Kenyans must help Moreno-Ocampo

Kenyan political class is made up of the most hypocritical and unprincipled human beings on earth. Now that our fate is in the hands of the ICC prosecutor , Luis Moreno-Ocampo, all our politicians will claim to favour the actions the Argentinean law professor is about to take in dealing with the post election violence planners and financiers. In a typical scenario of “survival of the fittest in the struggle for existence” Kenyan politicians will now queue to pretend to help the international prosecutor identify the “real criminals” who planned, paid for and executed the post election violence. Every one of them will claim to be innocent and point accusing fingers to his or her political enemies. All will claim their lives are in danger because of the pro Moreno-Ocampo’s stand they have decided to take.

To stop Kenyan politicians from unnecessary bickering and mudslinging, the international prosecutor must open the envelop and publicly announce the names in it. As soon as the suspected culprits are named they should resign from public office and prepare for trials which should either be conducted in Kenya expeditiously or at The Hague almost immediately. The third alternative is to establish an international tribunal in a neighboring country which will make it easy for witnesses to travel to.

The people of Kenya should be extremely pleased with the action taken by Kofi Annan in handing the Waki envelop to Moreno-Ocampo. Soon justice will not only be done but it is likely to be manifestly seen to be done. Yet the tough task of investigating the culprits of the post election mass murders can only be done successfully with the cooperation he gets from Kenyans. They have to give him the support they gave Justice Philip Waki and Judge Johann Kriegler. Indeed Moreno-Ocampo’s work would have been extremely difficult without the assistance of the of both Waki and Kriegler reports. Yet the two reports would have been impossible to compile without the assistance of ordinary Kenyans who were the greatest victims of the post election violence.

The same ordinary wananchi should now join hands the way they did when they assisted Waki and Kriegler to help Moreno-Ocampo in his investigations. He will also need the expert knowledge of some Kenyans who can give guidance to the Argentinean prosecutor. Indeed these experts are the ones who convinced both Kofi Annan and Moreno-Ocampo that there are culprits who must face justice either locally or internationally. These experts include Philip Waki himself and a group of very dedicated Kenyan lawyers working for the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights (KNCHR). As a matter of fact it is the KNCHR election report that triggered all the international investigations going on today.

It is the KNCHR which drew the international community’s attention as early as December 2007 about incitement and incidences of violence during electioneering. At that time the human rights organization said election violence remained a big challenge in Kenya’s electoral process. It exposed widespread electoral violence which led to lose of lives, injuries, internal displacement and what it called “immense destruction and loss of property”. Additionally, it warned, thousands of Kenyans were at risk of being disenfranchised following violent displacements targeting particular ethnic groups especially those who were perceived to be politically incorrect.

This is the kind of evidence which will be very useful to Moreno-Ocampo’s prosecution. Like the KNCHR the Kenyan Fourth Estate must also be willing to come forward and assist the prosecutor convict the culprits by proving that the stories they wrote about violence were indeed the truth. Those who were inciting the people to come out and participate in “mass action” are still very well known to the people of Kenya and journalists must be prepared to help the ICC find them guilty.

There may be some journalists sympathetic to those who caused the bloodbath and therefore unwilling to assist by claiming to obey their professional ethical principle of impartiality. If that happens then the court could still call them as witnesses of the stories they wrote. The journalists cannot refuse to authenticate their stories by proving they were indeed accurate. After all, accuracy is another important journalistic ethical principle. Photographers should also be ready to assist Moreno-Ocampo identify some of the criminals who committed mass murders.

Political parties, particularly ODM and PNU, will be among the first to accuse each other before Moreno-Ocampo during his investigations. PNU will claim their supporters in Rift Valley were killed in hundreds in Rift Valley. ODM can make similar claims about the killings which took place in Naivasha where Mungiki terrorists caused mayhem soon after the elections. The truth of the matter is that both parties were to blame for the mass murders and according to the KNCHR report electoral violence at that time stemmed from differences of opinion when supporters of competing parties and their candidates violently confronted each other. The report says this kind of violence was witnessed in various parts of the country when PNU and ODM supporters clashed in campaign rallies.

According to the KNCHR widespread violence was also witnessed during parliamentary and civic party nominations on November 16th 2007 when at least seventy people were reported dead since July 2007, in elections related violence during campaign rallies and ethnic clashes. The report said over 2,000 families fled their homes in Kuresoi and Mt Elgon for fear of further attacks as the violence spread to various parts of the two places. At that time the KNCHR warned that following the displacements, over 20,000 registered voters are at the risk of being disenfranchised. At that time the Kenyan authorities did not take the KNCHR seriously. If they did they would not be embarrassed as they are now while preparing to face Moreno-Ocampo who took the Kenyan human right lawyers seriously.

Needless to say one of the most important instruments which will be used by Moreno-Ocampo in his difficult task of prosecuting sacred cows of Kenya, will be the Waki Report itself. The report clearly said some of the gangsters that killed a lot of people included Mungiki,Taliban , Chinkororo, Kamjeshi, Baghdad Boys and many others which grew and multiplied within the context of a political culture that both used and tolerated extra state violence. Gangs and militias, according to Waki, continued to proliferate all over the country, thereby increasing the presence of institutionalized extra-state violence both during and after elections, a pattern that continued to increase up through the 2007elections.

This is an extremely important evidence from Waki himself and it will be priceless to Moreno-Ocampo in his work. The rest of Kenyans should follow Waki’s example and help identify those who paid and maintained all the gangsters named above. It is a job Kenyans should do with pride because it may mark the beginning of the end of election violence in this country.