When William Ruto reassured his political base that the Hague Option would take up to 2090 to be concluded, he could not have imagined that Luis Moreno-Ocampo would move with alacrity. When the ICC prosecutor names his Hague Six, the political ramifications cannot be predicted. President Kibaki and Prime Minister Odinga held a Cabinet meeting yesterday, resolving, inter alia, to push for the formation of a local tribunal to try suspects of the PEV. Hon. Gitobu Imanyara has resurrected his Bill that floundered on the floor of the National Assembly after Members of Parliament cravenly refused to take a vote on it. The Minister for Justice tried twice too and suffered similar defeats to the Imanyara Bill. The chickens have come home to roost and it is time Kenyans prepared themselves for a change in the weather forecast.
Hon. Ruto has been the most vocal opponent of the ICC process. He has even undertaken to challenge the authority of the ICC prosecutor; he elected to challenge the process once it became apparent that the prosecutor would not be held at bay. In his frenzied legal maneuvering, he has realised that despite the support he enjoys in the North Rift, he may have cooked his goose well and truly. No longer are Kenyans willing to sit idly by while impunity stalks the land like a Colossus.
In 2007 when Kenyans went to the polls, it was apparent that both sides of the political divide were angling for a clean sweep of the nation. President Kibaki controlled the instruments of State but he did not have complete control over the country. The National Security and Intelligence Service warned him that regardless of the results of the polls, there would be violence. Instead of taking measures to ensure that lives and property would be protected, he allowed his cronies and acolytes to use the Administration Police, among other institutions, to subvert the will of the people. The stories of APs participating and influencing the course of particular Parliamentary races refuse to die down and this is part of the reason why the security chiefs are trying for all they are worth to stall the process of taking their evidence before Lady Justice Kalpana Rawal of the High Court of Kenya. Raila Odinga's ODM was not to be outdone either. Stories of ODM victories carried on the back of 100+% turnout have also refused to die down. The fact of the matter is, the two sides engaged in wanton and rampant electoral malpractices that retired Justice Johann Kriegler's assertion that we cannot know for certain who won have a ring of truth about them. Both sides engaged in unlawful acts and when the Prime Minister and his supporters call for the 'thieves' of the elections to be investigated as a cause for the PEV, they put themselves squarely in the cross-hairs of the ICC prosecutor.
During President Moi's reign, his word was law. He determined whether one had a political career or not. It was by his fiat that one lived or died and he used his power to ruthlessly crush those he deemed unworthy of his grace. There would be no question of a person's political career stalling without the president's say-so and this is the system that we have sought to overturn since President Kibaki's inauguration in 2003. Despite President Kibaki's many flaws, and they are manifest, he has done more than any other person to liberalise the political arena. When Luis Moreno-Ocampo names his suspects tomorrow, their careers will be over. It is inconceivable that men and women who used violence to perpetuate their political careers will survive the revelations by the ICC prosecutor. This is a good thing. Echoing what Sunday Nation columnist Phillip Ochieng has said, the tribe is blameless for the sins of the politician. For those who were schooled in the Moi way of doing things, this must come as a shock.
William Ruto and his supporters in the erstwhile Rift Valley who continue to hold on to the notion that the tribe is the best bulwark against a hostile political sea are slowly beginning to realise that the KANU way is over and done with. They do not have a political godfather to manage the political climate for them. They stand or they fall on their own merits. If Hon. Ruto is named in the indictments tomorrow, he has no one to blame but himself. Sure his political allies, including the Prime Minister, have turned their backs on him. But this is only because he started believing his own press. Whether he remains a loyal, if disgruntled, member of ODM remains to be seen. Whether his alliance with Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka and Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta survives the indictment is now in doubt. What is for certain is this: if he is named, he can date the day and the hour when his political career came to an end. This will be the same for the names that will be linked to anyone one connected to the Ocampo Six. It is only a matter of time before all comes out as rats desert the sinking ship. These people do not deserve our sympathy or our mercy. If they are convicted, it is important that their convictions will be on the basis of the thousands of lives that were lost, the thousands of families that were destroyed, the thousands of women and children that were sexually abused, the billions in shillings that were lost and the hundreds of thousands of Kenyans who were driven from their homes in the middle of the night and have lived like wild animals since the dark days of December 2007.
No comments:
Post a Comment