Ivory Coast: For whom does Raila Odinga really work?

By: Femi B.Oyeniyi

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ASSIGNING the mediation efforts of the Ivorian post-electoral crisis, to a trivial figure such as the Kenyan Prime Minister, underscores the extent to which, the African Union internal bodies are infiltrated by Western stooges. Such an appointment should also actually make one laugh if the lives of millions of West Africans were not at stake. Raila Odinga, a former Marxist born in 1945, who studied philology at the University of Leipzig, in Communist East Germany, is today a “prominent” African member of Liberal International, like the President of the Golf Hotel Republic. After wandering with human rights groups in his home country for more than twenty years, he became in September 2007, the leader of the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) as well as the party’s flag bearer at the Kenyan Presidential Election of December 27, 2007. Article continues below Following the announcement of his defeat by the Kenyan Electoral Authorities, Raila Odinga ordered his ODM supporters to cause chaos in Kenya for several weeks, in order to make the country ungovernable. His actions lead to the death of more than one thousand people. Additionally this post election violence that he triggered displaced hundreds of thousands of Kenyans many of whom after more than three years are yet to return home. Odinga, who is well known by analysts in his country, for his “political and ideological seasonal migration” is definitely not a statesman and even less an African mediator. Odinga only represents himself and perhaps the predatory foreign interests who have so far sponsored his so called “mediation”. African citizens should actually demand the African Union Commission explanations on who is funding Odinga’s “excursions” in private jet from Nairobi to Abuja, Abidjan, Ouagadougou, Luanda and Pretoria? Courageous and righteous African leaders (and there are some) who are meeting in Ethiopia in a couple of days, as part of an African Union Summit,should make every effort to have the “Ivorian matter” removed from this comedian. The African Union must entrust the mediation efforts to a “credible African figure” which means an individual with less association as possible with the Empire. Respectable personalities still exist on the African continent! The objective of any mediation efforts in Cote d’Ivoire, will be to come across a realistic resolution to the crisis by taking into consideration the concerns and interests of each party. Ultimately, it is the Ivorian people and only them, without foreign interference, who can resolve the conflict in which their nation has been plunged into for almost a decade. *Femi B. Oyeniyi works for http://www.ivoirediaspo.net