The blog has used Skype to interview combonian missionary Renato Kizito Sesana about the situation in Kenya. Italy and Kenya have a lot in common: denunciation of electoral fraud, widespread corruption, contestation about military bases of the United States, manipulation of reality, politicians who seem to be on opposing sides who go out to dinner together in Nairobi’s best restaurants. Citizens used as political tools. In Italy we are still waiting for the epilogue.
I’m proposing a twinning between States and an exchange of leaders. Berlusconi and Veltroni to them. Kibaki and Raila Odinga to us.

Text:
”The current situation in Kenya arose from the elections of 27 December that were bitterly fought over. They have seen the official victory (by a few thousand votes) of Kibaki who was the president before that.
Straight away violent reactions broke out, from the opposition, accusing the government of electoral fraud and refusing to recognise Kibaki as President. What now seems very clear is that the violence that broke out after the announcement of Kibaki’s victory was carefully prepared in advance in different parts of Kenya. During all the pre-electoral phase, there was a strange campaign by which the opposition said “it’s our turn”, implying that there had been two Kikuyu presidents, and a Kalenjin president and that therefore it was the turn of Kenya’s third largest tribe in terms of numbers. This had already given a strong tribal labeling to the campaign. In the last few weeks this was aggravated by the fact that the opposition had started to say “if we don’t win it’ll mean that there has been fraud”.
Corruption in Kenya, that was really serious at the time of the previous president, Daniel Arap Moi, has been reduced but it is anyway at a very serous level and people are extremely tired of this. They can’t cope with it any longer. The government then has probably given themselves a blow to their own feet because they have moved Kenya’s commercial interests from Europe, the United States and England towards Japan and the East in general. While the leader of the opposition, Raila Odinga who is almost famous for being a man of the left, in reality has made promises to the Americans and to the West to come closer together again. Kibaki had refused an American military base on Kenya’s soil. Without a doubt there have been interferences and support at a world level on the elections in Kenya.
I think that the tribal issue is only a mask for other issues. It is a tool that the politicians have manipulated and made worse first of all to get votes and then to provoke violence. Politicians of different parties and belonging to different people of Kenya meet up, talk. People of the upper middle classes meet up, talk, go to dinner together in Nairobi’s great restaurants, and there are lots of them and they are in the biggest rich neighbourhoods of Nairobi. There has been no rivalry. There has been no problem. It has been the poor to break out in violence against each other under the pretext of ethnic rivalry. I believe that first of all, to find a solution to this problem, time is needed because the two sides straight away started off with such different positions and so rigidly diverse that it is impossible for them to change in a short time. We need to give them time to change their positions whilst saving face.
I believe Kofi Annan’s position is wise. He has come and is not imposing time limits. What is important is that the violence stops and the reaction to the violence. If the leaders really wanted it, if Kibaki and Raila Odinga wanted to stop their followers I am convinced that they could do so within a matter of very few hours. It would be enough to give a firm and precise condemnation of the violence and that hasn’t yet happened. Then they can negotiate and talk as they like. But the fear is that there is the temptation to use the violence. From the government side to use the repression of the police. From the opposition’s side to use the violence of the unemployed, the drifters, the young who are let loose, paid against the tribe of the President and kidding themselves that this brings advantages to their political position. " Renato Kizito Sesana, combonian priest