Foreign policy is not just President Kibaki’s thing
For a man of his fugitive status, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir should be very pleased with himself after pulling off a diplomatic coup against Kenya this past week.
In a world increasingly embracing international justice, a chance to slap sanctions on anybody never comes so easily to “most wanted” men like Mr al-Bashir any more.
But, again, this is President Mwai Kibaki’s Kenya we are talking about here. The President’s admirers love to depict his decision to look East (read China) as a stroke of diplomatic genius.
They cite construction works on a 47-km stretch along Thika Road and the paper work on the proposed Lamu port as the benefits of an inspired foreign policy.
What they conveniently forget to say is that China has a fairly promiscuous foreign policy which welcomes just about everyone with a major contract or oil to dish out on board.
Good relations with China are therefore a poor measure of any government’s performance in foreign policy.
Not that the Kibaki administration has not had more challenging foreign policy issues to address. Only that it has come short on each occasion. Clearly, foreign policy is not President Kibaki’s thing.
A common script has been for him to send out one of his more hawkish ministers to run around like a headless chicken on a diplomatic mission that has often ended up embarrassing everybody.
And the plot hardly ever ends without Kenya exporting its comical coalition wars or local politics to the international stage.
Remember the robust display of Kenyan diplomacy early this year during which PNU operatives hosted Laurent Gbagbo’s emissaries in Nairobi while Prime Minister Raila Odinga was in Cote d’Ivoire to mediate the conflict there as an African Union envoy?
What about the shuttle diplomacy which saw Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka fly into a flurry of rejections of Kenya’s request to have the International Criminal Court defer the crimes against humanity charges facing the so-called Ocampo Six?
Or the tempest in government over a security deal clinched during the Prime Minister’s recent tour of Israel?
Sit back, this Sudan debacle will go exactly according to script as well.
The President’s people have already shown their willingness to worship at al-Bashir’s feet.
You can safely bet that the Prime Minister’s people will say they were not consulted.
