Raila was wrong to meet Zuma at airport

The reported two-hour meeting between ANC leader Jacob Zuma and Prime Minister Raila Odinga in the VIP Lounge at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (JKIA) last week poses much more than a protocol conundrum.

The most egregious thing about it was that the PM appeared to have attended the meeting purely in his capacity as leader of ODM, and not principal partner in the coalition Government.

Why were the leaders of the ANC and ODM meeting in an airport lounge to conduct party business?

Before Zuma and Raila contrive to hold national executive committee meetings in airports and make major foreign policy pronouncements, let them get a number of things clear about party politics in the early 21st Century.

The time is long past when any political entity can pretend to embody an entire nation’s ideological make-up or destiny.

And nothing is more doomed to fail than the attempts at JKIA by Zuma and Raila to pass off the ANC, as it is constituted, and the ODM, as it is mutating, as "progressive" parties united against what they called "African dictators".

Both men have achieved their pre-eminence first as tribal chieftains and only latterly as representatives of select interest groups.

Anyone who thinks the ANC Zuma represents is the same party of Chief Albert Luthuli, Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Oliver Tambo and Desmond Tutu is sorely misinformed.

Neither is Raila the leader of the ODM that disputed the presidential election in Kenya a year ago. That ODM was nothing but a vehicle to State House.

In fact, ANCs structure is on the brink of a schism. Like the ANC, ODM is a much more amorphous entity. Listen to all the din coming from its grassroots elections, with accusations of widespread rigging, bullying and violence.

ODM’s time for schism will also come, but more about that when the time is nigh.

{Onesmus Wambua, US}

The meeting between PM Raila Odinga and ANC’s Jacob Zuma at JKIA where party affairs were discussed behind closed doors for two hours was a protocol outrage.

It matters little that both politicians are unconventional, colourful and "unabashed populists".

The desire to soar on the crest of raw populism aside, a protocol breach is a protocol breach, period. And the protocol breach perpetrated by Raila and Zuma at JKIA is — in diplomatic, international relations and governance terms — atrocious and in bad taste.

Let’s get the facts right. There was no meeting of the ODM and the ANC planned for JKIA on Wednesday December 3. The truth about the encounter is that Zuma was transiting through Kenya on his way to Lebanon before a simple protocol encounter was converted into an instant summit of his ANC and Raila’s ODM.

Kenya’s and South Africa’s ministries of Foreign Affairs have no doubt been stunned by news of a so-called meeting between ANC and ODM on Kenyan soil.

I consulted a number of personal contacts in Kenya’s Foreign Office and in the large complement of the Diplomatic Corps in Nairobi, and at least four of them were of the opinion that the PM must never again be detailed to meet a foreign dignitary on behalf of the President of Kenya — or indeed in his own behalf — without guarantees that all protocol will be observed and that he is doing so as the Prime Minister of Kenya, not party leader of ODM.

{Nicholas Kiptarus, UK}