US envoy exits, praised by Ruto but censured by State critics

President William Ruto and the US Ambassador to Kenya Meg Whitman witness as Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi and Clinton White, Counselor for USAID sign a pact that will enhance student and faculty exchange, joint research and innovation. [File, Standard]

Meg Whitman’s tour of duty as US President Joe Biden’s ambassador to Kenya has ended after two years of active involvement in open Kenyan political affairs. She impressed President William Ruto as a reliable ‘sister’, facilitating his access to the White House. At times she appeared more like Kenya’s ambassador to the US instead of the other way.

While she pleased Ruto, the diplomat angered critics of government policies by openly defending the administration against assorted accusations.

For this, she earned the label of ‘rogue ambassador’ from ODM boss Raila Odinga as an epithet only that it put her in the same category as Smith Hempstone, the original and proud rogue ambassador.

While Hempstone wrote a book, Rogue Ambassador: An African Memoir, about his escapades in Kenya, it is not known whether Whitman will pen one.

Hempstone was a journalist by profession before successfully pressing former US President George Bush to appoint him to Nairobi in 1989, Whitman was a corporate executive and billionaire before President Biden asked her to represent him in Nairobi beginning 2022. Both Hempstone and Whitman were political appointees. Between Hempstone and Whitman were other ambassadors whose impact varied with the time and their sense of mission; they were mostly career Foreign Service Officers. They included Aurealia Brazil who, despite effort to avoid controversy, had to deal with Korwa Adar’s Universities Academic Staff Union strike and found herself blocked by the police.

Terror attack

There was also Prudence Bushnell who, in the aftermath of the August 7, 1998, Al-Qaida terror attack, looked terrible. Her replacement, Johnnie Carson, entered into controversy with Kenyans over who was to blame for the Al-Qaida attack.

To the claim that Kenya was attacked as a secondary target because it was a friend of Israel and the United States, Carson argued that it was attacked because it is corrupt, has porous borders, and its intelligence was not very efficient.

In doing so, the US was seemingly trying to avoid liability. Three years later, on September 11, 2001, the same Al-Qaida hit New York and Washington DC harder than it had done in Kenya thereby raising the question of whether the US was more corrupt, more porous, and more inefficient than Kenya.

Carson saw the transition from Kanu to Narc which put Mwai Kibaki to the presidency and ushered in a new era and heavy Western involvement in Kenyan affairs

There followed self-reserved William Bellamy, funding American operations leading to the 2005 Orange-Banana Referendum.

There then, in July 2006, followed bombastic Michael Ranneberger, trying to outdo Hempstone.

In the 2007 violent elections in Kenya, the US, as well as Germany and the rest of the Conceptual West appeared to follow the British lead in trying to fix Kibaki for not cooperating with British wishes.

In 2011 Ranneberger found a Maasai wife and was replaced by Scott Gratian who barely lasted a year before Robert Godec took charge.

Whitman arrived in Kenya on August 1, 2022, the month of the August 2022 General Election. She was here, she said in June 2023, to “muck around with data” to promote Kenya’s business environment and trade with the US.

She immediately took interest in Kenya’s political developments and within days of her arrival, witnessed Kenya’s political push and pull, including the fiasco at Bomas.

At Bomas, there was violent effort to stop former Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission Chairman Wafula Chebukati from announcing results which showed Ruto in the lead.

It was similar to what had happened in December 2007 at KICC when the ODM Pentagon operatives, Ruto among them, jumped on tables trying to stop Electoral Commission Chairman Samuel Kivuitu from announcing that Mwai Kibaki had won.

The loser in both elections, 2007 and 2022, was Raila Odinga whose followers subsequently made the country so ungovernable that the winners had to cut political deals that catered to Raila wishes.

Making the country ungovernable involved Maandamano or street demonstrations mainly in Nairobi and other urban areas.

Occasionally stone throwing and violence accompanied the Maandamano.

In 2022, Whitman was an eyewitness to those demonstrations or what a little boy carrying a stone called Maandamano.

Her support for Ruto appeared to increase with the destructiveness in the various Maandamano .   

Whitman’s enthusiasm for Ruto elicited different reactions. During the August 2023 Devolution Conference in Eldoret, she declared that Ruto’s election in August 2022 was the ‘freest, fairest, and most credible in Kenyan history’.

Ruto was happy and cheered her but opposition leader Raila was so furious that he called her a ‘rogue ambassador’ and told her to ‘shut up’.

Whitman seemingly ignored Raila and doubled her effort to make Ruto look good in Washington where she succeeded in getting Biden to give Ruto a treat at the White House as a State visitor with all the ceremonies associated with State visits.

On his part, Biden was actually rewarding Ruto for agreeing to send Kenyan police officers to troubled Haiti, with the US supposedly paying the expenses.

Ruto had returned from the United States, not the hero that Whitman would have wanted him to seem but as a man with questions to answer about foreigners called ‘friends’, making decisions for the country.

“President Ruto,” Whitman argued, “is navigating a tough economic environment. This is a global issue, not just a Kenyan one.”

This defence of the Finance Bill, 2024, however, was despite clear signs that there might be a tax based uprising. The defence did not stop the Gen Zs from mounting strong opposition, anti-tax demonstrations, and ‘greeting’ those MPs who voted for it.

As a result, Ruto decided not to sign Finance Bill, 2024, dissolved the Cabinet, and even blamed the Ford Foundation for the Gen Z uprising.

In deflating the Gen Zs, Ruto had Raila’s support in creating his ‘broad-based government’ which paved the way for the former DP Rigathi Gachagua impeachment saga.

On her part, Whitman reportedly reached out to known public figures on how to deal with the Gen Zs.