Kenya should not be held to ransom over ICC cases

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Kenya should not be held to ransom over ICC cases

Updated Thursday, September 12th 2013 at 22:10 GMT +3

By Denise Kodhe

It is not Kenya that is on trial at The Hague. Both President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto should know that Kenya is not on trial at the International Criminal Court ( ICC). They are in the criminal court as individuals suspected of committing crimes against humanity. They did not hold presidential positions when they first appeared before the international court a year ago for admission and mention.

The International Criminal Court has been very clear all through on their position regarding local political issues. ICC publicly stated that political decisions made in countries where indictees come from have no effect, bearing, influence or relations with ongoing cases at the court.

It is naïve and hypocritical for both Uhuru and Ruto to drag their current positions into the cases facing them at the International Criminal Court. It would be unfortunate if they were using the General Election in March as a strategy to avoid or find a way around the cases facing them at The Hague
Before the elections last March, Kenyans were warned by the international community that it would be not business as usual and that choices have consequences; these warnings were vehemently ignored.
Instead, Kenyans went ahead and elected Uhuru Kenyatta as President and William Ruto as Deputy President.

The Kenyan people, Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto should now face the consequences and stop shifting blame and goalposts using their positions and the Kenyan constitution.

The people of Kenya, including the three indictees facing criminal charges at the ICC, knew very well the implications of their ambitions on their cases at the court.
Initiators of detention
The ICC is not a local court like Kibera or Milimani. It is an international court with international jurisdiction.
The International Criminal Court was set up by the United Nations for a purpose which Kenya and other Africa nations supported as members. Besides, Kenya is a founder member of the court and moreso a signatory to its Statute.
It is out of order now for Kenya to turn around against an institution that it founded.

The late Jaramogi Oginga Odinga was among the leading initiators of detention law in Kenya after independence but unfortunately or fortunately, he became the first victim of it.
After all, it was the Kenyan legislators who opted for The Hague option despite desperate appeals, advice and attempts by Kofi Annan, retired President Mwai Kibaki and former Prime Minister Raila Odinga among others to settle on a local tribunal.


President Uhuru Kenyatta and his Jubilee government should stop confusing Kenyans and making erratic decisions and actions that will plunge the country into chaos and crisis for a long time.

Kenyans should not allow themselves to be intimidated and coerced by the Jubilee government to support issues which are more or else personal. The rule of law and practice of good governance must be adhered to, practised and respected by all leaders in the world.

The president should do Kenyans a favour by separating ICC which is, in his own words, a personal issue, from the government and the people of Kenya.
Many Kenyans lost their lives and property during the post-election violence of 2008.
Justice must be seen to be done and not heard. This is the long-term and best way to create healing, harmony and unity among the people of Kenya.
Solidarity among a few African leaders against the International Criminal Court is suspect. It would be interesting to analyse the character of African leaders using the African Union to discredit ICC. What is behind their actions? Africa can do better and deserves good leaders with focus and integrity to move it to the next level.
Crooked and jinxed
Respectable and independent-minded African leaders like President Jakaya Kikwete of Tanzania among others should stand tall in support of ICC.
They should not join the bandwagon or fall into the trap of crooked and jinxed African leaders who are still living in the past and who think that the presidency is a prerogative of tribes, families and a few select groups.
Democracy and good governance must develop and thrive in Africa.

Africa should be able to compete with other developed and developing countries so as to prosper both economically and politically rather than being strangled by selfish and unfocused leaders with no ambitions or future.
The writer is Executive Director, Institute for Democracy & Leadership in Africa - IDEA.

Source: Standard Newspaper

 

Real talk!

International Criminal Court is our national life insurance policy

Should Kenya pull out of the Rome Statute that established the International Criminal Court ( ICC)? The answer is NO! A very big NO, if the word has different sizes!
It does not matter what the members of the majority in the 11th Parliament say. It does not matter what the majority in the Kenyan Senate say and it does not matter what all of our new cabinet secretaries say.

If we soberly consider the long-term interests of this country and our own chequered history, we should come to the conclusion that, for the time being and probably for the next 50 years, we need the ICC much more than the ICC needs us.
Majorities are always majorities but they are not always right. Some of the worst political decisions that the histories of many countries record have been made or vigorously supported by majorities of one hue or another.
It was the Hutu majority that perpetrated the Rwanda genocide of 1994. It was the Nazi dominance of German politics in the early 1940s that drove the final solution to the Jewish problem, which accounted for the extermination of more than six million European Jews.
We must never fail to carefully interrogate a decision merely because it was made or endorsed by a majority.
An intelligent and experienced warlord can build an effective armed force within no more than two or three years. Reasonably free and fair elections can be achieved in any country after only two or three attempts.
Of the major institutions that collate to form a modern state, the most difficult one to construct is an authoritative and corruption-free judiciary that is roundly respected both within and beyond its own jurisdiction. This is a judiciary in which no one would seriously think of bribing the judge, the prosecutor or the policeman.
Both the majority and the minority in our two houses of Parliament know very well that, even though our judiciary has made tremendous progress over the last few years, it is still a work-in-progress.
Scales of justice
All of our MPs and senators know that our scales of justice do not always swing blindly. They know that there are certain people in this country whom it would be virtually impossible to prosecute effectively within our own borders.
They know that there are certain cases within our courts that have taken over 20 years to hear and determine. And they know that, at the height of the post-election violence of 2008, there was no indigenous judicial mechanism to which the victims or their relatives could turn.

Standard Digital News - Kenya : International Criminal Court is our national life insurance policy
 
Here is Ababu Namwamba's take:


International Criminal Court is not for the three, our conscience is on trial

Updated Sunday, September 15th 2013 at 12:22 GMT +3

By Ababu Namwamba

Jubilee or CORD. Kalenjin or Duruma. Victim or accused. Whatever your political affiliation, ethnic extraction, sentiment or emotion. If you are Kenyan, and you have any semblance of a conscience... you cannot help but feel a searing sense of national shame.

The image of the Deputy President of the Republic taking a plea on the worst crimes known in criminal jurisprudence; the prospect of the Commander-in-Chief of our Defence Forces in the dock in a faraway land; the hunted demeanor of our journalist fighting terrifying charges in the blinding glare of global media.

The spectacle of Members of Parliament in panic-mode scampering all over in a shambolic bid to torpedo the Rome Statute. Scenes of elected leaders, flag in hand mumbling words of our national anthem on the cold streets of a foreign jurisdiction. It matters little whether you are pro or anti- ICC. This whole show shames us all. It is a damning unraveling of everything we have got wrong for fifty years... curiously unfolding in Kenya's year of jubilee! It is a severe trial of fifty years of our puerile stone-age tribal bigotry. For fifty years we have celebrated the tribe above all else. Tribe over country.

Tribe over justice. Tribe over merit. For fifty years we have stolen, raped, pillaged and perverted the course of justice...then taken refuge in the tribe.For fifty years we have paid lip service to nationhood while carving ethnic fiefdoms and elevating tinpots to tribal dons... to protect "our own" in the harsh jungle that is the Kenyan State.

Little wonder that even ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensounda has built her case along the natural Kenyan fault-lines of tribe against tribe. It is a fatal condemnation of fifty years of horrific impunity and disdain for the rule of law. For fifty years, we have entrenched the belief that impunity pays much better than fidelity to the rule of law. This belief is the stream that nourishes the serpent of impunity, which has squeezed us dry of any sense of what is fair, just and right; sucked us empty of our ability to be shocked, awed or ashamed; shortened our memory to warthog levels; and dulled our capacity for moral outrage. When some skunkhead of a driver smashes dozens of school children to smithereens, we shake our heads in fleeting horror, and then life goes on.

Do we even remember the price of the 2007-8 pogroms, subject of the ICC drama? Well, just 1,133 dead, 3,561 injured, 663,921 displaced...only! And, oh yes, the little risk of the country almost going banana. Who wants reminding that ethnic xenophobia has disturbed Kenya's soul every electoral cycle since the return of political pluralism in 1991? Innocent lives and property were wasted in 1992, we did nothing. And in 1997, no finger lifted.

Then the 2008 implosion, but who cares! Den Haag typifies a stinging indictment of fifty years of systematic collapse of our state institutions. For decades, we compromised the sanctity of our judicial edifice, clogging the corridors of justice with the filth of graft and incompetence, reducing justice to a commodity pawned to the highest bidder.

This made the choice of ICC or local tribunal a toss of "the untrusted known or the trusted unknown"...Vague vs Hague! We have now evolved this chilling hyper suspicion of any judicial decision at variance with our expectation.

The trials are a deserved sharp rebuke of our leadership, a tacit confirmation that we are a nation afflicted by a chronic trust deficit. No one trusts anyone. We could not even trust ourselves with the fabled Waki envelope.

Every cycle of national leadership since independence has failed to dry the streams of tribal animosity, forge national trust or exorcise the demons of impunity. While Julius Nyerere was fostering a strong sense of nationalism across the diverse ethnicities of Tanzania, Jomo Kenyatta was sowing seeds of toxic tribal jingoism.

As Ghana makes admirable progress in burying a legacy of coups and entrenching a culture of credible democratic practice, we seem determined to regress.

No, it is not just three Kenyans on trial in a faraway foreign court. On trial is our very national character and conscience.

Standard Digital News - Kenya : International Criminal Court is not for the three, our conscience is on trial
 
I agree with Namwamba that this trial is about 50 years of mass murder and impunity based on the state religion of ethnic bigotry and tribalism whose Vatican has been at State House for half a century now. Uhuru has taken over that mantle and it looks good on him.

How fitting it is that Kenya will be celebrating 50 years of paper independence (Jubilee) with the president and his sidekick at The Hague for mass murder and other crimes against impunity. The nation is exactly where it belongs. Some people say this is humiliating to the republic. Oh Please. Our leaders at State House have been humiliating and pissing on the nation for fifty years. When you shit in your own house don't complain when others come in and say it is time to clean up.
 

You do not expect Africa to compete with the rest,,if the grounds are not,,that,,equal.

You create some dubious courts to deal with me and NOT YOU,,,then expect the
competition to be fair??????

What a shame to see very educated Africans,,crying and beseeching the
same colonizers and rapers of the African resources,,to come and help
Africa.

These poor Africans will rather put their hopes,,not in themselves and
create a strong country,,,but rely on some thuggish courts put up by
the same colonizers to deal,,eti..with atrocities committed in the same
countries they,,the same pure like pamba countries such as Britain,
French and America,,committed,,,in the past.

Compare the atrocities,,, committed by the British in this country
before,,the independence,,to those of,,,2007,,,,


People were castrated,,displaced,,women raped,,land confiscated
forcefully and so much.

I do not know what is the need for education,,,if you cannot use it.

To hear some,,misplaced Africans,,crying that Kenya and others,,in
Africa,,,,that,,they will better stay in that Roman thing,,,that we
are safe there,,,,

If this is the truth,,,,then why waste time and have countries
calling themselves,,African countries,,,why not just give ourselves
to them and let them rule us..directly,,which is simpler????????

But i tell these lazy Africans,,,if you are not capable of taking
care of yourself and Africa,,,,it is only you,,,,but not every one
in Africa,,for many have confidence in themselves and that we
do not needs things we don't know about,,we will build Africa
with whatever we have.

In the course of doing that,,we will be making mistakes,,,but
we will rectify it and move ahead.

America did experience so much before reaching where they
are today,,going through bad times,,including civil wars.

They never needed any Roman statues,,,to be strong,,or,,
reach the level,,they are today.

If you are so weak and need some protection from some
funny international organizations,,,,those mafia like ,,go make
Africa of your own for the rest of Africa is saying,,,,,

A big NO to the Neo-colonization.
 

appeals advices and attempts by koffi annan and mwai kibaki raila or even kikwete did not take place within the last six months so it is useless to mention them at this point. legislators, and the then atttorney general amos wako had all the time to ensure that we create a local tribunal

Kenya was given a chance to create a local tribunal, it is the same legislators in the ‘coalition govt' that derailed its formation during the kibaki era. I only see pple going down bleeding with rage using uhuruto as a scapegoat because what were the positions of and uhuru and ruto in the last coalition govt?? you have even failed to give their mandate during that time.

You have to understand what the definition sovereignty means, using the outside tool as ICC to as a scare tool against kenyans making descions means ICC has only worked against your bids for highest positions in the land.

no one can beleive until now that several key witnessess have failed to cooperate with the court even with the amount of time, the prosecution had had to get evidence linking the two for crimes against humanity. if the iCC is nuancing errors on its part they should stop seeking for the easy way out by claiming more criminals and our kenyan government should not be part of that dictatorial scheme which would be simmilar to abuse of office. The time is ripe when kenya should pull out with immediate effect from the rome statutes and lean more towards an independent judiciary.

It is clear that raila kofi annan pleaded for a local tribunal and the unfortunate part is if kenya decide to pull out of the rome statutes, why does it become a matter of concern annan kibaki raila, who initially wanted a local tribunal..

this investment by coalition govt legislators that was meant to create an easy way out from following democracy to win elections has ulitimately caught up with them and made them lost credibility in the last general elections.
 

these are the same same british that are compensating penauts to the mau mau thinking such acts will erase from history what they have done. The process of compensation must be a thoughtful one and not because one politician wants to boost their political careers because it is expedient for them.

these are the children of the same british people that committed killings during colonization that are shouting for the president to go to the ICC
 
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