Why Kenyans Should Keep An Eye On The Trump Presidency

Despite the major changes inaugurated by the 2010 Constitution, the Kenyan Presidency still sits comfortably and unchallenged at the pinnacle of our politics. It is propped up by many of the norms that developed in the last half-century, especially during the dictatorships of Jomo Kenyatta and Daniel Arap Moi. Over the period, many looked to the United States for a model of how a powerful Presidency could be constrained. However, since last year, goings on over there have had a distinctly familiar ring.

During his unorthodox campaign, Donald Trump, who is to be inaugurated as President of the United States this Friday, violated with almost total impunity many of the norms, if not laws, that have served to keep American politicians in check for decades and centuries. "I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters," he memorably described it.

“The American presidency has never been at the whims of an authoritarian personality like Donald Trump,” John Dean, White House counsel under President Richard Nixon from 1970 to 1973, told McKay Coppins of The Atlantic. “He is going to test our democracy as it has never been tested.”

Geoffrey M. Hodgson, Research Professor in the University of Hertfordshire, defines institutions as “systems of established and prevalent social rules that structure social interactions. Language, money, law, systems of weights and measures, table manners, and firms (and other organizations) are thus all institutions.” In their insightful book, Why Nations Fail, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, describe institutions as simply the rules, written and unwritten, that influence how systems work.

While the language may be slightly different, the intent is essentially the same. Institutions are about the way things work rather than merely a set of formal organizations or even formalized rules.

The United States system is a case in point. Americans love to hold up their constitution as the ultimate defense against tyranny. But while the formal rules regarding governance it proposes are an important bulwark, arguably American democracy is built on a foundation of social norms and expectations much more so than formal rules.

For example, the two-term limit for presidents was not part of the Constitution. Rather, it sprang from George Washington’s decision not to run for a third term and held for the better part of a century and a half until Franklyn Roosevelt violated it in 1940. In fact, it was not until 1951 that the US constitution via the Twenty-Second Amendment finally imposed term limits. Similarly, the fundamental role the Supreme Court plays in assessing the constitutionality of legislation is not expressly provided for in the Constitution either.

It is for this reason that Trump poses such a big threat to American democracy. His refusal to release his tax returns, for example, bucks a near-5 decade old practice observed by all major party candidates which is designed as a measure to enhance transparency. The multiple conflicts of interest he carries into the White House and his statements about similarly flash the finger at years So does his post-election lack of moderation and disdain for “political correctness”. Yet the latter has been crucial in helping to keep the ugliness of overt racism, xenophobia and bullying out of mainstream American politics. Trump’s demeanor during and after the election have however legitimized conduct previously considered beyond the pale.

Donald Trump already has changed America, and not necessarily for the better. In the next four years, he will continue to affect not just the US, but also attitudes towards it in countries across the globe. The question is whether he will fashion it in his own rather grotesque image or whether the country’s institution will prove resilient and tough enough to contain him. In either case, there will be valuable lessons to be learnt from the continuing American "experiment in democracy". For Kenyans, struggling to implement our own democratic system of governance and to develop the social norms and attitudes that will underpin it, it would be wise to pay close attention.

Getting The Cable Guy

The recent arrest of WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, in the UK must be viewed with extreme prejudice, given the shenanigans surrounding the issuing of the arrest warrant against him and the attempts by Western governments, led by the US, to cripple his organisation.

The West has pulled all the stops in its attempt to get Assange and knock out Wikileaks. The fact that he is yet to be accused of violating any laws has not stopped governments trying to find, or perhaps manufacture, a reason to detain him. In his home country, Australia, Prime Minister Julia Gillard has said that the Australia Federal Police were going through ''thorough processes'' to find any laws Assange may have broken. The Attorney-General has intimated that Assange might not be welcome back if convicted over the leaks, while at the same time declaring that Australia was providing ''every assistance'' to US authorities in their investigation. According to The Age, one of Australia's leading newspapers, government authorities around the world are working overtime to determine whether Assange could be charged with a crime related to the leaks.

Assange’s arrest is based on a warrant issued by a Swedish prosecutor. He is wanted for questioning in Sweden for what his solicitor has called “sex by surprise.” Interestingly, though, at the same time the Swedes were issuing arrest warrants claiming they could not find him, news organisations such as Al Jazeera had no problems locating him for on air interviews.

According to Bjorn Hurtig, Assange's Stockholm-based lawyer, the warrant itself is based on "exaggerated grounds." The accusations, which Assange denies, apparently stem from a malfunctioning condom and a refusal to wear one during a separate encounter. A report on the Reuters website says the two women involved were not initially looking to file charges but rather to track him down and persuade him to get tested for an STD.

Citing several people in contact with Assange's entourage at the time, some of whom have since fallen out with him, the report says that it was only after the women had trouble finding Assange -he had turned off his cellphone out of concern his enemies might trace him- that they turned to the police. An initial arrest warrant on rape and molestation charges issued mid-August by an on-call prosecutor was dropped a day later by another prosecutor and the charges later reinstated by a third, Marianne Ny, who, according to AOL News, has been active in proposed reforms of Swedish rape laws, including a radical redefinition of consent.

The women’s lawyer, Claes Borgstrom confirmed to reporters at the time that his clients' allegations against Assange related to efforts he made to have sex with them without wearing condoms, and his subsequent reluctance to be tested for sexually transmitted diseases. In fact, following Assange’s arrest, a lawyer representing the Swedish government laid out for a British judge four specific charges of sexual misconduct but the word "rape" was not part of the charges which cited "unlawful coercion" and Assange's alleged reluctance to use condoms. A spokeswoman for Swedish prosecutors has also affirmed that at the moment Assange is not formally charged in Sweden, but is only wanted for questioning.

The Swedes also seemed determined to make exceptions for Assange. According to the Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet, which in August hired Assange to contribute bimonthly columns on politics and freedom of expression, last year a couple of Irishmen aboard a sea vessel were caught on tape beating a Swede, Christer Skoog, unconcious and then stomping on his head. However, despite the assault having taken place in Swedish waters, having the surveillance tape, and witnesses recognising and identifying both assailants, Sweden's public prosecutor decided to drop the case. Asked why he had not sought their extradition from Ireland, prosecutor Thomas Holst declared: “If we were to try to go after all the people who committed less serious crimes, we would have a lot to do.”

According to the Reuters report, however, the most serious accusation Swedish prosecutors made against him in a statement on their website is that he committed "rape, less serious crime" -- the least serious of three levels of rape charges that are on the statute books in Sweden. Conviction carries a maximum four year jail sentence and a minimum of less than two years, depending upon the circumstances. According to Assange's London lawyer, Mark Stephens, punishment could also be as light as a fine of 5,000 kronor or about $715. Despite this, it seems, however, that the Swedes have decided the accusations against Assange are of a sufficiently serious nature to justify an international arrest warrant.

Western governments have not been above using dirty tricks get to Assange and to knock out his website. After cyber attacks caused it to be dropped by its server, the US government leaned on US corporations to get them to stop servicing the now rogue site. According to TIME magazine, thanks in part to an effort by the office of Senator Joe Lieberman, who heads the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Wikileaks has been pushed off a series of servers in the US. PayPal, the online money transfer service, cut off Wikileaks after being requested to do so by the US State Department. Mastercard and Visa quickly followed, seriously threatening the operations of Wikileaks, which depends on donations from supporters.

In Europe, French Industry Minister Eric Besson called for the site to be banned from French servers and the Swiss postal system shut down Assange's bank account, stripping him of yet another key fundraising tool. Postfinance, the financial arm of Swiss Post, apparently only recently discovered that Assange had “provided false information regarding his place of residence during the account opening process,” because he used his lawyer's address in Switzerland for his correspondence with the bank.

Much of the criticism of Wikileaks revolves around the notion that releasing such information risks lives, exposing or compromising the identities of informants, spies, human rights activists, journalists and dissidents. According to former US House Speaker, Newt Gingrich, “Julian Assange is engaged in warfare,” and his actions are “information terrorism, which leads to people getting killed.” US state department legal adviser Harold Koh has said that Wikileaks' document dump "could place at risk the lives of countless innocent individuals" as well as "ongoing military operations."

However, following the release of another haul of US defence department documents relating to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in August, Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell told the Washington Post: "We have yet to see any harm come to anyone in Afghanistan that we can directly tie to exposure in the Wikileaks documents." The fact is Wikileaks had already redacted names and other information in the Iraq War logs. And though criticized for not redacting names in the Afghanistan files, the site had asked the government for help in doing exactly that but the government declined.

Daniel Ellsberg, the former military analyst who in 1971 released the Pentagon Papers which detailed US government lies and cover-ups in the Vietnam War, is sceptical of whether the government really believes that lives are at stake. He told the BBC's World Today programme that US officials made that same argument every time there was a potentially embarrassing leak. "The same charges were made against the Pentagon Papers and turned out to be quite invalid."

Ellsberg is now fronting a group of ex-intelligence officers from the CIA, FBI and the British Government that has written an open letter of support for Assange and WikiLeaks. He has previously said that labelling the Pentagon Papers leak as 'good' whilst the Cablegate leaks are 'bad' makes no sense. "That's just a cover for people who don't want to admit that they oppose any and all exposure of even the most misguided, secretive foreign policy. The truth is that EVERY attack now made on Wikileaks and Julian Assange was made against me and the release of the Pentagon Papers at the time."

Others are also rallying to Wikileaks’ defence including a clandestine group of internet vigilantes, known only as Anonymous and operating under the banner Operation Payback, which has launched cyber attacks against the websites of the companies that have yanked their support for WikiLeaks, temporarily taking some of them down. “At stake is not just the future of WikiLeaks, the protesters seem to believe, but freedom on the net in general — a principle worth defending by any means possible, however dubious,” writes Ray Singel in an article published by the online tech magazine, Wired.com.

Indecision 2009

Kenya Threatens Visa Ban on US Officials Blocking Healthcare Reform

Rumble in the Jungle

A Crying Shame

Tales of hypocrisy in government are nothing new. Kenyan politicians seem to have crafted it into an art. But, I humbly submit, they don’t hold a candle to their counterparts in the West. For example, you may recall American howls of protest when captured soldier Bowe Bergdahl appeared in what the US military described as a Taliban propaganda video. "They are exploiting the soldier in violation of international law," spokeswoman Lt. Cmdr. Christine Sidenstricker said, apparently unaware of the irony that the US itself had for years ignored “international law” in its treatment of Taliban and Al Qaeda prisoners. However, the latest furore over the early release of alleged Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi and his heroic reception in Libya surely takes the biscuit.

In 2002, following trial in a Scottish Court sitting at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands, Al-Megrahi was convicted of planting the bomb that exploded aboard Pan Am Flight 103 as it overflew the Scottish town of Lockerbie, killing 270 people. His appeal against the conviction was rejected on technical grounds. After serving more than nine years of his life sentence, he was released on compassionate grounds after being diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer, with doctors giving him less than a month to live. Megrahi always protested his innocence and following the rejection of his appeal, Professor Hans Köchler, one of five UN observers appointed by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, condemned the proceedings as a politically motivated "show trial" and "a spectacular miscarriage of justice". None other than Lord Fraser of Carmyllie, who drew up the 1991 indictment against the two accused Libyans and issued warrants for their arrest, has cast doubt upon the reliability of the main prosecution witness, Tony Gauci. Lord Fraser criticised the Maltese shopkeeper for being "not quite the full shilling" and an "apple short of a picnic". Robert Black QC, professor of law at Edinburgh University, who played a key role in convincing Libya to hand over al-Megrahi and his co-defendant, al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah for trial, believes that al-Megrahi should never have been found guilty. And in 2007, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) which had been looking into the case since September 2003, determined that "a miscarriage of justice may have occurred"

In fact, evidence points to the framing of Libya as a scapegoat for the bombing. In 2005, a retired senior Scottish police chief gave defence lawyers a signed statement, which confirmed the claims made in 2003 by a former CIA agent that his CIA bosses actually wrote the script to incriminate Libya. He accused American intelligence agents of planting a circuit board fragment, identified as part of a sophisticated explosive timing device made by Swiss firm Mebo and only supplied to Libya and the East German Stasi. In December 2008, the UK’s Daily Mail reported that new forensic analysis on the fragment found no trace of explosive residue. A source close to the investigation summed it thus: ‘The only piece of forensic evidence in the chain that pointed to Libyan guilt has never been near the seat of an explosion.’

In an interview with Al Jazeera, Tam Dalyell, the former Labour MP who played a crucial role in organising the trial at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands, declared that Libya had nothing to do with the bombing. He accused Iran of contracting the Popoular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC) to carry out the atrocity, in retaliation for the downing of an Iranian civilian airliner by a US Navy warship.

On July 3, 1988 Iran Air Flight 655 was shot down by the U.S.S. Vincennes killing all 290 passengers and crew as the plane flew over the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf. In spite of the fact that the US ship was at the time of the shooting operating illegally in Iranian territorial waters, the plane was flying within an internationally recognised air corridor, and the US military issuing a statement holding the crew accountable for the shooting, the US refused to apologize and to accept responsibility and liability for the incident. At a news conference on 2 August 1988, then-Vice President George H. W. Bush declared, "I will never apologize for the United States of America — I don't care what the facts are". There was nothing in the way of punishment for the crew of the Vincennes. On the contrary, they were awarded combat-action ribbons. The air warfare coordinator on board, Lt. Cmdr. Scott Lustig, received a commendation medal for his ability to "quickly and precisely complete the firing procedure"--the same firing procedure that shot down Flight 655. In February 1996 the US agreed to pay Iran US$ 61.8 million in compensation ($300,000 per wage-earning victim, $150,000 per non-wage-earner) for the 248 Iranians killed in the shootdown in a successful bid to discontinue a case brought by Iran in 1989 before in the International Court of Justice. This, by the way, pales in comparison with the US$10 million per family compensation paid out by Libya over the Lockerbie incident. Effectively the family of each adult victim on board Pan Am 103 received 33 times the equivalent sum of the family of each victim on Flight 655, whilst each child or senior citizen on Flight 103 got 66 times the amount received by the families of their counterparts on Flight 655.

In an article published in The Guardian, John Ashton and Ian Ferguson, authors of Cover-up of Convenience - the Hidden Scandal of Lockerbie, claim that according to the CIA, within days of the downing of Flight 655, Iran had hired the Syrian-based PFLP-GC to avenge the incident. The group had close ties to the Lebanese Islamic radicals Hizbullah and in the early 1970s specialised in bombing airliners. The group manufactured at least five barometric bombs designed to blow up aircraft, two - possibly more - of which were built into Toshiba radio-cassette players. Six weeks before Lockerbie, police raided the PFLP-GC gang and found one of the Toshiba bombs. Three of the other bombs were recovered four months after Lockerbie, but the second Toshiba was never found. However in the wreckage of Pan Am 103 fragments of the suitcase believed to have contained the bomb were recovered, together with parts and pieces of circuit board identified as part of a Toshiba Bombeat radio cassette player. In fact, a week before, the US state department had circulated a specific warning that radical Palestinians were planning to attack a Pan Am target in Europe.

So what interest did the CIA have in covering all this up? Well, according to Ashton and Ferguson, western intelligence sources claim the Lockerbie bomb was planted in the luggage of Khalid Jaafar, a Lebanese-American mule in a heroin trafficking operation. Apparently, elements within the CIA had been allowing Middle Eastern dealers to ship drugs to America in return for help in locating and releasing US hostages. Following the bombing, there were reports that large quantities of what appeared to be heroin had been found: one on a Lockerbie golf course and the other in a suitcase discovered by a farmer a couple of miles to the east. It appears that by allowing suitcases containing heroin to bypass security procedures, the CIA gifted the traffickers' terrorist friends a foolproof means of getting the bomb on the plane. (The farmer was never interviewed by police and in a 1992 reply to a query by Dalyell, Lord Fraser, stated that no drugs had been found, save for a small quantity of cannabis.)

Also, among the Lockerbie victims was a party of US intelligence specialists, led by Major Charles McKee returning from an aborted hostage-rescue mission in Lebanon. A variety of sources have claimed that McKee, who was fiercely anti-drugs, got wind of the CIA's deals and was returning to Washington to blow the whistle. A few months after Lockerbie, reports emerged from Lebanon that McKee's travel plans had been leaked to the bombers. The implication was that Flight 103 was targeted, in part, because he was on board.

To sum it all up, in an effort to cover up its complicity, the West conspired to put an innocent man in jail, extorted US$2.7 billion (over Kshs. 200 billion) from his country under the guise of compensation and now sheds crocodile tears over his release. The US government that awarded medals to the killers of 290 innocent Iranians now condemns the celebrations over the release of an innocent Libyan. And countries that have for a long time proclaimed themselves paragons of virtue have turned out to be no better than the third world tyrannies they are so fond of criticizing. Perhaps they should first consider removing the log from their eye.

PS

It now turns out that Al Megrahi's release was itself part of a deal between the UK and Libya so the former could access the latter's oil supplies. The rape of Tripoli continues...

Pollar Eclipse

Obama's No-Fly Policy

Preaching Water, Drinking Wine

EUconomic Recovery

The EU has a population of close to 500 million and, taken as a single economy, is the largest in the world with a GDP of $19 trillion. It is also the largest exporter of goods, the second largest importer, and the biggest trading partner to several large countries such as India, and China. Given all that, it is surprising that it's major contribution to resolving the current global economic downturn consists chiefly of criticising US policy. 

Last week Mirek Topolanek, who is running the EU presidency despite the collapse of his government in the Czech Republic, described Barack Obama's spending proposals as the "road to hell." Now, I am no lover of President Obama's pork-laden, anti-trade, nationalisation in the guise of stimulus packages and bailouts. Our own experience in Kenya amply demonstrates that the heavy hand of government rarely inspires innovation and accountability. 

However, it does occur to me that the EU has fared little better in this regard and has failed to step up to the plate. It still choses to hitch its wagon to the moribund US economy instead of using its economic muscle to chart a new course, one where the rest of the world doesn't head to the ICU when the US catches a case of the sniffles.

Hanging Gaza Out To Dry

As Gazans continue to be crucified for the sins of Hamas, the international community seems helpless or unwilling to either lift a finger in their defense or reign in the rogue state that Israel has now become. Even what is supposedly the world's most powerful nation is willing to endure the humiliation of its diplomatic representative by Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, who last week said concerning the US vote to abstain from a UN resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire:

"In the night between Thursday and Friday, when the secretary of state wanted to lead the vote on a ceasefire at the Security Council, we did not want her to vote in favor. I said 'get me President Bush on the phone'. They said he was in the middle of giving a speech in Philadelphia. I said I didn't care. 'I need to talk to him now. He got off the podium and spoke to me.

"I told him the United States could not vote in favor. It cannot vote in favor of such a resolution. He immediately called the secretary of state and told her not to vote in favor....[Condoleeza Rice] was left shamed. A resolution that she prepared and arranged, and in the end she did not vote in favor."

While the US is disputing this particular version of events ("just 100% totally completely not true," the State Department declared Tuesday), the low-key response to an allegation by the leader of a foreign (albeit friendly) country that he makes US policy is a clear indication of the power and influence the Israelis actually wield in Washington.

Another sad aspect of the international response is the dithering by Arab countries on whether or not to hold an emergency Arab Summit to condemn the Israeli attack. The two largest Arab countries, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, have been at the forefront of moves to block the convening of such a summit with the former reduced to acting as a mediator between Hamas and the Jewish state. The tepid Arab response has been thrown into sharp relief by the actions of Bolivia and Venezuela, which have both cut their diplomatic ties to Israel over the war, leading one Kuwaiti MP, Waleed al-Tabtabai, to suggest that the headquarters of the Arab League be moved from Cairo to Caracas. He said Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez "has proved that he was more Arab than some Arabs." Gamal Abdel Nasser must be turning in his grave. 

The people of Gaza have also been abandoned by their own government in the West Bank. Today we were treated to the spectacle of President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, proclaimed leader of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, snubbing an emergency Arab summit called specifically to discuss the ongoing attacks against his people. These are the same attacks his government has labelled “Israeli aggression” and demanded an immediate end to. Abbas preferred to hold talks in Ramallah with the hapless UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki Moon, at the end of which they both issued largely meaningless demands for a ceasefire.

On the other hand, Turkey, perhaps Israel's best friend in the Muslim World, has not held back in its evisceration of Israeli action. Turkey has been brokering indirect peace talks between Syria and Israel. But the war has stopped this process. Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, sees the Israeli attack on Gaza as an act of betrayal and has refused any further contact with the Israelis, even reportedly denying Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni's request to visit. According to Suat Kiniklioglu, spokesman of the country's Foreign Affairs Committee:

"We felt that our efforts and good offices in advancing the talks between Israelis and Syrians were damaged. It was extremely disrespectful because Prime Minister Olmert was here so recently, and this operation took place right after that!"

Apparently giving voice to tens of thousands demonstrating on the streets of Ankara calling for a severing of ties with Israel, Erdogan, who last week warned that a "curse" would befall Israel over "the children who died in those bombs", recently told Parliament that his criticism "is not as harsh as phosphorus bombs or fire from tanks ... I am reacting as a human and a Muslim."