0:47Madam Ambassador, could you explain to us the policy and the protocol of a state visit such as the one we saw in May, and who takes care of the cost?
1:55Would you tell us what you say to him about the events over the last few months, including those very strong allegations?
Tell the ambassador, Kenya is not the United States. Kenya is not a colony of the United States. Keep your mouth shut when here, otherwise you will be called for recall back to your country.
I arrived in Kenya days before the August 22 general elections. What I witnessed was nothing short of remarkable. Kenya held what many analysts and commentators say was the freest, fairest, and most credible election in Kenyan history. The elections were observed by international and local election organizations, and the results were upheld by the Kenyan Supreme Court, and power was transferred orderly and peacefully at the time.
Thank you. Here on the program on The Explainer tonight, we're so glad to be hosting U.S. Ambassador to Kenya, Ambassador Meg Whitman. Thank you, Madam Ambassador, for joining us on the program tonight. I'd like to begin by asking you about the historic state visit by President Ruto to the United States. Let's just start by, upon his return, as you know, there was such heated debate in the country about the cost of his trip. Madam Ambassador, could you explain to us the policy and the protocol of a state visit such as the one we saw in May, and who takes care of the cost?
Yeah, so first of all, we were delighted to host President Ruto on behalf of the Kenyan people and, frankly, by extension, all of Africa. This is the first head of state from an African country to get a state visit since 2008, so it was quite historic and I think built on our 60 years of relationship between the United States and Kenya. And basically, the sort of protocol, if you will, is that the head of state and his entourage gets themselves to the United States, and then we take care of the expenses from there, and then they have to get themselves home. So that's how it works.
All right, so the whole kerfuffle about a jet and who was paying for it, you say it's not the United States of America, the Kenyan government has to take care of that. Okay, all right, thanks for clarifying that. Let's have a good relationship with President William Ruto. And we've seen you talk and we've seen you have quite some rapport since your posting here. Is this a conversation you have had with him privately? Would you tell us what you say to him about the events over the last few months, including those very strong allegations?
Yeah, so I meet regularly with the President, but I do talk with him and, frankly, other members of government as well, the CSs in the first round and now the CSs in the second round. And we have very straightforward conversations on a number of different issues. I'm not going to share private conversations, but I can tell you we've been very clear and very frank about the core values that actually Kenya and the United States share. You are the leading democracy probably on the continent, and we've been a democracy for 255 years. And it's important that we compare notes and are very frank with each other about how we see the world.
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Whitman, M. (2024, November 13). MEG WHITMAN: i will leave KENYA BEFORE December [Interview transcript]. Kenya Political Show. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/756979/
MLA
Meg Whitman. "MEG WHITMAN: i will leave KENYA BEFORE December." Kenya Political Show, 13 Nov. 2024. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/756979/.
BibTeX
@misc{whitman2024_756979,
author = {Meg Whitman},
title = {MEG WHITMAN: i will leave KENYA BEFORE December},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, Kenya Political Show. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2024},
month = {nov},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/756979/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
