Kiplagat gets legislators' backing

The truth team should allow its beleaguered chairman Bethuel Kiplagat resume office, MPs said Thursday.

David Koech (Mosop), Charles Keter (Belgut) and Moses Lessonet (Eldama Ravine) said the Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission had to act in tandem if it was intent on fulfilling its mandate.

The MPs said that Mr Kiplagat had been cleared by a court of law and as such the other commissioners, who’ve vowed not to work with him, should abide by the court ruling.

“It disturbs us. It concerns us. That other commissioners can lock him out of his office even when the courts have cleared him is a mark of impunity,” said Mr Koech during a news conference in Parliament buildings.

The lawmakers, whose constituencies are in the Rift Valley province, one of the hot-spots of the 2007-2008 post-election violence, said their region had not been represented in the healing commission.

They took the view that if the commission does not present a unified face, its work will be in vain.

“If the commissioners cannot reconcile, how can they tell us they are reconciling Kenyans,” said Mr Koech, who is the chairman of Parliament’s Committee on Education, Science and Technology.

He said it was wrong for the commissioners to treat one of their own as an outcast.

“We’re saying that unless they’re hiding something, something which they know about Mr Kiplagat, which we don’t, they should share it with Kenyans,” said Mr Koech.

He added that there was no point in keeping up with the reconciliation exercise if the commissioners are practicing “total impunity by ignoring a court ruling. (READ: Court opens door for Kiplagat's TJRC return)

“I don’t know why the police have not acted against the commissioners,” said Mr Koech.

He also tore into the commission’s work saying that so far they have been “listening to people crying”.

“We’re yet to see them try to reconcile the people. We do not want them to table a report on just how people have suffered, but one that will also tell us how those people were reconciled,” the Mosop MP said.

If the commissioners fail to do their work, the MPs said they’d lobby their colleagues to disband the TJRC.. 

They insisted that Mr Kiplagat had an international standing in reconciliation and that he ought to be back in the fold if the final report is to be credible.