court that African countries collectively desert it so that it may deservedly face an ignominious collapse.
Do the only thing in your power to save Kenya’s Independence: Vote Uhuruto!
I can’t explore all the issues in one blog posting. I may look at other issues in subsequent postings. But I believe I have made my position clear. I am only an ordinary voter, and I’ll do the only thing in my power. In spite of all the threats and the propaganda, I’ll avail myself at my polling station at the earliest possible moment—6:00 am—and vote for Kenyatta and Ruto in the morning of Monday, 4 March 2013.
Don’t worry about the polls. Don’t think about the numbers of other voters supporting our candidates; simply do what only you can do: use your vote and vote for Kenyatta and Ruto.
God bless.
Wanaruona Anarumenya
I have made my choice: I’ll vote for self-determination and Independence; I’ll vote for the Uhuru-Ruto presidential ticket. I’ll be ready to face any consequences. I’ll want to be a worthy son of our fathers who fought for Independence and faced down the White Rage.
well put.
Hon. Uhuru Kenyatta gather courage many people especially those who value human diginity are behind you. We shall continue praying for you so as God’s favor may be on your side. Your manifesto so far is the best.
Chairman of Kenyans Springfield Missouri, USA
Rev. Dr. Gerald Mbogo – Kirinyaga
I think this is just long rhetoric where at the end there’s still nothing to convince someone who’s undecided.
Except Uhuru’s father was staunchly anti-maumau and is directly responsible for most of the problems facing the country today. So, yea not the best example for expressing moral outrage….
Oh, and Ruto is a closeted fascist…
UhuRuto is what I need…I’ll vote for that govnt…those yapping abt Kenyatta being a bad person..where was ur greatgrandfather? Was he not at home hiding and telling his many wives..let’s hope kenyatta wins the fight for us…me n ma grandma r for Kenyatta..if it weren’t for his father she’d be long dead of carrying stones for mkoloni…