Sambaza: The hard-liners in the Kibaki clan

    Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2008 12:45:43 +0300
   

Three ministers and two of President Kibaki’s advisors have made a point of scuppering the various attempts at mediation to solve the  post-election conflict.
The Minister for Transport, John Michuki and his counterparts in finance, Amos Kimunya and justice Martha Karua, are the main people who advised President Mwai Kibaki to take a firm line in order to undermine international attempts at mediation. Two other people close to Kibaki adopted a similar stance: one of his old friends, Joe Wanjui, as well as the State House Permanent Secretary in charge of Strategy, Stanley Murage. This group has had individual meetings with Kibaki in the State House to advise him to reject all international intervention in the post-election conflict. They argue that this would be harmful to Kenya’s image, putting  the country on the same level as Burundi, Zimbabwe and the Ivory Coast or  other African countries that have had strong international involvement in  their internal conflicts.

For his part, the finance minister had no difficulty in persuading President Kibaki that Kenya did not have much need for European financial  aid. He argued that Kenya had succeeded in funding the majority of its budget without significant international aid these last few years. Michuki  and Karua gave the same arguments. In addition, they insisted that the Kenyan police forces were strong enough to contain the opposition demonstrations.  According to them, the demonstrators would in any case lose their steam after a few days of strong activity in the streets. They feel that Kibaki should push a three-pronged strategy: contain the street demonstrations, insist on local rather than international mediation in order to concede as little ground as possible to the opposition, and thirdly to launch an international advertising campaign after the crisis has calmed down. 

 - From Rose