“Seller Beware” – diplomatic community quiet on Kenya. No one outside Kenya believes Raila’s claims to having won a dominant majority in 2022; but all know that Ruto is corrupt and violent and that diplomatic credibility was undermined by attempts to sell previous bad elections.

Raila Odinga Kenya president campaign

A variety of openly extralegal gambits by the Ruto Administration to centralize and consolidate power, including waivers of corruption cases, accompanied by severe economic pain for the majority of Kenyans and fiscal crises sets the stage in which the Odinga led opposition has initiated debilitating protests against the “cost of living” and the conduct of the last elections.

Given that Kenya is more and more “the last man standing” as a potentially arguable multiparty democracy in all of East Africa, the expanded EAC, the Greater Horn or however one might define the region, you would think diplomats would be all over this situation if you had been listening over the past 15 years.

Instead, “crickets”.

Presumably that has at least something to do with the fact that both “sides” are so clearly in the wrong and generally unsavory, yet with real power through the paramilitarized police, illicit funds and “the street” that it is best not to risk being seen as saying anything that could be used by one side or the other.

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