Kenya Stockholm Blog

Why Uhuru and Ruto Should Be Defeated Then Locked in The Hague

Kenya may become a political guinea pig in the International arena

Already, some warnings about “serious consequences” have been sent by sympathizers and good Samaritans who believe that Kenyans may be heading into a ditch.

As the Kenya Presidential debate progressed on the evening of 11th February 2013, “the big elephant” suddenly walked into the room – the ICC question. If I were to be the chief examiner relying on answers given by the candidates as a yard-stick to grade them on the ICC issue, Mohammed Abduda Dida scoops the prize, Martha Karua comes second, Raila comes third, Peter Kenneth takes the fourth position, Mudavadi takes fifth position while Paul Muite comes last. Ole Kiyiapi cannot be graded while Uhuru Kenyatta gets disqualified because of answering the wrong question. What is my motivation?

Dida is the only candidate who clearly disagreed with the fact that Uhuruto’s names were on the ballot. He wondered aloud why a Clerk facing charges in a court of law should step down while in the case of Uhuru, it was business as usual. Martha Karua came close to this position by wondering whether Uhuru will be suspended before or after he takes office in case he is elected President. According to Karua, any Kenyan can file a case in court after election for Uhuru’s suspension on grounds of the Constitution with the likelihood that such a case might succeed.

Raila comes third because he did not openly disagree with Uhuru’s failure to step aside but expressed the difficulties of running a country through Skype while in The Hague. Peter Kenneth comes after Raila because his main problem was that Uhuru is not locked out of the process of elections because of the ICC cases. Muite comes last because despite his legal background, he forgot that the ICC cases came about after investigations by Justice Waki who handed over the envelopes to Kofi Annan who subsequently forwarded the envelope to ICC where it was later discovered that Uhuruto’s names were in the big list.

Muite comes last because although he had a right to pontificate that the two principles ought to take part of the responsibility for the 2007 chaos, this is a view he ought to have expressed to Waki, Anan or ICC way back in 2008, not to Raila who was not involved in the investigations. If Muite could forget about the fact that the names emerged through the Waki report, one may wonder whether he still remembers where State House is located after he went underground following his rejection by his own people in 2007. James ole Kiyiapi cannot be graded because he ran out of time and never made his point clear. Uhuru is disqualified because of one reason.

Instead of clarifying how he would run Kenya with the ICC cases on his neck, he instead, linked the case to a personal challenge he was facing. Observing that every Kenyan (including the presidential candidates) had personal challenges, Uhuru sought to portray the ICC problem as a human problem, not a huge political crisis that has never been witnessed in Kenya since the Mau Mau took up arms to resist the British colonialists before they were betrayed by home guards. In taking the “personal challenge” line of defence, Uhuru failed to recognize that Kenyans may be experiencing personal problems but that if such problems are of a legal nature and connected to mass murder, the problem ceases to be personal but judicial. In his case, the problem is actually international while the case carries with it grave consequences for the Kenyan nation should Uhuru be elected president.

First, the candidacy of Uhuruto demonstrates to the world that with the catalogue of political reforms which includes a new Constitution to boot, the Republic of Kenya has failed miserably to stop two suspects of crimes against humanity from having their names printed on the ballot paper. The original stopping point could have been section 6 of the new Constitution which failed as the Commission for the Implementation of the Constitution slept. The next stop could have been the courts which also failed while the last hope was IEBC where everything flopped and the suspects were given green light to vie.

The suspects could be summoned to The Hague then locked
The lesson here is that with all the reverence attached to it, the Constitution is a piece of paper for if it was that sacrosanct, how did key suspects of crimes against humanity filter through it to present themselves as Presidential candidates? At the international arena, Kenya is nothing but a laughing stock because after abandoning the colonial-style constitution which we claimed was “imperialistic” we have been unable to follow one crafted by ourselves and now, suspected criminals are seeking to lead the nation to a disaster of unknown proportions.

The second problem is that with names of ICC suspects on the ballot, the people of Kenya have officially been converted into political guinea pigs to study whether there is anybody anywhere in the world (it has never happened) who can knowingly vote for a President and a Vice president who are principle suspects of crimes against humanity at the ICC.

The starting point for psychologists, sociologists, diplomats, political scientists and global anthropologists who will be watching the experiment is that a registered voter is a sane person who can make wise and informed decisions especially on such a critical issue of electing a country’s top Chief Executive. The fact that this kind of situation has presented itself is unique but for observers who fully understand the major implications of electing these suspects to Office, the disturbing issue will be how the people of Kenya will be mentally categorized (depending on the outcome). Already, some warnings about “serious consequences” have been sent by sympathizers and good Samaritans who believe that Kenyans may be heading into a ditch. Apart from recent warnings, Kofi Annan came back personally to warn us followed by Fatou Bensouda of the ICC and Hilary Clinton.

As a sovereign nation (a status we invoke liberally every time we are warned about ICC matters) another experiment which will be running on the side-lines is the political segment designed to establish what happens in case ICC suspects charged with crimes against humanity are actually elected to office in a Third World country in Africa. In fact, many experts are waiting to write books on the subject depending on what happens in Kenya.

May be, our European exploiters probably know that after we probably elect the suspects to Office, and since Britain is currently the “In Charge” of the ICC’s “remote control”, the suspects will be summoned to The Hague and after their arrival, the cunning Britons will press a button and our newly elected leaders will remain locked in the ICC cells indefinitely to attend to their cases. It is at this point that the experiment as to what will happen to the Kenyan nation will begin. If this happens, the exciting part of the experiment is that our new constitution does not cover this kind of scenario and it is too late to amend the Constitution because our Parliament has been dissolved. It is notable that it is the ICC which announced that the cases will start after elections, probably to set the stage for the secret experiment which could have been code named: “Operation Kenya Lockup 2013”.

Under the circumstances, and if I were one of the presidential candidates on the podium, my humble opinion could have been that both Uhuru and Ruto should first suffer a clean defeat at the 4th March polls (because their names will be on the ballot) before being locked at The Hague to face trial and if found guilty, they should be jailed for life as compensation for the thousands of lives which were lost during PEV, billions worth of property that was destroyed and the creation of half a million internal refugees in Kenya. Currently, it is only through a clear defeat at the hands of Kenyan voters that the country can be saved from what could be a looming post-election national disaster likely to make the 2007 disturbances look like a Tea Party.

Okoth Osewe
Secretary General
Kenya Red Alliance (KRA)

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February 13, 2013 - Posted by makozewe | News & Analysis