Written by West FM 2012-01-24 13:51:00 Read 761 Times

The International Criminal Court at the Hague on 23/01/2012 confirmed that Court’s Prosecutors proposed charges that Hon. William Ruto and Mr. Joshua Sang be charged at the ICC for crimes against humanity of murder, deportation or forcible transfer and persecution and Hon. Uhuru Kenyatta and Ambassador Francis Muthaura for crimes against humanity of murder, deportation or transfer, rape and other inhuman acts and persecution.  The ICC declined to confirm charges against Hon. Henry Kosgey and Major - General Hussein Ali.

The ICC reiterated that the now four Kenyans against whom the charges of having committed crimes against humanity have been confirmed remain accused persons before that Court and that they also remain presumed innocent until found guilty by a Trial of the Court.

The post election violence and terror, the subject of the ICC prosecutions rocked Kenya in late 2007 and early 2008 and it is now four years on.  The Nation of Kenya has been able to observe a transparent criminal process slowly unfold at the ICC far away in Europe at the Hague, in the Netherlands.  Depending on where one stands in the whole matrix of the ICC process there are those who now are for that process and those against it but nobody can fault the systematic transparent and timely movement of the wheels of justice at the ICC from the moment that Court became seized of the matter.

The question that Kenya has to answer as a Nation is that we remain largely in denial of the criminal injustices that were committed in 2007/2008.  That despite all the big talk about the heralding of the new Constitution in 2010 and the various so called raft of reforms, the Grand Coalition Government has deliberately glossed over, skirted over the most important question of local impartial justice for the perpetrators and victims of crimes committed in 2007 and 2008.

The ICC has only indicted four Kenyans for the post election violence and mayhem.  It is clear as daylight that indeed crimes were committed in their legion in 2007/2008 and by other Kenyans beyond those four now facing the ICC.  This country cannot delude itself that the ICC process will be the panacea of our failed institutions of justice.  Are we saying that we will go to the next General Elections with the hundreds of perpetrators of the 2007/2008 post election violence at large and at liberty to indulge in another round of impunity?

West fm states that the ICC decision of 23/01/2012 ought to compel us as a country to ask ourselves whether we are prepared to follow the same path as the ICC in ensuring that the local justice system really and actually works, however slowly it may be.  The challenge is to see, witness a systematic prosecution of those who were the low and middle rank perpetrators of the 2007 and 2008 post election violence so that can Justice be our Shield and Defender as a country and no other substitute.  Yes, Justice cannot forever remain a rhetorical topic in Kenya.  The reform of the institutions of justice, the rule of law, law and order must be accompanied with real concrete steps in the delivery of justice the way the wheels of justice have been shown and seen to move at the ICC.  The ultimate outcome of the reform of the institutions of law and order is to see the fruits of those reforms delivered to Kenyans and not the reforms on paper as an end in themselves.

Yes, let the Nation of Kenya do its duty to its citizens by ensuring expeditious impartial justice to all the perpetrators and victims of the post election crimes and violence of 2008 now and not later so that as a Nation we may soar above the now prevalent National denial of that sad chapter in our History.

WEST  FM EDITORIAL ©2012