Kibaki is driving with eyes wide shut

Kipkoech TanuiPresident Kibaki knows full well the futility of his bid to have cases against the Ocampo Six deferred for a year but he is driven by political considerations. He is well aware his is a race in the dark but has chosen to run it so as to look ‘loving’ and ‘fatherly’ to those closest to him like Uhuru Kenyatta and Francis Muthaura.
This is not to say Uhuru and Muthaura, or the other suspects are guilty — no matter how odious the charges against them are, that will be decided by ICC Judges.
I know Kibaki treasures being seen as the Mother Hen who brings her chicks, and even those of other chicken, under her wings when an eagle is sighted. But you do not expect that a President who consumes a rich diet of national and international security briefs on everyone and everything to be ignorant of this futility.
National purse
But if you disagree it is all about Uhuru and Muthaura, and peripherally Maj-Gen (rtd) Hussein Ali, wait and see the fight he will put up to keep them in office even as they shuttle between Nairobi and The Hague. They are in his league unlike William Ruto and Henry Kosgey who are out of Cabinet because of court cases.
The question we need ask is if he has not made the ICC case harder for Uhuru and Muthaura because one cannot be a Hague suspect and senior official holding the strings of the national purse or controlling State machinery at the same time! It is worse when the master you serve wants to cut off ICC’s feet. I fear the way things are going, some guys may have their invitation letters to The Hague substituted with arrest warrants next month.
But does Kibaki really expect Steve and his ‘disciples’ would convince Ban Ki-Moon, US and UK to cajole a whole UN Security Council to defer Kenya’s cases when one side of the Grand Coalition is against it and when Kibaki was pushing for a local tribunal and trying to give us a Chief Justice and DPP of his liking at the same time?
Have we also forgotten Kenya, unlike Sudan and Libya, referred its case to ICC? Does Kibaki think the outer world is blind to how he has silently and cunningly executed a tribal coup at his office, the Treasury, and all Security organs?
Don’t these States ask themselves like some of us do what Kibaki and his men (now that Martha Karua is out of the kitchen) are preparing for next year?
I see a Kibaki caught between the rock and a hard place. If he looks the other way as the ICC boulder rolls towards Son of Jomo and Muthaura, ethnic legends would never forgive him. If he defies ICC to the World, he would be adjudged a rogue President but a ‘Messiah’ to his supporters.
If in process of ‘saving’ Uhuru, Muthaura, and Ali (whose line of defence is not hard to guess), tumutus (midgets) like Ruto, Kosgey and Joshua Arap Sang benefit, so be it. They just happen to be in a vehicle the President knows is torpedoing towards disaster, but which painfully carries his ‘children’.
It does not matter if one argues he is retiring and is no longer ogling for more political ‘mistresses’ to fill his political harem.
So you can’t blame him, even if he knows it is wasted effort, the incentive is not in success of deferrals, but in looking like he cares about those that are where they are because of his candidature. There is also the claim a fear has been implanted in him that ICC could be after him when he retires next year.
Hit the snake
I doubt this but still who would not, like late Kanu hawk Peter Ejore advised the Jogoo party at the onset of the clamour for multi-party democracy, hit the snake on the head while it is still at the door?
According to Ejore, you have to hit the serpent’s head with whatever you have, even a torch, because you do not know how big the serpent is, for if it comes in, it may overwhelm you!
The complication however is that the invitation card to this ‘serpent’ called ICC bears Kibaki’s signature, and so the belated attempt to push back the door is informed by different political realities than when it was invited to coil around those who shed blood.
When Kibaki appended his signature to the card, chaos reigned in Kenya, international pressure was insurmountable and holding onto State House even a day longer, was goal number one. He may even have sought solace in Cristy Lane’s famous One day at a time, Sweet Jesus whose chorus runs:
Yesterday’s gone sweet Jesus;
and tomorrow may never be mine; Lord help me today show me the way; one day at a time.
So in his mind, just as Kalenjins talk with fondly of the Moi Era and Kikuyus nostalgically about Jomo Kenyatta’s, so Kibaki, too, wonders what his ethnic ‘nation’ will remember him for even after the hard work of reserving them the most succulent side of State-fried chicken and steak.
I am told the burning question in Central today is: ‘No areke moe mwana wa Jomo? (Will he really let them take son of Jomo?) Upper Eastern is also asking the same over Muthaura!
Skewed but understandably, it must be Kibaki’s wish ICC’s ‘serpent’ could slither away and that from behind the hooded veil of State, he gets a free hand to pick judges to hear post-election cases locally. Problem is Kenyans are living in a different level of national consciousness, constitutional dispensation, democratic renewal, and international astuteness.
The writer is Managing Editor, Daily Editions, at The Standard.
ktanui@standardmedia.co.ke