We took circuitous route but The Hague here we come

Kenya: National attention is turning to The Hague trials where from next week Deputy President William Ruto will be in the dock and President Uhuru on November 12.

It has been a long walk to the sanctum of the International Criminal Court, a process characterised by highly ethnicised politics, which transformed communities from which the key suspects come from into a vote-minting machine.

Opinion has been divided on whether the two, alongside journalist Joshua Arap Sang, are guilty but that is a topic better left to lawyers and judges. There are those who argue the process was polluted by international politics, an issue bandied by those who see ICC suspects as pawns in the West’s supremacy war with China. This must be why Uhuru has opened the Kenyan doors wider for China than Mzee Kibaki did!

The position has been amplified by the courage with which Kenya has rallied Africa to pull out of the Rome Statute, through mobilising the African Union. On this front, Uhuru and Ruto could count on commitment of Mzee Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, the master of political boisterousness in Uganda Yoweri Museveni, and that walking-stick-lover across the border who has been indicted by the ICC and is seemingly only welcome in Kenya —  Omar Al-Bashir.

At first, majority of Kenyan leaders, including Ruto voiced support for trials at The Hague, arguing first that it bore greater credibility and secondly, was less riskier than the justice system under former President Kibaki, which they felt was susceptible to Executive lynching and manipulation.

But then much later, the tune changed, long after Parliament crushed efforts to set up a local credible judicial mechanism. The vogue then was that the smaller fry, or youths, were going to be swept into police cells selectively and in droves. It were wiser, our leaders thundered, less harmful to let The Hague handle cases because trials would take decades and it could only deal with a few individuals.

But as it turned out, they were only right on the first argument and wrong on how long trials would take to start and close. That is why on Tuesday 10th, Ruto will be in the dock, and no one can tell how long the trials would take, not even Uhuru’s.

Our national attention is on three different issues, the first being whether there will be a power vacuum in the moments both our country’s chief executive and his deputy will be on trial. The answer to this question again is ethnicised and depends on the community and political affiliation of the person you are asking.

The second issue is if the two leaders would have the intensity of concentration required of them to deliver the Jubilee promise when half the month they would each probably be at The Hague. This again is debatable because one side will argue that with modern technology you can run the country from anywhere in the world.

The other argues the grind of the hearing, what may likely be told in court, and the long sessions with lawyers alongside the shuttle to and from The Hague, would be distractive to say the least.

Parallel to leading Africa initiatives to get out of the Rome Statute, long after the plane of trials take off and is far away from the Kenyan airport taxiway, there is also the special session of Parliament to try formalise the process of getting the ICC justice mongrel off the back of Kenya.