Obama urges Kenyans to oppose ethnic divisions, corruption in government

NAIROBI, Kenya -- Sen. Barack Obama urged Kenyans to take control of their country's destiny by opposing corruption and ethnic divisions in government during a policy speech Monday at the main university in his father's homeland.\nObama warned that Kenya and other African nations will never thrive if their citizens cannot count on the government to deliver services fairly, regardless of their tribal background or ability to pay bribes, Obama told about 600 people at the state-run University of Nairobi.\n"In the end, if the people cannot trust their government to do the job for which it exists -- to protect them and to promote their common welfare -- all else is lost," he said.\nObama is winding down his trip to Africa, which began Aug. 18 in South Africa. On Tuesday, he will visit the world-famous Masai Mara game reserve in southern Kenya, followed by trips to Djibouti and Chad.\nThe Illinois Democrat has received the warmest welcome in Kenya, where the people have claimed Obama as one of their own even though he was mostly raised in Hawaii and did not know his Kenyan father well.\nThis is Obama's third visit to Kenya but his first since being elected the United States' only black senator in 2004.\nOn Monday, he acknowledged the irony of a politician from Chicago, known for its long history of public corruption, talking about good government. But while corruption is universal, he said in Kenya it amounts to "a crisis that's robbing an honest people of opportunities they have fought for."\nGovernment officials did not immediately respond to Obama's comments Monday. The senator had a closed-door meeting with President Mwai Kibaki last week.\nKenya has been roiled for years by widespread allegations of corruption. Kibaki won elections in 2002, promising to root out the corruption that had become endemic under the 24-year rule of his predecessor, President Daniel arap Moi. But now, Kibaki too is facing mounting pressure to respond to allegations of high-level corruption.\nA study by the watchdog group Transparency International found that Kenyans encountered bribery in nearly half their interactions with officials.\nKibaki's administration has pointed to its efforts to root out corrupt judges and ongoing investigations into high-level wrongdoing. Officials also have said that the government alone cannot fight corruption and asked individuals and companies to stop paying bribes.\nObama argued that corruption is not simply unfair, but it hampers growth of Kenyan businesses and discourages foreign investors. It weakens the nation's ability to respond to crises like AIDS, malaria and drought, he said, and it can feed fear and hatred within the country.\nLaw student John Kamau, who was in the audience, said he hopes Obama's message will get more attention because it comes from a wildly popular figure and someone with no stake in Kenya's political rivalries. But the message itself was nothing new.\n"It's like a song that has been sung before," Kamau said.\nObama said the Kenyan government must reduce patronage jobs and increase salaries for the remaining employees to reduce temptation for taking bribes. It also needs clear laws and regulations so that individual bureaucrats cannot twist the rules to their own ends, Obama said.\n"Finally, ethnic-based tribal politics have to stop," he said to applause from the audience of students, university staff, business leaders and others.\nObama said his father, a Kenyan government economist, butted heads with government officials over ethnicity and patronage and ended up losing his government job. Obama said his father also held outdated views about the roles of women, and, as a result, never enjoyed a strong family life.\nHis father died in a car crash in 1982, leaving three wives, six sons and a daughter.\n"In many ways, my family's history reflects some of the contradictions of Kenya and indeed the African continent as a whole," Obama said.\nAIDS prevention also has been a theme of Obama's visit. On Saturday, he and his wife, Michelle, underwent public HIV tests at a hospital in the city of Kisumu in an effort to reduce the public stigma associated with HIV testing.\nObama and his family also traveled Saturday to Nyangoma-Kogelo, a tiny village in the rural west where his father grew up. He stopped at his father's grave and visited his 85-year-old grandmother.