From: maina ndiritu
It is becoming increasingly clear that Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta and Eldoret North MP William Ruto do not stand a chance of a fair trial at the ICC over the crimes against humanity charges against them.
With sickening regularity in recent weeks and months, key figures involved in the prosecution and in the so-called continuing mediation efforts are making reckless pronouncements designed to hopelessly prejudice these cases.
The ground is clearly being expertly prepared for a massive miscarriage of justice and the first international show trial of the 21st Century.
Indeed, on Monday last week, Uhuru significantly observed: “Even suspects have their own rights, in their own nations. From the time we were named, we said we were determined to follow due process to clear our names, but this does not mean we should be denied our rights.”
The Chief Prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, and the head of the Kenyan post-election violence mediation process, former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, have made remarks that are explicitly intended to stand in the way of Uhuru and Ruto’s ultimate political ambitions. And both have brazenly denied they were interfering in Kenyan electoral politics. The double-speak has been astonishing.
A couple of weeks ago, soon after a week-long visit to Kenya, Bensouda issued a statement in which she made clear for the first time the extent to which she would rely on evidence adduced by hidden witnesses against Uhuru. These people also happened to have been self-confessed former senior members of Mungiki when it was a murder cult.
Such ‘evidence’ and such ‘witnesses’ are the stuff the show trials in the totalitarian states of the 20th Century contained. Even Uhuru’s worst enemies can see that the ICC really has it in for him.
And then, this week, in remarks that somehow coincided with the announcement of Uhuru and Ruto’s joint ticket for the 2013 presidential race, Annan parachuted into the centre of Kenya’s General Election campaign.
In a weird performance on BBC, he told Kenyans that it is “not in the interest of the country” for the electorate to elect a leader “who will not be able to freely interact with the rest of the world, including travelling to some countries”.
When the BBC reporter urged Annan to come out and state whether he was, in fact, urging Kenyans not to elect Uhuru and Ruto, he denied this and snapped: “Do not put words in my mouth”.
Even the idiot in every Kenyan (or other) village could see right through such cynicism and advance-rigging.
Mr Annan’s truly frightening double-speak is the kind of hypocrisy that produced the bizarre accusations against Uhuru and Ruto in the first place.
If this is how he can behave on-air speaking to a global broadcaster like the BBC, how does he behave behind closed doors at, say, the Kenyan Judiciary, where he has met Chief Justice Willy Mutunga, not once, but twice, in recent weeks?
As for the juvenile fiction that presidential and deputy- presidential visits to foreign countries are show-stoppers of the highest significance, go tell it to the birds! The assertion about Kenya’s isolation in the event of Uhuru and Ruto being elected is nonsense.
For completely different reasons, Mzee Jomo Kenyatta did not travel abroad after 1964 for the rest of his life, yet Kenya enjoyed a profile that was higher than anything since.
A competent, high-profile head of the Foreign Office (the Foreign Secretary), the rest of the Cabinet outside the presidency, and the Brand Kenya Board launching a particularly creative nation-branding campaign, is all we would need.
Many Kenyans do not trust Mr Annan. The reverse is also true — there are millions of Kenyans who blindly support him and name themselves, their new-borns and even matatus after him.
The thing to note is that we are looking at a political fault-line here, a political divide, the fruit of adversarial politicking and negative ethnicity.
And yet Annan can stand there and assure the world that the ICC process is devoid of politics. From where I stand, he is himself a political player now and anyone who says otherwise is a psychopathological liar.
Enough of mind games: The ICC is clearly out to bring down its biggest prey yet — two top political leaders from a functioning, not a failed, State. This is an act of desperation; it is not justice.
In fact, it is the ICC itself that runs the highest risk of isolation and international opprobrium in 2013 should the perception gain ground inside Kenya, and elsewhere in Africa, that a free and fair trial is just not possible at The Hague for these two leaders.
Mr Waikenda is the TNA director of communications.
http://www.nation.co.ke/oped/Opinion/Annan-and-his-ilk-pre-rigging-the-Kenya-polls/-/440808/1646980/-/item/1/-/noavcj/-/index.html
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Why should we not all live in peace and harmony ? we look up the same stars we are fellow passengers on the same planet and dwell beneath the same sky , what matters it along which road each individual endeavours to reach the ultimate truth ? the riddle of existence is too great that there should be only one road leading us to an answer
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QUINTUS AURELIUS SYMMACHUS
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