Obama enemies’ bid to stain the audacity of hope

• A lawsuit charges that Senator Obama was born in Kenya and is thus disqualified from seeking the presidency
• Republican party running TV ad claiming Senator Obama neglects his half-brother, George Onyango Obama
• Viewers asked: “If Barack Obama cares so much about your family, why doesn’t he take care of his family first?”
• George Onyango Obama lives in the sprawling Huruma estate in Nairobi.

Fringe foes of Barack Obama are again turning to Kenya in what appears to be increasingly desperate attempts to discredit the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate.

The latest lines of attacks include a lawsuit charging that Senator Obama was born in Kenya and is thus disqualified from seeking the presidency on the grounds that he is not a US citizen.

In addition, the Texas state branch of the US Republican Party is running a television advert claiming that Senator Obama neglects his half-brother, George Onyango Obama, who lives in the sprawling Huruma estate.

Birth certificate

Mr Philip Berg, an attorney from the Philadelphia area and a supporter of Senator Hillary Clinton, contends in a suit filed last week in federal court that Mr Obama’s mother gave birth to him in Kenya and not in Hawaii, as the senator’s birth certificate indicates.

Mr Berg told the Nation on Monday that “a reliable source” in Kenya — whom he would not name — had indicated that Mr Obama was born in a maternity hospital in Mombasa on or around August 4, 1961 — the date listed on Mr Obama’s Hawaii birth certificate.

Mr Berg could supply no proof for his assertion that Ann Dunham, the senator’s mother, had travelled to Kenya with her husband, Barack Obama Snr, in an advanced stage of her pregnancy. She then delivered Barack Obama Jnr in Kenya and subsequently flew back to Hawaii to register her son’s birth, Mr Berg’s lawsuit claims.

The Obama campaign says that allegations that the senator’s birth certificate is not genuine are part of an effort to “smear” the candidate by making baseless accusations.

In the Texas Republican advert, viewers are asked: “If Barack Obama cares so much about your family, why doesn’t he take care of his family first?”

His own brother

The video then shows a photo of Senator Obama’s house in Chicago as well as the White House. “His own brother lives in this one,” the advert continues, showing a picture of George Onyango Obama’s house in Huruma.

The younger Obama, who was six months old when his father died in a 1982 car accident, has defended his half-brother against attacks by those seeking to depict Senator Obama as neglectful of his Kenya family.

But in reaction to one such story in a foreign medium on Monday, George said he was happy in Huruma and dismissed as a fabrication, claims that he lived on less than a dollar a month. “I do not live on less than a dollar a month. Life is good. I live with my cousin and niece in our family house in Huruma,’’ he told the Nation in an interview.

Like vultures to a carcass, the international press has been all over the younger Obama, raising new queries about the media ethics Western journalists usually purport to teach the developing countries.

“When the journalists come here, they do not want even the neighbours to be near, and if they find other journalists, they take him away to a posh hotel and return him later,” said a friend.