For MPs, the displaced no longer on radar

Might you remember what the International Criminal Court (ICC) and its Chief Prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo are about? In the deafening decibels of deliberate distortion and pure political propaganda, you will be forgiven if you forget what is at stake.

You do not hear Members of Parliament talking about justice for the thousands of Kenyans killed and the thousands more maimed and displaced during the politically instigated mayhem of late 2007 and early 2008, do you? You don’t and won’t.

What you are hearing increasingly are the names Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto, with Henry Kosgey running a remote third. Of course, there are others to complete the sextet, but those others do not much matter to MPs.

What you hear is not that Ocampo is seeking justice for thousands of Kenyans deeply and forever scarred by the political bedlam and bloodletting of late 2007 and early 2008. What you hear is that Ocampo is a politically partisan purveyor of injustice against innocent Uhuru and blameless Ruto.

MPs and diverse politicians are portraying Uhuru and Ruto as the unfortunate and undeserving victims of the injustices of late 2007 and early 2008, with Postmaster General Hussein Ali, Public Service head Francis Muthaura, Industrialisation minister Kosgey and journalist Joshua Sang as the supporting cast.

In this up-ended scheme of thinking, the IDPs disappear from the MPs’ radar. They are the unknown and unknowable, distant and dispensable crowd in the receding 2007/2008 background. They are not an issue, these internal refugees.

They are not an issue, the conditions they have endured since 2007/2008. To the politicians, the issue is that Ocampo personifies a global and local conspiracy to stop Uhuru and Ruto from marching to the presidency and deputy presidency respectively in 2012.

It is not an issue for MPs that Ali, Sang, Kosgey and Muthaura have families, friends and relatives and that they are as aggrieved as Uhuru’s and Ruto’s are. It is not an issue that the internal refugees have families, friends and relatives who are still waiting for justice three years down the line.

No, the issue for MPs and various politicians is that the people of Central, Mt Kenya and Rift Valley regions are, thanks to Ocampo, solidly united behind Uhuru and Ruto more than ever before. The issue is State House in 2012, not immediate justice for IDPs.

And it follows a pattern, doesn’t it? Remember a fund-raiser was held at the KICC for the IDPs in 2009. No, it was not the plight of IDPs that was the central issue; the fund-raiser was used to unveil so-called Kenya’s next political leadership.

Then, the Kikuyu, Kamba and Kalenjin (KKK) alliance was uncovered. Now, politicians vouch in Parliament for a diabolical motion inimical to the IDPs’ search for justice; then rush to camps to play Father Christmas and issue new resettlement timelines. That’s not different from wishing IDPs an unhappy 2011, is it?

This diabolical cunning of MPs and politicians accounts for their other activities totally and utterly at variance with addressing the plight of IDPs. They have assaulted the law, the four-month-old Constitution and the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR).

The law because it brought into play international justice, which MPs initially wanted but now do not because it has zeroed in on Uhuru and Ruto.

The Constitution because it is clear that all international statutes to which Kenya is a signatory are entrenched in it.

The KNCHR because its 2008 report on the violence of late 2007 early 2008 trains the unwanted searchlight of culpability on Uhuru and Ruto.
But the main reason is that to monster KNCHR is to discredit what politicians believe to be the source of Ocampo’s evidence.

Unfortunately, these politicians can count on powerful company. President Kibaki has decreed that Hague-bound VIPs remain on post until they are proved guilty. Mr President, why did you suspend Ruto from the Cabinet?

Back to the beginning. ICC and Ocampo are neither intruders nor carpetbaggers. We willingly invited them here because we persuaded ourselves we could not sort out the matter of justice arising from the 2007 presidential poll by ourselves.

But, politicians thought they would get away with the atrocities of 2007/2008 as happened with the 1991 through 1997 politically propelled pandemoniums.

That is why Ocampo is under furious attack. Impunity is fighting and biting back. Impunity is the other name for Kenya’s political class.

Mercifully, the gods of impunity must now reckon with international justice. And, thankfully, the ICC process is now unstoppable.

The writer is a media consultant [email protected]