Tribalism Here, and There

By ROGER COHEN
New York Times

NAIROBI, Kenya

The joke going around here, after a rigged vote, is that it may be easier to elect a Luo president in the United States than in Kenya.

“We beat them to it, I just wasn’t sworn in,” Raila Odinga, the opposition leader and a member of the large Luo ethnic group, told me. “Obama, if elected, would have been second, but I was robbed at the ballot box.”

Barack Obama is an American delivered by birth from the fissures of his father’s land. But it is through the charged tribal prism that Kenyans view the U.S. presidential race after a spasm of postelectoral ethnic killing and cleansing that left more than 1,000 dead and a half-million people uprooted.

Because Obama’s paternal family is Luo, the Luos love him without reserve. By contrast, Kikuyus, the largest tribe, are cool to him.

Since independence in 1963, Kenya has never had a Luo president. The incumbent, Mwai Kibaki, is a Kikuyu and widely accused, as the country’s first president Jomo Kenyatta was, of favoring his tribe.

(Conitnued here.)