Sat, 26 Jan 2008 02:29:54 -0800 (PST)



KISUMU 25th January 2008
By Leo Odera Omolo

   A million question is being raised by Kenyans in connection with this week’s meditation effort by the Ugandan President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni whose utterances and hasty recognition of President Mwai Kibaki has already degenerated a lot of heat with the political circles here.

   Was the Ugandan head of state a genuine mediator or a partisan? Is he really a peace maker or a mischievous vilen servingelfish interests ? These are some of the contentious questions being asked by Kenyans who knew the Ugandan leader very, even since his old dark day of bush war against the likes of the late Gen TITO Okello and Apollo Miltone Obote.

   It is even worthwhile to remember that Yoweri Museveni was a fagutive who was had established a secret hideout in the lakeside City of Kisumu during the liberation war which was mounted byn the Ugandan exikles and Tanzaniuan regular forces against the despotic regime of the late Idi Amin Dada and thereafter the rebellion bush war against both Gen. Tito Okello and dr. Milton Obote regimes.

   Museveni and his Libyan counterpart Muammor Gadhafi have made a proposal which political pundits here have dismissed as half-hearted and deceitful. Museveni and Gadhafi shared the idea that President Kbaki and his arch-rival Raila Amolo Odinga should share power.

   Gadhafi went as far as dispatching his Minister for African Union Affairs ALI Tirku to Nairobi with the written proposals about the power sharing plan which were handed to the on-going mediation talks being chaired by the former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan with the assistance of the former Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa and the former South African first Lady Mrs Graca Mandela.

   The Libyan delegation also met the ODM leaders and the government side separately. And according to president Museveni’s Press A Secretary Joseph Tamale Mirundi President Kibaki had agreed to the power sharing idea, but set a condition that this could only be effected after a judicial commission of inquiry conducts investigations about the killings during the post-election violence.

   While briefing the newsmen about the achievement of Museveni mission in Nairobi Mirundi reiterated that the Ugandan leader was not in Kenya to favour any side of the political divide.

   Kenyans were, however, not amused. The fact that President Museveni is the only African head of state who was the first to congratulate President Kibaki for his election victory is a clear indication that the Uganda leader is not impartial over the issue. His government is the only one among the nations of the world which had hastly issued president Kibaki with recognition.

   Apart from not being neutral on the current political stalement in Kenya, Museveni record on democracy back home in Uganda is viewed by many Kenyans s being not sufficiently attractive enough to qualify him for any meaningful mediation effort.

   Museveni himself came to power in Uganda about 24 years ago under the barrels of the guns, and has since then hangs on it by way of conducting unorthodox and crude means during the stage managed elections after the other. His hands are not clean enough for one to be respected and a neutral mediate.

   The Kenyans communities living in western parts of the country, particularly the Luos have yet to forgave Museveni for what they called genocidal killings of their Luos kins in Northern Uganda under the guise of fighting the LRA rebel forces of Gen. Joseph Kony.

   Kenyans' suspicion about Museveni intention was seriously aggravated by the last year mysterious death of Gen Garaang the leader of the Southern Sudan Liberation Movement in a Ugandan military helicopter, which was provided by Museveni.

   Museveni is also viewed as a dictator who has persecuted the northerner Lwos and executed hundreds of youths in the region under the pretext of battling with the LRA rebels.

   Although Museveni came to Kenya under the auspices of the East African Community {ECA} the regional economic integration unit grouping Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi. He is the current chairman of the ECA summit, his mission remains highly suspicious to all and sundry . The Ugandan leader need to come out clean about the allegation of systematic killings of northerners in his country before could claim any right to be accounted as one of the noble and eminent African leaders.

   Three major Kenyan communities sharing the international Kenya-Uganda common boundaries have no confidence on Museveni and as such he is the least qualified person to take any mediation initiative to reconcile president Kibaki and the opposition leader Raila Amolo Odinga. The latter had actually beaten the former hands down in the December 27, 2008 presidential election results, and only sensible course open for resolving the current political upheaval in Kenya is a brief power sharing and eventually re-run presidential elections.

   Museveni’s proposal for the establishment of a judicial commission of inquiry into the hotly disputed results of presidential elections was met with deserving total rejection. The ODM leaders vehemently opposed the ideas, which they out rightly rejected, saying the post-election crisis had mutated into much bigger problem in the country.

   True to their rejection, the post-election dispute has went as far as touching the old wounds and sparking tribal animosity. It has rekindled some of the already healed problems of the past decades such as political assassinations of the likes of Tom Mboya, Gama Pio Pinto, J.M. Kariuki , Ronald Gideon Ngala, Robert John Ouko and other illustrious sons of Kenya whose untimely deaths were and still being suspected to have been caused by one particular community in Kenya. It also revived the old land clashes, which has witnessed the massive evictions of some members of one community from one area to the displaced people’s camps countrywide.

  President Kibaki's Ministers, however, have taken hard line dismissing the current political turmoil which has gripped the country resulting into the deaths of closed to 1,000 as a simple and laughing matter. Some of the cabinet members have gone on record insisting that their boss {Kibaki} was duly elected to his office. But the majority of Kenyans are nursing contrary beliefs that Raila beat the incumbent president by a large margin of close to one million votes but was shamelessly robbed of the victory through a well orchestrated rigging scam.