Kibaki calls crisis talks over Hague

The government on Monday grappled to find the right response to Wednesday’s court appearance at The Hague where election violence suspects will be named.

International Criminal Court prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo is expected in court on Wednesday afternoon to ask for indictments against six Kenyans.

A heated Cabinet meeting resulted in a statement assuring the public of security. It also put the government behind efforts to revive local trials of chaos suspects.

Ominously, police said some Members of Parliament had been going round rallying supporters to demonstrate as soon as certain political figures are named as suspected masterminds of the 2007 election bloodbath.

Police commanders across the country have been put on alert and asked to prepare for demonstrations. They have also been ordered to be restrained in the use of live bullets. But they will allow peaceful demonstrations, police spokesman Eric Kiraithe said.

In Cabinet, a minister who attended but did not wish to be named because Cabinet proceedings are secret, said the two sides of the coalition traded blame in what he described as a “stormy” meeting. They resolved to seek the United Nations’ help to form a local tribunal.

A Presidential Press Service statement after the meeting noted that Parliament shot down Government efforts to form a local tribunal.

At the same time, politicians and other groups were busy discrediting the ICC.

A group calling itself the National Council of Elders sought suspension of The Hague proceedings until the ICC gave an understaking that those who appear before it will get a fair trial.

President Kibaki seems to have called Monday’s extraordinary session of Cabinet to rally ministers behind the ICC process and assure the country the government will deal with other perpetrators of the violence through a local process.

“Irrespective of what transpires at the ICC on Wednesday 15th December, 2010, and in view of the fact that ICC is only a court of last resort, the government will establish a local judicial mechanism in accordance with the Rome Statute within the framework of the new Constitution,” the PPS statement said.

Without a local mechanism, the meeting, which was also attended by Prime Minister Raila Odinga at State House, was unanimous that peace and security, political stability, national reconciliation, and justice for victims will not be achieved.

“The Government has on various occasions stated that the cases arising out of the post-election violence should be resolved through an independent and credible local judicial process.  In that respect, the Government published two Bills which were unfortunately rejected by the National Assembly,” said the PPS.

The minister who spoke to the Nation said the two sides, PNU and ODM, traded accusations over responsibility for what was described as “premeditated” violence and “retaliatory” chaos that ensued after the presidential election results were disputed in the December 2007 poll.

At the end of the meeting that started at noon, the minister said, three Cabinet ministers, Kiraitu Murungi, Njeru Githae and James Orengo, drafted the statement later sent to the media.

Earlier, MPs David Koech (Mosop) and Jeremiah Kioni (Ndaragwa), sought to discredit the ICC process, claiming that Mr Moreno-Ocampo held secret talks with a senior ODM minister in Nairobi and Washington.

They claimed the ODM bigwig sought to incriminate some individuals and render them ineligible to run for president in 2012. They also criticised ODM leaders for calling for mass action in the aftermath of the election and demanded that they too be prosecuted.

“It is known to us that a senior ODM minister some time ago flew all the way to Washington to hold a meeting with Ocampo. The same minister also had a closed door meeting with the prosecutor when he was in the country recently. This has led us to believe that the Hague process is no longer judicial, but political,” Mr Kioni said at the Boulevard Hotel in Nairobi.

He accused the ODM of rushing to meet the prosecutor secretly “yet some of their people instigated the youth by calling for nonstop mass action”.

Reporting by Bernard Namunane, Timothy Kemei, Zaddock Angira and Fred Mukinda