Annan welcome to engage in national dialogue

Isolating Kenya from the international community is not a viable option for anyone hoping to lead the country into its first five to ten years under the new Constitution.

In today’s globalised world, our development is dependent on mutually beneficial relations with other nations, whether in the West, East or Africa.

Our foreign policy is primarily trade driven and our economy highly dependent on sectors like tourism that thrive on having Kenya maintain a respectable standing in the community of nations.

It is, therefore, our hope that the jingoistic statements recently made about foreign meddling represent little more than campaign rhetoric that would have no bearing on policy.

There is often good reason to interrogate the motives of foreign governments, institutions and individuals as they pile on pressure to achieve this or that end. After all, most mainly act in self-interest or to support agendas that may not be central to local needs.

Their apparent paternalism often chafes when their prescriptions presume to direct rather than add to a discourse that must ultimately reflect the wishes of Kenyans.

However, the response to this is not to choose a strained relationship, merely to define the appropriate boundaries for one. The participation of former United Nations boss Kofi Annan in the national dialogue on the General Election is as welcome to most Kenyans as his role as a mediator in 2007.

We recall that his success was not in providing a prescription but in persuading us to find the only one that was left given the prevailing circumstances at the time.

In the same way, his words on the choices we make next year are welcome as friendly advice. It is, however, up to voters to decide whether to heed him or not. Either way, such opinions are no matter over which Kenya’s relationships with her foreign friends over the next presidential contest, need be endangered.