Odinga avoids Zimbabwe double speak

OUR Prime Minister Raila Odinga spoke at last and backed a UN Security Council resolution for immediate ceasefire in Gaza: very honourable indeed, only if he had not advocated war against Zimbabwe barely a month ago.

Mr Odinga was clearly in favour of a UN Security Council resolution against Zimbabwe which would have necessitated the movement of troops into that country under the pretext of "Responsibility to Protect".

He was indeed under pressure from the Muslim community in this country to denounce the Gaza war.

His response was a little too late, if you asked me.

Mr Odinga waited for the UN to speak first. He did not have his own position for almost two weeks. This is what happens when you openly advocate war in other places – you are immediately found wanting when you have to denounce it elsewhere.

As a Kenyan, I was shocked and at the same time appalled by my leader’s utterances about the need for military intervention in Zimbabwe.

Interestingly, only yesterday he said about the fighting in Gaza: “"Given the perilous conditions affecting the entire Gaza population, the Council's action came late. As we know, among the hundreds of civilians killed in Gaza, nearly 225 were children, according to the United Nations," Odinga said.

Did Mr Odinga’s think the victims of the war he was proposing for Zimbabwe would not be women and children?

Mr Odinga also said, incorrectly, that when the UN Security Council acted on Thursday night, it was with overwhelming unanimity. I do not know what news our PM has been reading. His friends in America abstained from that vote and they are a permanent member of the Council, so where is the “overwhelming unanimity” coming from?

It was, however, refreshing to learn that Mr Odinga, for the first time, talked about conflict and spared us his very caustic ideas on how to resolve the crisis in Zimbabwe. He was ‘smart enough’ to avoid double speak: condemning war in Gaza and encouraging war in Zimbabwe.

Funmi Oyugi
Nairobi, Kenya