Hague Circus Was Bound To Occur

Thursday, 07 April 2011 14:51 BY WYCLIFFE MUGA

Over the past week or so the Deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta and former Cabinet Minister William Ruto have gone all over the country holding political rallies. And some commentators have posed this question:
Why they do not just face their appointment at The Hague with quiet dignity as some of the other suspects are doing? What will all this running around the countryside and addressing public rallies achieve?
Now, while there are those who argue that this political activity is a clear sign of just how little these men understand the ICC process, I would argue the contrary: I think they know only too well what kind of ordeal awaits them, and what it means for themselves and their families. That is why they are now lashing out in rage at their chosen target, who is the Prime Minister Raila Odinga. And you may be sure that they will spare no effort to take him down with them, if indeed they do go down.
The spectacle of powerful men, who have the president’s support, having to answer for the gravest crimes imaginable to a global court which is beyond any local influence, opens a completely new chapter in our history. So let us consider historical parallels from the experience of other nations.
It is likely that there will be more readers who will have heard some reference to “the butcher of the Balkans” than those who will know that this nickname defines the late Slobodan Milosevic, former president of Serbia.
He is among the VIPs who have preceded our own ‘Ocampo Six’ to the trial chambers of The Hague. His case took about five years, and ended when he died of a heart attack in his prison cell, before judgment could be passed on him. As his universally acknowledged nickname implies, the lasting impression that he left in this world, was that of an incredibly vicious and evil man, whose hands dripped with the blood of innocent men, women and children.
This is the kind of person with whom Uhuru and Ruto and all the others will now be associated in many minds, perhaps for the rest of their lives. They are about to have their names entered into a rogue’s gallery of those whose alleged crimes are on such a monstrous scale as to make them the enemies of all mankind.Of course they may well be innocent of any crime. Milosevic too had many who believed implicitly in his innocence. There was actually an international committee fighting for his immediate release even as his trial went on. It received support from many eminent men and women, including the celebrated British dramatist, the late Harold Pinter, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005.
And Milosevic also tried to politicize his indictment, arguing in his defense that he had been set up by the German government, in pursuit of “a long-standing objective of German foreign policy to "erase Serbia from the map", citing a number of alleged wrongdoings by Germany against Serbia during the last hundred years” according to an online source.
So ending up at The Hague is the most humiliating and terrifying event that a man who has been anywhere near the top of the political pyramid in any country can face. And not only is it something which will very likely put a stain on his name which can never be fully erased. But it is also standard procedure that those who end up being summoned by the ICC, will identify powerful and sinister political enemies who they blame for their plight.
It was inevitable then, that Ruto and Uhuru would set out to produce an elaborate political circus intended to paint themselves as martyrs being hounded by powerful “neocolonial” foreign interests – aided and abetted by their local hirelings.
But there is a very real possibility that the ICC judges will decide that the evidence before them does not merit pursuing of this matter to full trial.
Such must be the most deeply cherished hope of not only the six men themselves, but all their friends and family. Any other possibility is simply too horrifying to contemplate.
For if this matter goes on to full trial, the various witnesses Ocampo is said to have lined up can be relied on to provide gruesome testimony which will be broadcast to a global viewership. And at that point, it may not even matter what the final verdict is.
To the world at large, such testimony will be seen as confirmation that these Kenyans are no different from the late “butcher of the Balkans'