{UAH} THE LATEST KENYAN NEWS: The Tough Decision Ahead For Uhuru

http://www.kenyauptodate.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-tough-decision-ahead-for-uhuru.html?m=1

The Tough Decision Ahead For Uhuru

Last week I explained how the outcome of Kenyan presidential elections often hinge on some blatant lie, which those challenging the incumbent - or the leader in opinion polls - manage to convince a large number of the voters to embrace.

My first example was from 2007. In the election of that year, Raila Odinga and his campaign team managed to persuade most voters outside Central Kenya that despite President Mwai Kibaki having received an overwhelming mandate from right across the country five years earlier, he had subsequently served only his own tribesmen, the Kikuyu.

And this proved to be a very effective strategy for Raila and his ODM party.

Then in the March 4th election earlier this year, we had the Jubilee Alliance persuading two key voting blocks - Central Kenya and the Rift Valley - that it was PM Raila Odinga who had schemed to ensure that his arch-rivals, presidential candidate Uhuru Kenyatta and running mate William Ruto, were "taken to The Hague".

This too worked very effectively for Uhuru and Ruto.

But my main point was that whatever short-term success these lies may have produced for those who spread them, in the end they were to be revealed for what they were, by the march of events.

Kibaki's service to the nation was to be made manifest in the landmark infrastructure projects implemented during his second term in office (though conceived during his first term). And indeed they continue to be unveiled to date. All those impressive projects we see Ruto and Uhuru hastening to "launch" every other day, are not really Jubilee Alliance projects. They are all Kibaki projects.

And the one large project which the Jubilee Alliance could have laid claim on as being truly their own – the schools laptop project – has been an unmitigated flop thus far.

But even more dramatically, Ruto's defense counsel for the ICC trials, Karim Khan, has pointed an unwavering finger at a number of senior people who served in the Kibaki government as those who deliberately set out to "fix" his client. By which Mr Khan means that these men and women went out of their way to fabricate the kind of evidence likely to secure for Ruto, a long and exemplary custodial sentence. No mention anywhere by Khan, of Raila Odinga, whom Ruto had all along credited with this scheme to "fix" him.

My argument then is that leading Kenyan politicians have long been accustomed to spreading outrageous lies as a strategy for overcoming their opponents.

However, it's one thing to play this game within Kenya. But it seems that Uhuru and Ruto's supporters are now playing much the same game against the ICC. And this has proved to be a colossal strategic blunder.

Almost every week we are asked to embrace some new lie, about how "the Kenyan cases" ended up at The Hague.

We all know that Koffi Annan was asked by the African Union to come here in 2008, to help us find a peaceful way out of the post-election violence. But now – and simply because he supports the ICC process – Koffi Annan is being portrayed by the president's supporters, as an enemy of our national interests.

Then, Kenya voluntarily signed the Rome Statutes which made it a 'state party' of the ICC. And the 10th parliament voted in broad daylight against the creation of a local tribunal to try suspects of the post-election violence of 2008.

The MPs, by a clear majority, demanded that the matter be referred to The Hague. But now we are told that the ICC is "a neo-colonial" institution and a 'tool of imperialists'; with a racist agenda, and a focus on targeting African leaders.

While lies and distortions of this kind may be effective in a Kenyan presidential campaign it should be obvious by now that on the world stage, no good can come from such an approach.

Even as he leads the nation in celebrating the 50th anniversary of our independence, Uhuru is still in much the same position as he was before his operatives set out to ensure that - as a serving president - he would not have to personally appear before the ICC judges.

And the difficult decision before him, is that of whether to defy the ICC summons - in the manner of Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir - and trigger the issuing a warrant of arrest against him.

Or to follow the example of his deputy, William Ruto, and present himself for trial at The Hague.

THE LATEST KENYAN NEWS: The Tough Decision Ahead For Uhuru
http://www.kenyauptodate.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-tough-decision-ahead-for-uhuru.html?m=1