(Continued from Part 1, previous blog post)
Needless to say, to do what Barack Obama envisioned isn’t easy when much worse is common in Africa.
As I am writing this blog post, news comes on a deadly bombing on December 3 in the Somali capital of Mogadishu targeting a graduation ceremony for medical, computer science and engineering students at Benadir University, an educational institution recently founded in October 2002 in the hope of providing modern education – especially medical education in cooperation with the World Health Organization – to young Somalis in order to keep the current and future generations from being lost in the ravaging civil war in Somalia. The terrorist attack killed students, journalists and the three government cabinet ministers responsible for health, education and higher education. (See, e.g., Cleveland.com, December 3, 2009, by Mohamed Olad Hassan, “23 dead after suicide bomb attack in Somalia”; Fox News, December 3, 2009, “Bomber Dressed as Woman Kills 22 Somalis”; and, Benadir University, “Message of The President, Dr. Mohammed Moallim Muse”.)
The suicide bomber, one of the 23 dead, was a man disguised as a woman.
The Somali government called the tragedy “a national disaster”.
Only eight days before, relieving news arrived in Canada about the freeing of Canadian journalist Amanda Lindhout, taken hostage in Somalia since August 2008. But amid the glee and joy some Canadians also expressed concern that the release came only after a large ransom of $600,000 (initially reported as a possible $1m) had been paid to the kidnappers for the freedom of Lindhout and her companion, Australian journalist Nigel Brennan, that the money was from their families and friends in Australia and in Calgary, Canada, some of whom had sold their homes and cars to raise the fund. (See, e.g., CBC News, November 25, 2009, “Canadian Amanda Lindhout freed in Somalia; $1M ransom demanded, family pays for reporter's freedom”; and, The Daily Telegraph, December 3, 2009, “Ransom for journalists Nigel Brennan and Amanda Lindhout came from Australia”.)
Such an exorbitant price on those who could barely afford it for them to save the life of their dear Amanda Lindhout – all because of her enthusiasm to visit and report on Somalia, a predominantly Muslim nation, after working in Iraq for Arab news organizations.
In my January 29, 2009 blog article I referred to several Canadians taken as international hostages, namely journalists Amanda Lindhout and Beverly Giesbrecht and Canadian-UN diplomats Robert Fowler and Louis Guay, as “persons of conscience”; Giesbrecht is the only one of them not yet freed at this point.
But then one realizes that these Canadians are lucky to be alive. While the Canadian Amanda Lindhout and the Australian Nigel Brennan are leaving Somalia, among the dead at Benadir University’s graduation ceremony were a British citizen, Somali health minister Qamar Aden Ali, and an American citizen, Somali minister for higher education Ibrahim Hassan Adow.
What has filled some people with such hatred toward others’ progress which ultimately would benefit them as well? It seems to be the very opposite of a new way of seeing the world, opposite of a faith in other people, which Barack Obama had called for.
No wonder in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech delivered in Oslo, Norway a week after the Benadir University bombing, President Obama singled out Somalia as the example of a “failed state” (see, The White House, December 10, 2009, “Remarks by the President at the Acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize”).
Somalia has been anarchic in recent history, continuously plagued with ethnic strife, civil war and mass starvation since the early 1990s, and during the last days of the George H. W. Bush administration in 1992, the United States decided to lead peacekeeping forces to Somalia under the auspices of the United Nations after having assisted Pakistani-UN operations there with limited success (see, e.g., Air Force Historical Research Agency, May 6, 2004, by Daniel L. Haulman, “A Country Too Far: U.S. Military Operations in Somalia, 1992-1994”).
Treachery and betrayal in international politics then became entangled with the anarchy in Somalia.
It was the second major UN-sponsored American military operation for the Bush White House, the first having been the 1991 Gulf War after Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had invaded Kuwait in 1990. April Catherine Glaspie, the controversial former U.S. ambassador in Baghdad at the time of the Iraq-Kuwait crisis, was now sent to Somalia by incoming President Bill Clinton as the UN mission’s second-in-command, to reprioritize the humanitarian mission into one that would capture the defiant Somali warlord leader, General Mohamed Farrah Aidid, and restore order in that country. (See, e.g., The Atlantic, August 1992, by Robert D. Kaplan, “Tales From the Bazaar: April Glaspie”; World Somali Congress, September 15, 2007, “SOMALIA AND IRAQ SHARED SIMILAR STRATEGIES”; and, Wikipedia.)
In the UN’s first major move to reign in Aidid, twenty-five Pakistani-UN soldiers perished on June 5, 1993 during an operation to inspect Radio Mogadishu, making it the worst one-day massacre of UN peacekeepers since the deaths of 44 Ghanaian-UN soldiers in the Congo in 1961 (The Guardian, May 20, 2000, by Victoria Brittain, “Continental rifts: Victoria Brittain laments the west’s failures of nerve in Africa”):
“Glaspie authorised the June 5, 1993 mission by a Pakistani UN unit to inspect Radio Mogadishu, source of anti-UN propaganda and a known weapons site. When Aidid’s men were notified of the impending inspection, the message “this means war” came back. The Pakistanis were not given that message, and went to their doom with minimal security precautions. Peterson sums it up: “The result of this American-approved ‘inspection’ was the largest single-day massacre of UN peace-keeping troops since 1961, when 44 Ghanaians were killed in the Congo.””
In my January 29, 2009 blog posts, I mentioned several interesting facts to do with Vancouver, Canada: controversies surrounding April Glaspie’s performance in Iraq, and the fact that she was originally from Vancouver; Bill Clinton’s first summit with Russian President Boris Yeltsin held in Vancouver in April 1993 soon after he had become U.S. president (and around the time when Glaspie was sent to Somalia); and Vancouver businesswoman and journalist Beverly Giesbrecht’s kidnapping in November 2008 in Pakistan near the Afghan border while doing jihad propaganda work and reporting for Al Jazeera.
It’s quite possible that people go by the old and familiar ways when they feel others are not instilling trust in them, i.e., they remember lessons from the past more than trust words about the future.
Prior to the June 5 debacle at Radio Mogadishu, in March – around the time when the Clinton-Yeltsin summit was announced for Vancouver – the Canadian Airborne Regiment, which had gone with the U.S. military to Somalia in December 1992, were in several incidents of brutality involving killings of Somali civilians, the most infamous of them the torture and murder of teenager Shidane Arone. (See, e.g., National Defence and the Canadian Forces, 1997, “Report of the Somalia Commission of Inquiry: Introduction”.)
There were wild allegations, including that the Canadian soldiers had been given some sort of experimental drug which caused them paranoia and other bad mental behaviour (see, e.g, National Defence and the Canadian Forces, 1997, “Report of the Somalia Commission of Inquiry: The Mefloquine Issue”; and, Wikipedia).
The Canadian Minister of National Defence at the time happened to be Vancouver’s Kim Campbell, a leading contender to succeed Progressive Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney – host of the Clinton-Yeltsin Vancouver summit. In June 1993, Campbell became the first-ever female Canadian prime minister, then during the campaign for the national election she soon called Campbell was accused of trying to cover up the Somalia scandal. (See, e.g., Los Angeles Times, October 6, 1993, by Mary Williams Walsh, “Canada Is Shaken by Impending Trials of 6 Soldiers in Somali Death”; and, Esprit de Corps, November 1997, “Somalia cover-up: a commissioner’s journal, By Peter Desbarats” (courtesy of findarticles.com).)
As I have earlier mentioned, in the (October) 1993 election Campbell suffered the worst electoral defeat in Canadian history – and that was only one of the generally poor showings during that era by the pioneer record-setting female political leaders in Canada.
The Canadian military’s misadventure in Somalia certainly added to Kim Campbell’s bad luck.
During Campbell’s time in Canadian federal politics prior to her ascent to the very top, I was a resident in the Vancouver Centre riding where she was the Member of Parliament, and in November-December 1992 I had communicated with her local constituency office as part of my political activity.
A public inquiry, independent of the Canadian military’s investigation, into the “Somalia Affair” was eventually called in March 1995 by the government of Liberal Prime Minister Jean Chretien who had defeated Kim Campbell, but it did not run its full course before it was cut short by the government in 1997. The Airborne Regiment was also disbanded. (See, e.g., The New York Times, February 11, 1996, by Clyde H. Farnsworth, “The Killing Of a Somali Jars Canada”; National Defence and the Canadian Forces, 1997, “Report of the Somalia Commission of Inquiry: Introduction”; and, Wikipedia.)
Nine Canadian soldiers and officers faced court martial over the Shidane Arone killing and other incidents.
One of them was Clayton Matchee, a brash Canadian Airborne soldier who faced torture and murder charges, who in March 1993 had reportedly tried to hang himself and clearly suffered severe brain damage; in 2008 Matchee was declared permanently mentally fit for court and had his charges dropped. Kyle Brown, a more low-key soldier also facing torture and murder charges, was convicted and spent several years in prison, while Sergeant Mark Boland pleaded guilty to a lesser charge and also spent time in jail. (See, e.g., The New York Times, February 11, 1996, referred to earlier; The Star-Phoenix, September 16, 2008, “Charges dropped for Matchee”; Wikipedia; and, National Defence and the Canadian Forces, 1997, “Report of the Somalia Commission of Inquiry: The Somalia Mission: Post-Deployment”.)
The United Nations peacekeepers have since left Somalia, but only after the ‘Black Hawk Down’ episode that killed 18 U.S. Army Rangers in October 1993 (see, e.g., Wikipedia); the lawlessness continued and has been spilling over to the nearby international shipping routes near the Gulf of Aden in the Indian Ocean – in the form of piracy.
In 2009 while Amanda Lindhout and Nigel Brennan were still in Somali kidnappers’ custody, the deaths of the fellow pirates of Somali teenager Abduwali Abdukhadir Muse, in April at the hand of the American warship U.S.S. Bainbridge after the pirates had attempted to hijack the U.S. cargo ship Maersk Alabama, illustrated the peril of either stubborn ambition or blind distrust.
In early April 2009, Muse and three others took Maersk Alabama hostage in the Indian Ocean, and after some confrontations and negotiation left on a lifeboat, with ship captain Richard Phillips as hostage. Then U.S. warships arrived, the lifeboat soon ran out of fuel, and the pirates agreed to be towed to a port by the U.S.S. Bainbridge. It was not a surrender by the pirates, and they continued to hold Captain Phillips hostage on the lifeboat, until suddenly a coordinated burst of gunfire from Navy Seal snipers killed the three pirates guarding Phillips, freeing him unharmed and leaving the teenager Muse as the only surviving pirate, who had gone over to the U.S. warship – to negotiate with the Americans or to get medical treatment and in effect surrender depending on the version of the story. (See, e.g., The New York Times, by Robert D. McFadden and Scott Shane, April 12, “In Rescue of Captain, Navy Kills 3 Pirates”; and, New York Daily News, April 21, 2009, by Thomas Zambito, Christina Boyle and Tracy Connor, “Somali pirate's smile turns to tears; charged with crimes that could send him to jail for life”.)
In recent years Somali pirates have routinely hijacked international ships for ransom, in many cases bringing the ship – cargo as well as crew members – back to Somali ports; and so these four pirates leaving the ship with only one person as hostage made them appear less nasty than some of the others and thus the three eventual deaths more unusual.
One may wonder, for instance: After the arrival of the U.S. Navy did the pirates continue to hold Captain Richard Phillips hostage for ransom, or did they at this point merely keep him as a bargaining chip to avoid arrest by the American military? Were the pirates given any promise by the FBI negotiators which had they trusted might have saved their lives?
Ironically, the only surviving pirate Abduwali Abdukhadir Muse was then sent to New York City to stand trial and he arrived there and appeared in court on April 21, and one day later Canadian-UN diplomats Robert Fowler and Louis Guay were released in the city of Gao in Mali, who had been kidnapped in neighbouring Niger in December 2008 and held in detention by Al Qaeda North Africa. (See, e.g., The Times of London, April 22, 2009, by James Bone, “Somali pirate Abduwali Abdukhadir Muse in US for Maersk Alabama hijack trial”'; and, National Post, April 29, 2009, by Steven Edwards, “Freeing of Fowler, Guay may have diplomatic price”.)
Robert Fowler happened to be the (former) Deputy Minister of National Defence – including serving under Kim Campbell in early 1993 – when the Canadian military took part in the UN mission in Somalia and became tainted by incidences of civilian killings (see, e.g., Esprit de Corps, November 1997, referred to earlier; and, The Toronto Star, December 16, 2008, “Robert Fowler no stranger to conflict zones”).
My own experience has taught me that trust is indeed not easy to come by in politics.
In 2002-03 after I had returned to Canada and settled in Toronto (an event discussed in the preceding part of this blog article), I encountered a problem that set me back in my career plan – something unexpected and negative that I viewed as either repercussion still occurring following my early-1990s’ political activity in Vancouver or calculated new act of political oppression.
As part of my efforts to overcome the problem, in May 2003 I e-mailed some documents about my political activity and the related matters to “RMA”, a former mentor and professor at Berkeley, who was Canadian with a Yale Ph.D., had been a Princeton University faculty member and besides doing mathematics had also headed the Department of Economics at UC Berkeley, an academic department that has provided all the chairwomen for the Council of Economic Advisers in the Democratic White House: Bill Clinton’s Laura D’Andrea Tyson and Janet Yellen – and now also Obama’s Christina D. Romer.
“RMA” responded on May 25, saying:
“I am also very concerned about your mental state. I think you need to be under the care of a psychiatrist. If you are not currently receiving psychiatric care, please make arrangements to get care immediately.”
I was taken aback by his response.
Part of my experiences in the early 1990s in political activity in Vancouver had included suffering under oppressive measures involving psychiatric incarceration and forced anti-psychotic medical treatment, which were first brought in by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and lasted on and off from the end of November 1992 to February 1994. Various psychiatrists gave different opinions during that time, but none diagnosed any real medical symptom, instead taking my political views as symptoms of a “delusional” or “paranoid” mental disorder. (My ongoing other blog posts, February 20, 2009 – present, have been reviewing politics related to that part of the history.)
The forced psychiatric measures tapered off from February 1994 when the correctional officer supervising my one-year probation on a conditional discharge and several peace bonds – all due to minor troubles with lawyers who didn’t want to assist me or to do well in that and helped set entrapments against my civil disobedience – wrote a letter to the prosecution counsel at the court, relaying my intention not to take more medication and stating his opinion that psychiatric medicine could not be enforced by court order outside of psychiatric committal (and every time I had been committed a mental-health review panel soon ordered my release if the institution hadn’t done so).
In fact, taking psychiatric medication such as Haldol (Haloperidol) for an extended period – I was forced to take on and off during a period of more than a year – could turn one into sufferer of degenerative and irreversible tardive syndromes – with uncontrollable behaviour much like Michael J. Fox’s discussed in the preceding part of this blog article, if not actual Parkinson’s disease (see, e.g., American Family Physician, by Rosabel Young, April 15, 1999, “Update on Parkinson’s Disease”; and, Andrea C. Adams, Mayo Clinic Essential Neurology, Mayo Clinic Scientific Press, 2008).
The danger of reliance on medicine to control human thought and behaviour was obvious.
The probation officer I was very thankful to went by the name of Fred Hitchcock.
It’s a real story and real name, even if it might remind one of the great horror-film director Alfred Hitchcock. Fred Hitchcock was the director of the Vancouver disordered offender unit in the B.C. correctional service.
Nonetheless, further along the theme of the earlier discussions on some actors and movies (in the preceding part of this blog article), I could probably characterize that part of my experience as a movie scene in which I was peeking out from hiding in someone’s closet and hearing a narrating voice, “In light of Jason’s time in Justine’s space …”.
And speaking of the Justine Bateman-lookalike student I had come across often at Berkeley in the 1980s, I returned to Berkeley in the summer of 1990 for a research stay when I was already teaching at UBC in Vancouver, and one evening a Berkeley old-time friend “Dar” who was also from Guangzhou, and I went to a Telegraph Avenue pub for a drink, and “Shawna” was sitting right there with a boy friend.
“Dar” has since finished his post-doctoral work at the Salk Institute in San Diego and at Stanford, and now works in Houston, Texas.
In late 1994 Fred Hitchcock also wrote a letter for me, dated November 22, to let me visit my family in Guangzhou, China (ahead of the end of the conditional period in February 1995); in that letter he also recorded my intention to move to Ontario afterwards to seek employment. The Guangzhou trip did not materialize, as my mother was with me in Vancouver and stayed until early 1996, and soon afterwards I began working with businesswoman Liza Chiang – originally from Taiwan with a tale of Sun Li-jen’s near life-time house arrest as recounted in the preceding part of this blog article. Then I moved to Hawaii to work in 1997 and did not move to Ontario until 2002 – when I returned to Canada from California after a post-9/11 layoff in Silicon Valley.
When things got unexpectedly ugly in Toronto in 2002-03 I sought advice on politics from former mentor “RMA” at Berkeley, who was active in academic and local politics.
And when I received the May 25, 2003 e-mail reply from “RMA” suggesting that I seek psychiatric care, I said to myself, “It’s already in the New Millennium. Forget it.”
In any case, I wasn’t John Nash, i.e., not as obsessive or stubborn as the Princeton mathematician and 1994 Nobel Economics Laureate who had a long and mysterious psychiatric history starting in 1959 when he was on the faculty of MIT in Boston, and whom most people know about through the Oscar-winning movie “A Beautiful Mind”, or the book of the same title it was adapted from (see, e.g., Slate Magazine, December 21, 2001, by Chris Suellentrop, “A Real Number: A Beautiful Mind’s John Nash is nowhere near as complicated as the real one”; and, The New York Times, December 21, 2001, by A. O. Scott, “Film review; From math to madness, and back”).
In my January 29, 2009 blog posts, I have discussed some intriguing links between that old era’s politics and John Nash’s mental-illness diagnoses and life misery.
As for the rather shocking feedback in 2003 from “RMA”, someone who had headed a place with people the likes of White House chief advisers Laura D’Andrea Tyson, Janet Yellen and Christina D. Romer, I certainly hadn’t lacked faith in him when I sought his advice.
Time changes, and so do people, or at least so does the way crucial duties are entrusted for people’s sake. I particularly emphasize the New Millennium, as its arrival has also marked the coming of the era of globalization of humanity – a historical calling that requires a new way to view the world.
My political activity for which I went through repercussions first began when I pitted myself against the management style of my boss “Maria” at the University of British Columbia, and then against the conduct of then Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney in his handling of constitutional reform and in his leadership more generally.
At the time I had hoped that the Member of Parliament in whose riding I lived, Kim Campbell, known for her up-and-coming ambition, could be of help. Instead, on the same day at the end of November 1992 several hours after I had faxed some documents to Campbell’s Vancouver constituency office, RCMP officers came to my apartment to take me to my first-ever psychiatric committal, and by early December Kim Campbell, then Justice Minister, would secure behind-the-scenes support from Brian Mulroney to succeed him as the Progressive Conservative party leader and prime minister, although Mulroney’s decision to step down was not announced until February 24, 1993. (See, my ongoing other blog posts, February 20, 2009 – present.)
The first Clinton-Yeltsin summit, in April 1993 hosted by outgoing Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney on the campus of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver (as also discussed in my January 29, 2009 blog posts), marked the departure of the old and the coming of the new, with Clinton having defeated George H. W. Bush and riding high on his liberal agendas, among them the Goals 2000 project for progress of education toward the New Millennium.
But it appears the pitfall of obsession with women soon caught up with both the old and the new – in Canadian politics in the form of obsession with female leadership and for Bill Clinton more personally: in 1993 Mulroney’s party under Kim Campbell suffered the worst election defeat in Canadian history and into the New Millennium was folded (merged into a newer party in 2003); and Clinton’s Goals 2000 achieved only meagre results – while he became embroiled in a sex scandal involving White House intern Monica Lewinsky and was impeached by the U.S. House of Representatives ahead of the New Millennium’s arrival.
And on New Year’s Eve 2000 when the New Millennium was knocking at humanity’s door, there were few lofty yet well-defined and well-publicized goals for the world community to stride for befitting the euphoria, but instead fears about Y2K which turned out to be over-worrying. Then soon hard-to-believe destructions happened to the World Trade Centers and the Pentagon, and the world saw that at least Al Qaeda was likely real.
The 2000 U.S. presidential election was hotly contested between Al Gore in the Clinton White House and George H. W. Bush’s son George W., and the outcome of this vote at a historic time was determined only after an appeal from the Bush campaign to the United States Supreme Court. The lawyer who did it, Theodore Olson, originally from Chicago and a UC Berkeley graduate, later became Solicitor General for the Bush administration; but Olson soon lost his wife Barbara Olson, a former federal prosecutor and former legal counsel for the U.S. House of Representatives who was originally from Houston, Texas, on the plane that plunged into the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. (See, e.g., The New York Times, February 15, 2001, by Neil A. Lewis, “Man in the News; Prize Job for a Bush Rescuer; Theodore Bevry Olson”; National Review, September 13, 2001, by Ann Coulter, “This Is War: We should invade their countries”; and, Wikipedia.)
September 11 happened to be Ted Olson’s birthday and Barbara had stayed the night in Washington, D.C. in order to have breakfast with her husband for the occasion, then took the flight back to Los Angeles where she had a busy schedule as a national TV commentator on high-profile and celebrity legal issues, including on the Monica Lewinsky scandal in the past (see, e.g., The Telegraph, September 14, 2001, “Barbara Olson”).
Despite the unprecedented threat of global terrorism, at the local community level things have been changing in America, albeit slowly.
Take for example, a missing-person case that was recently solved - ‘accidentally’ at Berkeley.
Not unlike many Berkeley activists of various stripes who proselytized there everyday, Phillip Garrido, a middle-aged looking man living in Antioch north of Berkeley, brought his two teenage daughters Starlet and Angel to UC Berkeley campus on August 24, 2009 after a trip to the FBI in San Francisco, for the same goal he had – advertising for his new book, “Origin of Schizophrenia Revealed”, as part of a religious crusade. In this book Garrido described, with personal experience as a former convicted kidnapper and rapist, how human behaviour could change. (See, e.g., Antioch Grove, August 28, 2009, by Jeremiah Peterson, “FBI Releases Garrido’s Spiritual Manifesto; New Details About 18 Year Abduction of Antioch Woman Jaycee Lee Dugard”; and, Wikipedia.)
While Garrido was applying for a permit for a special event for his group “God’s
Desire”, some personality signs indicating a possible unusual relationship between him and the two girls caused suspicions on the part of two female Berkeley campus police officers, Allison (Ally) Jacobs and Lisa Campbell, who immediately related their concerns to Garrido’s probation officer, and the latter verified that Garrido did not have daughters on record. (See, e.g., UC Berkeley News, August 28, 2009, by Cathy Cockrell, “Arrest of kidnap suspect Phillip Garrido hinged on instincts and diligence of two members of UC Berkeley police force”; and, Examiner.com, August 30, 2009, by Charisse Van Horn, “How Jaycee Lee Dugard was found: U.C. Berkeley Police describe Dugard’s children Starlet and Angel”.)
It turned out that Phillip Garrido did have the two daughters, Starlet and Angel, but that he had fathered them with Jaycee Lee Dugard, a well-known missing teenager in California since eighteen years ago, whom he had kidnapped. Jaycee Lee had become part of Garrido’s household with his wife Nancy, been renamed Allissa (or Allyssa), and for a while lived with her two children in makeshift tents and a shed in the Garrido family’s backyard. Allyssa had also taught herself to become a computer-graphics designer and been helping with Garrido’s business and activities. (See, e.g., KCRA Sacramento, August 27, 2009, “Kidnap Suspect: ‘Wait Until You Hear The Story’ Phillip Craig Garrido Accused Of Kidnapping Jaycee Lee Dugard”; The Daily Record, August 31, 2009, by Ryan Parryin, “Kidnap victim Jaycee Lee Dugard helped run business for abductor”; and. The Times of London, November 5, 2009, by Philippe Naughton, “Jaycee Lee Dugard ‘tried to hide identity from police’”.)
Some people called Jaycee Lee Dugard’s mentality “the Stockholm Syndrome”, into which, in addition to sex slavery, she had fallen victim. It could have been fears earlier, and some sense of shame later, but thanks to the alertness of female Berkeley campus police officers Allison Jacobs and Lisa Campbell, it finally unravelled in 2009.
I have also found some interesting personal coincidences with this Phillip Garrido-Jaycee Lee Dugard story: media reported that Garrido approached Berkeley campus police on August 24, and was arrested on August 26, exactly 21 years from August 26, 1988 when he had first made parole for his 1976 kidnapping and rape that had netted him prison terms of 50 years plus 5-years-to-life; if I remembered correctly, moving from Berkeley to Vancouver I happened to arrive in Canada on August 24, 1988; and in that year I was 29, the same age as when Jaycee Lee Dugard is freed this year in 2009, while 29 and 2009 happen to be magical numbers for me as also alluded to in my my January 29, 2009 blog posts.
Broader coincidences, more generally interesting, are about the year 1991 in common in the various topics discussed in this blog article: the Gulf War; Michael J. Fox’s first symptoms of Parkinson’s disease; the fall of the Social Credit party whose Bennett father-and-son dynasty had ruled British Columbia during most of the 1950s-1980s, from where Fox had come to Hollywood; the first anti-stalker law in the United States taking effect in California, a law spurred by incidents such as the stalking of Michael J. Fox’s “Family Ties” sister Justine Bateman in Berkeley in 1989; Jaycee Lee Dugard’s kidnapping in California, and the start of my political activity at the University of British Columbia, over the management style of my then boss, “Maria”.
UC Berkeley had substantially contributed to his ensemble of female academic and political stars in the White House, but all that did not prevent Bill Clinton from being officially tainted by the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal.
But Clinton’s public problem from alleged sexual obsession with women had not begun with Monica Lewinsky but with Paula Jones when he was still the Governor of Arkansas – and also in 1991 (see, e.g., The New York Times, 1998, “CHRONOLOGY: Paula Jones Civil Suit”).
Has the Monica Lewinsky scandal also contributed to Hilary Clinton’s loss of the 2008 Democratic presidential candidacy, who had tried to keep the lid on the subject early in her campaign? (See, e.g., Washington Post, February 25, 2007, by Anne E. Kornblut, “Clinton Fights to Keep Impeachment Taboo; After Spat, Campaigns Know to Expect Swift Reprisal for Any Hint of the Scandal”; The Times of London, January 19, 2008, by Tim Reid and Tom Baldwin, “Hillary Clinton speaks of her pain and shame at the Monica Lewinsky scandal”; and, The Atlantic, April 10, 2008, by Ross Douthat, “The Monica Question: Campaigning for her mother on college campuses, Chelsea Clinton has faced repeated questions from students about the Monica Lewinsky scandal”.)
I’d like to think Barack Obama won it in 2008.
In his second book, “The Audacity of Hope”, published after he had become U.S. Senator, Obama criticized some politics of the Bill Clinton era (including the Monica Lewinsky scandal though Obama did not refer to it directly), that it had been like a “psychodrama” of old grudges and plots hatched on college campuses and played out on the national stage, instead of growing trust and fellowship built on the civil-rights and other political progresses of the 1960s; these comments strike a chord with me that my experience has led me to feel a similar way also (Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream, Crown Publishers, 2006):
“In the back-and-forth between Clinton and [House Speaker (Republican) Newt] Gingrich, and in the elections of 2000 and 2004, I sometimes felt as if I were watching the psychodrama of the Baby Boom generation—a tale rooted in old grudges and revenge plots hatched on a handful of college campuses long ago—played out on the national stage. The victories that the sixties generation brought about—the admission of minorities and women into full citizenship, the strengthening of individual liberties and the healthy willingness to question authority—have made America a far better place for all its citizens. But what has been lost in the process, and has yet to be replaced, are those shared assumptions—that quality of trust and fellow feeling—that bring us together as Americans.”
Genuine steps toward progress would require breaking away from the conventional mindset on behaviour, life and goals, and from the socially enforced outlooks toward the future, and require thinking more about what one can do while less about what is there for one – to modestly paraphrase John Fitzgerald Kennedy in his presidential inauguration speech on January 20, 1961.
Obama campaign’s slogan, “Yes we can”, can be viewed as a modest attempt at inspiring the way JFK did, while another campaign slogan, “Change we can believe in”, reflects an updated sense of realism about what that faith pertains to.
But Obama’s naysayers may point to what he has done for Africa – or hasn’t done – as a counterargument, that as the first African-American U.S. president traveling around the world he has officially visited Africa only once and to only one country, Ghana – not even to Kenya where his family roots are from (see, e.g., The Times of London, July 10, 2009, by Jonathan Clayton and Tristan McConnell, “Barack Obama’s visit to Ghana is snub to Kenya, his ancestral home”).
How is Obama different from his half-brother Mark Ndesandjo in this respect? – His critics may ask.
The disappointment among some people in Africa about Obama seemingly not taking a broader, more intensive approach to issues on their continent is understandable. However a comparison between Africa and China may be of greater relevance here, and I’ll attempt to show why and in the process also answer the more personal question posed above.
Both Africa and China are regions of expansive geographical confine and large population, both are part of the developing world, and in the second half of the 20th century both went under strongly nationalist and fervently independent sentiments and through a period of relative isolation from the developed world in the West. (See, e.g., BBC World Service, “The Story of Africa: Independence”; and, Council on Foreign Relations, April 23, 2008, by Jayshree Bajoria, “Nationalism in China”.)
With the changes in international politics in recent decades, both Africa and China are now gradually opening itself up in their efforts to develop, to modernize and to integrate with the rest of the world economically and socially (see, e.g., International Trade Forum, January 2001, “Africa’s Export Success Stories”; America.gov, July 19, 2007, by Jim Fisher-Thompson, “Sub-Saharan Africa Benefits from Expanded International Trade; U.S. trade representative says trade is an effective anti-poverty weapon”; Business Economics, October 1993, by John H. Park, “Impact of China’s open-door policy on Pacific Rim trade and investment - International Perspective” (courtesy of findarticles.com); and, ChinaCulture.org, 2009, “Reform, opening up bring change in people’s thinking”).
But the difficulties and challenges Africa faces and China faces in interfacing and integrating with the rest of the world are quite different, in fact opposite in a sense, as Africa needs to overcome the prevalence of anarchy and extreme violence, first and foremost, whereas China needs to overcome the fear of it.
China has taken tremendous strides in reforming its economic system, opening or building up its markets for international trade in investment, labour, goods and services, gradually but steadily. The process started 30 years ago with a few southern and southeastern coastal economic zones such as Shenzhen and Zhuhai, and have extended to entire provinces, including especially the southern province of Guangdong in which Shenzhen, Zhuhai and (the provincial capital) Guangzhou – the historic port of Canton – are located, and a large region in eastern China around the cosmopolitan city of Shanghai, which in the first half of the 20th century (the pre-Communist era) had been a leading international center of finance in the Far East. (See, e.g., Fortune, January 1935, “The Shanghai Boom” (courtesy of earnshaw.com); Economic History Association, December 2001, by Andrea McElderry, “Western Capitalism in China: A History of the Shanghai Stock Exchange | Book Reviews”; China Daily, May 23, 2006, “Out of Guangzhou, Africa trade booms”; News Guangdong, November 20, 2008, “1979: Shenzhen, Zhuhai and Shantou Special Economic Zones”; People’s Daily, March 26, 2009, “State Council: Making Shanghai a new global financial center”; and, my January 29, 2009 blog posts.)
A curious anomaly among China’s special economic zones for international trade, one that hasn’t done well, is the city of Shantou (in Guangdong province) which happens to be where my maternal family heritage was from as discussed in the context of early Protestant Christianity in China in my other blog posts in 2009.
Overall, the economic reform and opening-up process first begun in the late-1970s/early-1980s under then Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping has survived doubts and any possible “mocking fate” and flourished. In southern China the process is also benefiting from integration with the market-based economies in the former Western colonies of Hong Kong and Macau, which were returned to China during the late 1990s with special autonomy for their commercial-market and administrative systems. (See, e.g., Wikipedia; United States Congress Joint Economics Committee, China’s Economic Dilemmas in the 1990s: The Problems of Reforms, Modernization, and interdependence, M. E. Sharpe, Inc., 1992; News Guangdong, March 6, 2009, “Chinese political advisors call for free trade zone between Hong Kong, Shenzhen”; China Daily, August 11, 2009, by You Nuo, “Where there is a political will, there is reform”.)
Politically though, it has been harder, not the least because China as one large country – the most populous in the world – has struggled with maintaining balances among the various regions and sectors disparate in their experiences and/or expectations of loss and gain in the economic reform and opening, and the Chinese leadership in 1989 opted for the safety of orthodoxy when it came to power and political control. (See, e.g., CNN, 1999, “The man who took on the dissidents: Li Peng (1928-)”;Time Magazine, June 24, 2001, by Johanna McGeary, “INSIDE CHINA”; and, Slate Magazine, November 25, 2009, by Daniel Gross, “Karl Who? China is a Communist country, but I have yet to meet an actual Communist”.)
For Africa, however, the disparities among the different regions and countries are not threatening to tear up a pre-existent, nation-like ‘African Union’, or through such threat to severely constrain the economies of various parts of the continent. While the importance of African unity should not be underestimated, greater flexibility and thus greater opportunities exist in this regard when it comes to international trade and development.
For his first presidential visit to Africa, Obama chose Ghana for its adhering to the principle of democracy and achieving political and social stability within that principle, as The New York Times commented prior to Obama’s visit (The New York Times, May 17, 2009, by Peter Baker, “The Calculus Behind Obama’s Ghana Stopover”):
“The White House passed over Kenya, where Mr. Obama’s late father was from, in favor of the small nation of Ghana as the site of his first presidential visit to sub-Saharan Africa. A year after Kenya exploded in political violence, it remains a tense and unsettled place. Ghana, by contrast, is an outpost of democracy and civil society in a volatile region.”
Alternately I reason that in choosing Ghana Obama remained faithful to the vision for Africa he had outlined in his 1995 book “Dreams From My Father”, namely that for Africa’s future a type of unity through native faith born out of hardship is needed to absorb the power of the modern world.
Ghana – the Gold Coast in its former colonial name – fits part of that bill as being the first place in black, sub-Saharan Africa (as opposed to North Africa populated by Arab Muslims) the Europeans came to settle and trade in recent history, during the 15th century; at the time it became a centre of trade in West Africa. (see, e.g., Wikipedia; BusinessGhana, “History of Ghana: European Influence”; The Crawfurd Homepage, by Jacob Crawfurd, “GHANA TIMELINE – THE GOLD COAST”; and, The International Artists’ and Writers’ Workshops, 2007, “Ghana”).
Ghana was also the first country in black Africa to achieve independence from European colonial rule, in 1957 under the leadership of Kwame Nkrumah, leader of a self-government movement since the late 1940s, whose greater vision and legacy for African unity have been an inspiration to many in the continent and around the world – as witnessed by his having been voted Africa’s Man of the Millennium by African listeners of the BBC (see, e.g., BBC World Service, September 14, 2000, “Kwame Nkrumah’s Vision of Africa”; The International Artists’ and Writers’ Workshops, referred to earlier; Journal of Pan African Studies, March 15, 2008, by Ama Biney, “The legacy of Kwame Nkrumah in retrospect”; and, Wikipedia).
Ghana also has a stable multiparty constitutional democracy, instituted since 1992. That might not seem a great deal but it has made Ghana stand out as an exception in a volatile part of the world. (See, e.g., Sergio Pereira Leite, Anthony Pellechio, Luisa Zanforlin, Girma Begashaw, Stefania Fabrizio, and Joachim Harnack, Ghana: economic development in a democratic environment, International Monetary Fund, 2000; Peace FM Online (Ghana), November 20, 2009, “African countries are confident in Ghana’s democracy – Dery”.)
And Ghana also thrives as a showcase of independent and indigenous African cultures to other peoples, a window to interact with the world (see, e.g., The International Artists’ and Writers’ Workshops, referred to earlier; The Power of Culture, May 2008, by Brennan Leffler, “ICACD puts culture on the development agenda in Africa”; and, Arts in Africa, “Cultural Developments in Africa”).
The history and the recent experiences of exchanges with the modern world, mean that Ghana has been able to achieve what Obama’s grandfather, Hussein Onyango, had once been skeptical about that it would be possible for Africans.
In my continuing blog posts on Canadian politics, I mentioned the late Canadian journalist Christopher Young, former editor of the Ottawa Citizen newspaper, whose background of being born in Ghana – even in the pre-independence era (his father Norman Young was a history teacher there) – contributed to his sense of pride, integrity and independence, and carried him to a height of political journalism with a breath of international perspective few in Canada would speak from during a difficult time in Canadian politics, when on February 20, 1988 Young was virtually alone in warning Canadians that then Prime Minister Brian Mulroney’s adventure in constitutional reform – the 1987 Meech Lake constitutional accord – risked bringing Canada to a Yugoslavian-style national crisis. Mulroney, whose wife Mila’s family happened to be from Serbia, continued on that path but his constitutional plan was later defeated in 1990 by the combined efforts of Aboriginal politician Elijah Harper in Manitoba – a province with a unique history of ethnic-autonomy streak starting with Louis Riel’s Red River rebellion of 1869 – and Premier Clyde Wells of Newfoundland – Canada’s newest province which left Britain and joined the confederation only in 1949. (See, e.g., Expo 67 in Montreal, June 27, 1967, by the Canadian Press, “Major Events In Canada’s First 100 Years”; Embassy (Canada’s Foreign Policy Newspaper), March 29, 2006, by David Kilgour, “Christopher Young: Newspaperman. In Memoriam: 1927-2006”; Peter C. Newman, The Secret Mulroney Tapes: Unguarded Confessions of a Prime Minister, Random House of Canada, 2006; and, Feng Gao’s Space: analysis of Current Affairs, Politics & History, by Feng Gao, “The myth of political vendetta in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s Airbus Affair investigation, the politics of Brian Mulroney and Jean Chretien, and some social undercurrents in Canada”.)
To me, the Elijah Harper-Clyde Wells connection in the Meech Lake constitutional saga in Canada bore some resemblance to Barack Obama’s notion of a faith “that pulsed at the heart of the first African village and the first Kansas homestead”, envisioned in his 1995 book “Dreams from My Father” (as previously quoted).
In its stride toward modern progress Ghana has given certain distinctively unique and positive influence to the world: Ghanaian diplomat Kofi Annan rose through the UN hierarchy to become the first Secretary General of the United Nations from black Africa in 1997; and Annan not only was the UN Secretary General at the historic time of the arrival of the New Millennium, but has been the only recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize representing the United Nations, in 2001. (See, e.g., UN News Centre, October 12, 2001, “Welcoming Nobel Peace Prize, UN officials praise Annan’s leadership”.)
Very notable recognition for very laudable achievements, and I also note that the announcement came that year on North America’s traditional Columbus Day – albeit from a personal angle the good news was travelling around the world while I happened to be on my first day of idle life at home after layoff in Silicon Valley (as discussed in the preceding part this blog article).
In fact, if there was something to read from Barack Obama’s July 2009 Ghana visit being his first and only official visit to Africa so far, it might be the following: Obama had actually visited Egypt on June 4 to present his first major speech to the Muslim world at Cairo University, but according to the White House the Ghana visit was the first visit to address African issues; Egypt is an Arab Muslim country that happens to be located in North Africa and is the home country of Kofi Annan’s UN predecessor, Butros Butros-Ghali, who had served one 5-year term on the job before Annan’s 10 years. (See, e.g., The New York Times, May 24, 1999, by Paul Lewis, “Boutros-Ghali’s Book Says Albright and Clinton Betrayed Him”; MSNBC, May 15, 2009, “Egypt wants Obama to speak from mosque: Historic mosque makes short list of venues for president’s June 4 speech”; BlackAmericaWeb, May 20, 2009, by Michael H. Cottman, “President Obama and the First Lady to Travel to Ghana in July”; The Daily News Egypt, May 31, 2009, by Tamim Elyan, “Cairo University Staff, Students Weigh in on Obama’s Visit”; and, The Washington Times, July 9, 2009, by John P. Krudy, “Peaceful vote draws Obama to Ghana”.)
Also worth noting is the fact that Ghana’s transition to a stable democracy had restarted only from 1992 and progressed essentially paralleling the increase of Kofi Annan’s visibility in world politics, but it has been peaceful and genuine.
After leading the country to independence in 1957, Kwame Nkrumah pursued a nonaligned though left-leaning foreign policy, but also started a transition to a one-party state under him; then on February 24, 1966 while he was on an official visit to (North) Vietnam and China his government was overthrown by a military coup supported by the CIA. (See, e.g., The Journal of Pan African Studies, March 2008, by Boni Yao Gebe, “Ghana’s Foreign Policy at Independence and Implications for the 1966 Coup D’état”; The Monitor (Kampala), October 31, 2009, by Ali A. Mazrui, “Uganda: Kwame Nkrumah in the Destiny of Global Africana”; and, Wikipedia.)
Something personally interesting to me in the above history is that the date, February 24, later happened to be when Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney announced his resignation in 1993 – prior to that I had gotten into political activity critical of his leadership as mentioned earlier (also see, my ongoing other blog posts, February 20, 2009 – present).
Following the fall of Nkrumah a long period of mostly military rule ensued in Ghana, until 1988 when transition to a multiparty electoral system began with low-level elections, and finally April 1992 when a democratic constitution was approved in a national referendum. The military ruler who presided over the transition was an intellectually oriented Flight-Lieutenant Jerry John Rawlings, leader of the “June 4 Movement” that had waged a successful coup on June 4, 1979 to overthrow previous military rulers and restore democracy, but then re-intervened and reverted to military rule in 1981; Rawlings retired from the military in 1992, and won the 1992 and 1996 elections in which opposition parties were allowed to campaign in relatively free environments, though there were boycotts. Entering the New Millennium, Jerry Rawlings announced his retirement, abiding by the two-term constitutional limit of presidency, and his party lost and ceded the 2000 election to the opposition. (See, e.g., BBC News, January 2, 2001, by Mark Doyle, “Rawlings: A hard act to follow”; Center on Democracy, Development, and The Rule of Law, Stanford University, October 2007 (revised March 2009), by Antoinette Handley, ““The World Bank Made Me Do It?” International Factors and Ghana’s Transition to Democracy”; The Courier Magazine, June/July 2008, by Hegel Goutier, “Modern Ghana, far from Ancient Ghana: Ghana History”; Ghana Business News, June 16, 2009, “Call for review of Ghana’s 1992 Constitution made”; and, Wikipedia.)
The change in political power through a democratic election was accepted, honestly and peacefully; and when Barack Obama visited Ghana in July 2009 welcoming him was new President John Atta Mills, a British and American educated legal scholar and Jerry Rawlings’s former vice president and successor, who lost both the 2000 and 2004 elections to the former opposition. (See, e.g., Kent’s Diaries – From Anything to Everything Read (weblog), January 7, 2009, by Kent Mensah, “Ghana: New President Takes Office”; and, J. J. Rawlings - Ghana’s former President J.J. Rawlings in the spotlight (weblog), July 10, 2009, by J. J. Rawlings, “Thanks Rawlings For Bringing Obama”.)
Obama said at the time, “Ghana has now undergone a couple of successful elections in which power was transferred peacefully, even a very close election.” (See, e.g., The Independent, July 21, 2009, by Melina Platas, “Yes, Africa, you can”.)
The Ghanaian transition to multiparty democracy can probably serve as an example of peaceful and pragmatic democratic reform – as controversial as it might seem – for other countries, even ones beyond Africa.
In its heritage as the oldest European colonial-trade outpost in black Africa and its long history of cultural interactions with the West, Ghana reminds me of Guangdong province in China where I came from. However, it remains to be seen whether Ghana’s integration into the world economy will truly usher in a modern future, and whether in an Africa lacking unity Ghana can become a modern economic hub in West Africa it once was – something the city of Guangzhou (the port of Canton in the old days) was and is in a China run by a central government.
In contrast to his half-brother Mark Ndesandjo’s disillusionment with Africa, who now lives in Shenzhen just south of Guangzhou in China, Barack Obama’s choice of Ghana for his first visit to black Africa reflected careful political considerations; and Obama wasted no time campaigning for democracy there and in Africa (see, e.g., America.gov, July 11, 2009, “Obama: Ghana Shows Democracy Can Thrive in Africa; Says visit was particularly meaningful to him”).
When Ghana was achieving independence in the 1950s, Kenya on the opposite side of the African continent also began a process for independence. Though both British colonies, Kenyans took to a more militant approach toward that goal, and achieved it six years later than Ghana, in December 1963 under the leadership of Jomo Kenyatta, leader of the Kenyan African National Union (KANU), who had been in jail most of that time for leading the Kenyan African Union (KAU) and allegedly guiding the Mau Mau movement that had waged a militant rebellion against British colonial rule. (See, e.g., The New York Times, December 12, 1963, by Robert Onley, “Joyful Kenya Gets Independence From Britain”; BBC World Service, “The Story of Africa Independence – Case Study: Kenya”; and, Wikipedia.)
Barack Obama’s grandfather Hussein Onyango’s doubt that independence would work for Africans – quoted in the preceding part of this blog article – was expressed in the context of skepticism about what the KANU party could achieve in their struggle for Kenyan independence, even though Onyango agreed with many of their demands; Onyango also spent some time in a detention camp, suspected of being a KANU supporter, and became physically weak after that. (See, Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, Crown Publishers, 1995 & 2004.)
After independence, President Kenyatta institutionalized a one-party system which then ruled Kenya through his time and the time of his successor, Daniel arap Moi; Moi had been leader of the Kenyan African Democratic Union (KADU) and merged that party with KANU to form a one-party government shortly after independence (see, e.g., Wikipedia).
It was Barack Obama’s contention in his 1995 book, “Dreams from My Father”, that the airing of opinions critical of the policies of Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya’s founding President, led to Barack Obama, Sr.’s firing – by Kenyatta personally – from a senior civil-service position in the Kenyan government, and the career setback in turn led to Obama, Sr.’s descent into the grip of alcoholism, poverty, failure of intellectual goals, physical disability, and ultimately early death in an auto accident in November 1982. (See, Barack Obama, referred to earlier; and, CBS News, April 15, 2008, by Ben Smith and Jeffrey Ressner, “Obama’s Father Authored Long-Lost Article”.)
In 1992 when a democratic constitution and the multiparty system were instituted in Ghana, a multiparty system was also instituted under President Moi in Kenya. Moi then won two five-year terms in the 1992 and 1997 elections, and retired in 2002, choosing the late Jomo Kenyatta’s son as his successor, who then lost the 2002 election to the current president, Mwai Kibaki, and in 2007 led KANU to become a coalition supporter of Kibaki’s presidency. (See, e.g., University of Tampere, 2000, by Francis P. Kasoma, “The Press and Multiparty Politics in Africa”; Third World Quarterly, 2001, by Stephen Brown, “Authoritarian leaders and multiparty elections in Africa: how foreign donors help to keep Kenya’s Daniel arap Moi in power”; and, Wikipedia.)
Whereas Ghana went through long periods of pro-Western military rule following Kwame Nkrumah’s downfall after installation of a one-party system several years past independence, Kenya was governed by a one-party system during the entirety of a similar historical period, 1960s – 1992. Therefore it doesn’t appear obvious why Ghana’s transition to democracy has been hailed as a success while Kenya’s isn’t as much.
One major difference is between the general peacefulness of the situation in Ghana since its transition to a multiparty democracy in 1992, and an intense, violent electoral dispute in Kenya in 2007 between incumbent President Mwai Kibaki and his main opponent Raila Odinga – the latter’s father was once Jomo Kenyatta’s vice president before Daniel arap Moi. Although the Kenyan electoral dispute was subsequently resolved in 2008 through a power-sharing, coalition-government arrangement brokered by Ghana’s former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, the widespread post-election violence in 2007 and early 2008 left more than 1,200 people dead. (See, e.g., The Statesman (of Ghana), November 24, 2006, by Mary Morgan, “Ghana’s ‘hybrid’ democracy”; World Politics Review, January 13, 2009, by Michelle Sieff, “Ghana’s Democracy Continues to Mature”; United Nations, March 19, 2008, “Report from OHCHR Fact-finding Mission to Kenya, 6-28 February 2008”; and, Wikipedia.)
Among the dead were Lucas Sang, a 1988 Olympic-finalist runner, stoned to death and his corpse burned, and Wesley Ngetich, international marathon athlete and two-time champion of the Grandmas Marathon in Duluth, Minnesota, killed by a poison arrow. (See, e.g., Daily News (South Africa), January 23, 2008, “Kenyan athletics star killed by poison arrow”; Christian Today, February 22, 2008, “Kenya athletes deny helping Rift Valley killings”; and, The New York Times, May 13, 2008, by Jere Longman, “In Kenya, Violence Shakes Running Community”.)
Tribal ethnic conflicts in electoral politics appeared to be a major cause of the violence (see, e.g., openDemocracy, January 7, 2008, by Gerard Prunier, “Kenya: roots of crisis”).
Though not as chaotic as the violence in its northeastern neighbour, Somalia, the spur of violence in Kenya has shaken international confidence in the country.
Earlier in 2006, Barack Obama had visited Kenya as a U.S. Senator representing Illinois, but the 2007 election violence would become a thorn in the face of his vision for Africa were Obama to include Kenya on his itinerary for his first presidential visit to black Africa (see, e.g., Los Angeles Times, August 22, 2006, by Edmund Sanders, “Senator’s Kenya Visit Inspires Obama-Mania”; The New York Times, August 29, 2006, by Jeffrey Gettleman, “Obama Urges Kenyans to Get Tough on Corruption”; and, Thaindian News, July 4, 2009, “Obama not to visit father’s undemocratic Kenya”).
An international challenge lies ahead for Kenya, and in it as an example for much of Africa that are still in the grip of worse violence and political extremism: the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has made a request to the court for an official inquiry into the 2007 post-election violence in Kenya, and for criminal charges against those found responsible. Previously, The Kenyan government promised in December 2008 – not long after Obama’s historic electoral victory in the United States – to fully address the issue themselves and bring those responsible to justice, but nothing has been done after a year’s time, and a proposed special Kenyan tribunal mechanism to prosecute the crimes was rejected by the Kenyan Parliament in February 2009. (See, e.g., BBC News, February 12, 2009, “Kenyan MPs reject violence court”; Human Rights Watch, November 26, 2009, “ICC: Prosecutor Seeks OK on Kenya Inquiry”; and, GlobalPost, December 15, 2009, by Tristan McConnell, “ICC prosecutor says Kenya must press charges”.)
While I would hesitate to compare the developmental potential of Nairobi and Kenya to that of Shanghai in China, since 2002 the city and the country have emerged from decades of economic stagnation under the one-party system and are looking forward to ambitious economic modernization: after several years of privatization, Nairobi is now a major business hub in East Africa, and one in 18 Kenyans holds some company stock shares listed at the Nairobi Stock Exchange, which is the largest in East Africa and the fifth largest in Africa (behind stock exchanges in South Africa, Egypt, Morocco and Nigeria, one of which was developed under British colonial administration while two of which are really in Arab countries in North Africa); in 2007-08 the Kenyan government also unveiled the Kenya Vision 2030 plan aiming to move Kenya forward to the position of a “rapidly industrializing middle-income nation” in the world by the year 2030. (See, e.g., Government of Kenya, October 2007, “Kenya Vision 2030: A Globally Competitive and Prosperous Kenya” (courtesy of the Safaricom Foundation); The Courier Magazine, August/September 2008, by Debra Percival, “Kenya: Seeking to become a regional hub”; and, Wikipedia.)
Unexpectedly, the 2007 election violence and political crisis, as well as global recession, have brought Kenya’s economic growth rate down from 7.1% in 2007 to 1.7% in 2008, partly as a result of losses in the tourism industry. (See, e.g., The Courier Magazine, August/September 2008, referred to earlier; and, allAfrica.com, November 27, 2009, by Jevans Nyabiage, “Kenya: Economy On Path to Recovery, Says Central Bank”.)
If Barack Obama wasn’t coming, no one should take it lightly.
Closer to home in Cranbrook, British Columbia, on May 13, 2008 – exactly one month after a Grand Coalition Cabinet was unveiled in Kenya following the post-election violence and the subsequent power-sharing agreement – a rare, freak accident killed business student Isaiah Otieno originally from Kenya, who happened to be the son of Dalmas Otieno, banker, former cabinet minister in the Daniel arap Moi era before the 1992 election and now the newly installed Kenyan Minister of State for Public Service from the new Prime Minister Raila Odinga’s former opposition party, Orange Democratic Movement. (See, e.g., allAfrica.com, April 14, 2008, by Patrick Wachira, “Kenya: Kibaki Names New Cabinet”; Mars Group Kenya, April 14, 2008, “President Offers Mix Of Youthful Faces And Experienced Hands In New Line-Up”; and, MajimboKenya, May 14, 2008, “The son of Kenyan Minister, Hon Dalmas Otieno, killed in Helicopter crash in Canada”.)
It turned out that Isaiah Otieno was walking on a street near his home while listening to iPod music, and a helicopter above inspecting hydro-power lines suddenly crashed into him, killing him and the three crew members. The cause of the helicopter engine-power loss that led to the crash remains uncertain. (See, e.g., CTV British Columbia, December 2, 2009, “TSB hasn’t pinpointed cause of fatal chopper crash”.)
Isaiah Otieno’s father, mother, sister Lillian Otieno and Kenyan government officials attended the memorial service in Canada, and brought their beloved home for a proper burial (see, CTV British Columbia, May 23, 2008, “Hundreds of mourners remember chopper victim”).
Then it was reported that during the burial ceremony in Kenya, Member of Parliament Edwin Yinda was ejected from his seat, for the reason that he did not wear formal attire for the solemn occasion (see, African Press International, June 4, 2008, by Jeff Otieno, “MP humiliated during burial ceremony”).
Family values apparently are important in Africa.
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