The circus is truly in town but don’t use IDPs as bait in your political wars

You have to give the devil his due. Mr Uhuru Kenyatta and Mr William Ruto have done a sterling job milking political capital out of accusations they face of crimes against humanity, including murder, rape and other sexual violations, forcible displacement of people, persecution and other inhumane acts.

They arrived from The Hague on Monday to an orchestrated welcome as triumphant warriors.

From the roadshow that snaked its way from Jomo Kenyatta International Airport onto the rally at Uhuru Park, the message was that the Ocampo Six, or at least two of them, are at the head of an emergent political movement designed to halt the presidential ambitions of Prime Minister Raila Odinga come 2012.

The victory parade at Uhuru Park, where the ICC and Mr Odinga were roundly bashed by large number of MPs, was indeed a great success if the size of the crowd is anything to go by.

It was also used to demonstrate that the alliance has gone beyond the ill-thought out KKK of Uhuru, Ruto and Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka (for the Kikuyu, Kalenjin, Kamba communities), to bring in leaders from all over the country and present the face of Kenya rather than a narrow ethnic grouping.

The organisers also got an unexpected boost ahead of the rally with the clumsy attempt by Mr Odinga’s ODM camp to hijack the venue for some purported prayers for those displaced by the post-election violence.

The IDPs are a shameful blot on our society and can be a potent weapon against the Ocampo Six who are accused of the crimes that slaughtered 1,133 souls and ran more than half million out of their homes.

However, it comes out as crass, heartless and shameless opportunism when Mr Odinga suddenly remembers that there are hundreds of thousands of IDPs whose suffering he can exploit to hit out at political rivals.

Just as shameless, of course, is that the leaders who are accused of leading the forces that fought it out after the disputed 2007 elections are now trumpeting a union they say will deliver them to State House in 2012, but not mentioning a word on what they are doing to allow those displaced to go back to their homes.

If Mr Kenyatta and Mr Ruto have, indeed, kissed and made up, one would imagine that their first priority would be resettlement of the IDPs that are still languishing in the cold.

And here we would be talking, not about the government buying land for alternative settlement, but a process that allows those kicked out of their homes anywhere in Kenya to go back, rebuild their houses and resume their lives.

It would have been a powerful statement yesterday if Mr Ruto had used the occasion to invite back, with his guarantee of security, all those forced by violent and bloodthirsty mobs to flee their homes, farms and businesses in Eldoret, Kericho, Burnt Forest, Molo, Turbo and other places in that neighbourhood where he reigns unchallenged.

Likewise, Mr Kenyatta could have issued an open welcome for those similarly kicked out of Kiambu, Limuru, Kikuyu, Nyeri, Murang’a and other places in central Kenya where he has been crowned the new ethnic king.

Instead, Kenyans were forced to endure yet more of the hatred and vitriol that serves as proof positive that our leaders never learnt a single lesson from the post-election carnage.

Senior leaders intent on capturing power or trading it within families and communities have unleashed their rabble-rousers on scorched-earth strategies.

The premature campaigns are being conducted without a care in the world that Kenya only just narrowly stepped back from the precipice, and that the reforms required to stave of civil war in future are nowhere near complete.

We have a new Constitution that might be a useless piece of paper if the implementation process is derailed by cheap and selfish politics.
Indeed, abortion of the new Constitution will leave us in a dangerous legal limbo that could only lead to disaster.

This is especially so in a situation where some of these people are even threatening to scuttle the next elections if their favoured candidates are occupied at The Hague.

mgaitho@ke.nationmedia.com.