its implementation.
Today, the politicians that once opposed its implementation and called it
all sorts of names –"neo-colonial, useless, shoddy or divisive" are
now bothered of whether their names are inked in the sealed Waki envelope
handed to chief mediator, Kofi Annan.
Politicians that support the implementation are standing firm and
sarcastically describing how visas and air tickets can be acquired to The
Hague, or how easy it is to carry porridge and pieces of bread to Kamiti
Maximum Prison in Nairobi compared to the Netherlands.
The Standard newspaper reported that President Kibaki, Head of Civil Service
Francis Muthaura and senior security officers met last week to discuss the
modalities of establishing the special court/tribunal.
It goes ahead to say that, local key leaders want a special tribunal
modelled on the International Criminal Court, but manned by local judges -
just to reduce foreign participation as proposed by Justice Phillip Waki.
Are politicians now confident of the Kenya's judiciary? Or, have they
forgotten that ICC will be handy in the local tribunal?
Last week, opinion polls indicated that majority of Kenyans want the the
Waki report implemented, whether The Hague, or a local tribunal.
December 17, 2008 is near and calling for quicker measures. Failure to do
so, Luis Moreno-Ocampo will be handed the envelope.
Slowly justice will reign and impunity will be history.
///////
"I deeply hope that the horrors humanity has suffered during the 20th
century will serve us as a painful lesson, and that the creation of the
International Criminal Court will help us to prevent those atrocities from
being repeated in the future." - Luis Moreno-Ocampo on the occasion of his
election as first Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court by the
Assembly of States Parties in New York on 22 April 2003.
