Africans put up signs welcoming Obama back ‘home’ ahead of President’s official tour
Tuesday, June 25, 2013 9:10
Africans put up signs welcoming Obama back ‘home’ ahead of President’s official tour
- Barack Obama will visit Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania on tour
- President to be accompanied by First Lady and daughters Malia and Sasha for trip that departs Wednesday from DC
more obama spending our tax payer money while congress just sits back and lets this islamic terrorist destore what is left of our nation
when we the people no longer have any more money for obama gave it all to the muslim brother hood and
his muslim terrorist
watch china walk right in
i cant wait to see the face s of people when they see russian troops in our st
you think they will wake up then
no most likely the obama lovers will think obama will protect them just like how he is protecting our children
And no i am not say in he protects our children
but the people of the usa
dont care about they onw children is that why obama lets them think it is ojk to have sex with they kids
this nation is lost
i have no more hope for man kind
PUBLISHED: 20:28 EST, 24 June 2013 | UPDATED: 20:29 EST, 24 June 2013
Obama, First Lady Michelle and daughters Malia and Sasha are scheduled to depart Washington on Wednesday morning.
The President will visit South Africa, Tanzania and Senegal. In the latter country, artist Ouzin put the finishing touches on a painting of Obama and Sengal’s leader Macky Sall today ahead of the President’s visit.
Warm welcome: Artist Ouzin puts the finishing touches on a painting of
Obama and Sengal’s leader Macky Sall ahead of the President’s visit
When Obama arrives in Africa this week, there will be one notable omission from his travel itinerary: Kenya, the birthplace of his father and home to many of his relatives.
Concerns about Kenya’s political situation have trumped Obama’s family ties.
Ahead of Uhuru Kenyatta’s victory earlier this year, a top Obama administration official warned Kenyans that their ‘choices have consequences’ – a remark that now appears prescient given the president’s decision to skip a stop in his ancestral homeland.
Return to his roots: Obama has not visited Kenya since 2006 when he was a senator (pictured)
The White House did consider a visit to Kenya when they contemplated an African swing during the president’s first term, before Kenyatta’s election. That trip never happened, but Obama pledged that he would, in fact, visit Kenya before leaving office.
‘I’m positive that before my service as president is completed I will visit Kenya again,’ he said in a 2010 interview with Kenya’s state broadcaster.
White House officials say they respect the right of Kenyans to choose their own leaders. But deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said the U.S. also has ‘a commitment to accountability and justice’.
President Barack Obama, first lady Michelle Obama and their daughters
Malia and Sasha (pictured last week returning from a trip to Ireland and
Germany) are due to leave for Africa on Wednesday
Kenya’s government has been muted in its response to the president’s decision to leave the county off his itinerary.
‘It’s for the Americans to decide where Obama goes,’ spokesman Muthui Kariuki said.
‘There are 54 nations on the African continent and he’s only visiting three, so I don’t see the real big deal about not going to Kenya.’
But Sam Ochieng, a political activist who lives in Kibera, Nairobi’s largest slum, said the U.S. president was sending a message about Kenya’s political problems by putting democratic values ahead of his personal connections.
‘It would be a shame for an American president to come to Kenya and shake dirty hands,’ Ochieng said.
By now, Obama’s ties with Kenya are a well-known part of his unique family history. Barack Obama, Sr. was born in the western Kenyan village of Kogelo, moved to the U.S. to study, and met and married the president’s mother in Hawaii. He left the family soon after his son was born.
Obama made his first trip to Kenya in 1988, after his father’s death, and wrote extensively about the visit in his memoir ‘Dreams From My Father.’
‘My name belonged and so I belonged, drawn into a web of relationships, alliances and grudges that I did not yet understand,’ he wrote.
The president visited Kenya two more times, most recently in 2006 as a freshman senator. He was greeted by cheering crowds in the capital of Nairobi and in Kogelo, where he spent time with his grandmother and visited his father’s grave.
He and wife Michelle Obama also publicly took HIV tests, part of their campaign at the time to reduce the stigma surrounding the virus.
But Obama’s nationally televised speech criticizing the government for failing to curb corruption or instill trust in its people earned him a cold shoulder from Kenya’s leadership.
Kenya’s presidential spokesman said at the time that Obama was ignorant of Kenyan politics and had yet to form an understanding of foreign policy.
Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta has been charged by the International
Criminal Court as an ‘indirect co-perpetrator’ for the crimes of
murder, deportation, rape and inhumane acts
Johnnie Carson, who until April served as head of the State Department’s Africa bureau, said in the lead-up to this year’s election that ‘choices have consequences,’ a comment that was viewed as a warning against electing Kenyatta.
His remarks were widely criticized as an inappropriate intrusion into a sovereign nation’s elections.
Kenyatta, the son of the country’s first president, has been charged by the ICC as an ‘indirect co-perpetrator’ for the crimes of murder, deportation, rape, persecution and inhumane acts allegedly committed by his supporters in the aftermath of the 2007 elections. He insists he is innocent of any wrongdoing.
More than 1,000 people were killed in the ethnic violence that followed the flawed 2007 contest.
The ICC has pushed back the start of Kenyatta’s trial until Nov. 12. Kenyan deputy president William Ruto will also face similar charges at the international court in September.
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