OBAMA VISIT TO KENYA IS EXPENSIVE

PRESIDENT Barack Obama's July trip to Kenya
will cost US taxpayers a staggering Sh5.7 billion,
almost equivalent to the Kenya government's
annual allocation to Nakuru county.

The cost of the trip has been worked out by
influential US commentators who have asked
Obama to call off the safari, because "it is too
costly for nothing".

It is understood that Obama will be in Kenya for
just a day.

Professor Robert Rotberg, a respected US
governance and foreign affairs scholar,
maintained that America will be compelled to
fork out the billions to mount massive security
because of the al Shabaab threat in Kenya.

“Guarding President Obama in today’s Kenya will
cost approximately $60 million,” Rotberg
predicted in a hard-hitting commentary aimed at
dissuading him from visiting Kenya. It was
headlined, “Going to Kenya Is a Dumb Idea, Mr
President”.

When the US President travels, the White House
travels with him, from the cars he rides in, to the
water he drinks, the gasoline he uses and the
food he eats.

Ahead of his visit is a contingent of Secret Service
personnel, some of who are already in the
country weeks before Obama arrives for a day's
visit.

When the President does finally land in Nairobi,
he will do so on Air Force one, plus a massive
entourage and a motorcade of armour-plated
vehicles. These include the president's bulletproof
limo, known simply as The Beast, a military
ambulance and communications vans packed
with state-of-the art high tech devices.

Around 250 heavily armed Secret Service agents,
dozens of advisers and teams of sniffer dogs will
escort Obama to Kenya in addition to White
House cooks.

Obama's movements during foreign trips are
choreographed down to the minutest detail – by
the US Secret Service and other agencies.
Yesterday, George Musamali, a Kenyan security
expert, put the cost of the Obama's visit – thought
to be about eight hours – at approximately Sh10
billion.

"The Americans will take no chances. They will
put their best foot forward to protect their
President," Musamali said.
The advance team comprising for Obama's visit
last week took charge of Secretary of State John
Kerry's security, with Kenyan forces playing only
a peripheral role.
But Rotberg criticised Obama's trip to Kenya as
lowering the dignity of his office and conferring
legitimacy on Kenya's corrupt leadership.
In a an op-ed for Politico, a political journalism
publication with an online presence, Rotberg
sensationally maintained that Obama's visit will
stoke ethnic divisions within the country and
endanger his own life.
Rotberg observed that, despite President Uhuru
Kenyatta's case being dropped at The Hague, the
global court is still pursuing Deputy President
William Ruto.
“Does President Obama really want to be forced,
inevitably, to be the state guest of a country
where the sitting president and vice-president,
his hosts, have been indicted by the International
Criminal Court?” Rotberg wrote in the respected
US magazine, one of whose slogans is, “All Politics
is Local”.
“Does President Obama truly seek to shake their
hands, officially? How could he, and the United
States avoid being compromised diplomatically
and our promotion of human rights globally
sullied?”
The commentary, which is likely to irritate
Jubilee’s presidential and foreign affairs
strategists, argues that Obama should postpone his
historic trip to Kenya until after he leaves the
White House.

US Secretary of State John Kerry was in Kenya
last week.
But the top US diplomat did not meet Ruto on his
two-day trip, with diplomatic sources hinting that
Obama too may snub the DP over his ICC charges.

Rotberg termed Kenya “wildly corrupt”.
“Conferring the honor of President Obama’s
office on such thoroughly questionable leaders
would do little to strengthen our own role as a
promoter of good governance and the rule of
law,” he said.

Rotberg also argued, “President Obama naturally
and appropriately will want to visit his paternal
homestead in the Luo heartland. But traveling
there will plunge the American president deeply
into ethnic politics in Kenya, and do nothing for
inter-group harmony in that volatile country”.

Source: The Star