What Uhuru, Trump will likely discuss during White House visit
What you need to know:
One of the areas that America has been a beacon for some us who have been fighting for so long so that our voices can be heard is the freedom of the press.
The current President of the United States is unfortunately not being a very good model in that regard.
At the base of genuine democracy there has to be freedom of the press.
I saw in the news the other day that our President is going to the United States and will have discussions with President Trump at the White House. This made me remember that America and Kenya have always had very cordial relations I suppose for strategic reasons. In fact among the countries the drafters of our 2010 Constitution benchmarked with, America was on top of the list. One has just to look at the shape of governance structures that were recommended therein and the American input is quite obvious.
DEMOCRATIC CULTURE
Our evolution towards building a truly democratic culture has no doubt been influenced a lot by the American democratic thinking. I wonder what the two Presidents will talk about when they get together. No doubt they will touch on many things. Luckily, they are not meeting for the first time. Our President has been invited twice to the G7 meetings and so they know each other. They both have different issues that they are dealing with in their respective countries and I am sure some of that may come up in their discussions.
INTERESTING NEWS
I assume that an issue like what is going on about our war on corruption, the fight against Al Shabaab and such like matters will come up. Whether we like it or not those super powers will always be relevant when it comes to how we organise our affairs perhaps because of the way we started off after independence. Incidentally, we have also been told that the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is visiting next week or thereabouts.
This is interesting news because since independence we have always been close to these Western types but I cannot remember a time we had this kind of interaction between ourselves, America and the UK within such a short time. May be after China came into our horizon some things have changed.
GOOD MODEL
As I was saying earlier, there have been a lot of things we Kenyans have admired and probably “copied” from the American system be it politics, education, economic operations, cultural outputs and many more.
One of the areas that America has been a beacon for some us who have been fighting for so long so that our voices can be heard is the freedom of the press. The current President of the United States is unfortunately not being a very good model in that regard.
PRESS FREEDOM
As long as he keeps labelling press operations of major media networks like CNN as “fake news” whenever they report on objective issues touching on him, Trump is not good role modelling. At the base of genuine democracy there has to be freedom of the press.
Fr Wamugunda is dean of students at the University of Nairobi. [email protected]
