The United States Government is opposed to a Raila Odinga-Presidency and it apparently wants President Uhuru Kenyatta to remain in power, an American author has stated.In an article on the New York Review of Books, Author Helen Epstein articulated how the American government played an active role in ensuring the August elections went in favour of President Kenyatta.
A far more troubling possibility is that the US wants Kenyatta to remain in power, at the expense of democracy, she opined in the piece titled The Election and the Cover-up.
According to the American writer, the US government was rooting for Uhuru as he had aligned the country's military to the US policy.
"Uhuru has aligned Kenya with US policy by, for example, deploying Kenyan forces in AMISOM, the US and the UK-supported African Union peacekeeping mission in Somalia," she stated.
A move that Raila Odinga was greatly opposed to and had even vowed to withdraw the troops within 90 days of his presidency if elected.
"NASA officials point out that the AMISOM deployment has provoked terrorist attacks on a Nairobi shopping mall and a university, killing hundreds and devastating Kenya's tourism industry," Ms Epstein added.
Raila's position in regional politics was also a huge factor as to why the US was against his bid for the presidency.
"Odinga is also close to South Sudan's beleaguered opposition and might help force the US-backed government into negotiations. This is something the Obama administration seems not to have wanted, and the Trump administration seems not to either," she conveyed.
Ms Epstein read suspicion in how Former US Secretary of State John Kerry who was leading the Kenya Elections Observers Group, was quick to endorse the election results.
"Another rigged election in Africa is not news. But that US election observers were so quick to endorse it is shocking. Perhaps they believed that wrapping the election up quickly would prevent violence," she added.
She further criticized Kerry's commendation of how the electoral body had conducted the polls stating that IEBC has done an extraordinary job to ensure that Kenya has a free, fair and credible poll.
Kerry went further to urge the Opposition to accept the results and move on. Sentiments that made Kenyans attack him online.
"If the observers think urging Odinga to move on will avoid a rerun of 2007, they are likely mistaken. The Bush White House's rush to congratulate Odinga's rival, Mwai Kibaki,after the rigged 2007 election helped fuel the violence that followed," Ms Epstein maintained.
Helen Epstein is an American writer having worked on 10 books of literary nonfiction. They include the groundbreaking Children of the Holocaust, one of the first books to examine the intergenerational transmission of trauma; the biography Joe Papp: An American Life; and the memoir;Where She Came From: A Daughter's Search for Her Mother's History.
All were named New York Times;Notable Books of the Year. Her books are rigorously documented but in their blend of biography, autobiography and history, the private domain and the public record, they read like novels.
