“will respect the will of the [Americans] when they elect the country’s [forty] fourth president”

"I certainly didn’t hear that Kenya’s Foreign Affairs minister had issued a statement saying that Kenyans “will respect the will of the [Americans] when they elect the country’s [forty] fourth president”. So why do we allow foreign envoys to tell us with such smug condescension that they will accept our choices? Why do we care whether or not they will do so? Are we not financing 95 per cent of our annual budget from our own local sources? What is it exactly that we need from these countries that we must stand at attention and be inspected at every turn without us ever mentioning the atrocities of Guantanamo Bay and Iraq? International relations are unfair and unequal, yes, but when will Kenya learn to call the bluff of international bullies in the eloquent way Julius Nyerere and Nelson Mandela used to? Our last election ended in the pain of fratricidal blood. But if we learnt nothing from it, if the spectacle of IDPs and the number left dead has taught us nothing, then a coterie of imported nannies will not succeed in wiping our noses clean." (thanks Buush)