October 8, 2009
NAIROBI, Kenya — Kofi Annan delivered a stern message to Kenya on Wednesday, saying that there was a “crisis in confidence” in the political leadership and that the country was flirting with disaster by delaying much-needed reforms.
Concluding a three-day assessment of where Kenya stands a year and a half after its bloody election period, Mr. Annan seemed grave, urgent and a bit discouraged, but not hopeless.
“It is clear this is a moment of truth,” said Mr. Annan, the former United Nations secretary general. “Please, as Kenyans, don’t sit back. When leaders fail to lead, sometimes we have to make them follow.”
He said that he expected the International Criminal Court to prosecute the “big men” who orchestrated the mayhem in Kenya last year, which killed more than 1,000 people, though he added that it was imperative for Kenya’s courts to hold their own trials of lower-ranking perpetrators, in a statement against impunity.
Last year, Mr. Annan helped pull Kenya back from the brink. He swooped into the country in January 2008 while it was still convulsing from ethnic violence set off by a deeply flawed election, which many international election observers said the government had rigged. Mr. Annan prodded warring politicians to the negotiating table, and he shaped an agreement that stopped the fighting and formed a governing coalition. Pictures of Mr. Annan’s Zen-like face were plastered on minibuses. Even a rare baby rhino was named after him.
But this time around, he did not seem so serene. Kenya’s leaders have been dragging their feet on the crucial issues that were laid bare during last year’s election crisis, including land disputes, ethnic favoritism and an imperial-style presidency. And very little has been done to prosecute the suspected ringleaders of the violence, many of whom serve in the government, in the top ministries.
Mr. Annan — who held long meetings with opposition politicians, human rights activists, religious leaders, election officials, diplomats and business leaders, along with President Mwai Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga — said Wednesday that the government had taken some steps in the right direction.
Last month, the national police chief, who was blamed for a spree of extrajudicial killings, was demoted. And last week, the anticorruption chief, who had been widely ridiculed for drawing an enormous salary (about $400,000 a year as the average Kenyan makes about $1,000) while doing just about nothing, was pushed out.
But the country still seems on edge, as Mr. Annan seemed to sense. He said reforms must be accomplished by the next presidential election, in 2012, and he had heard rumors that ethnic gangs were already rearming themselves, preparing for Round 2.
“Unless we take action,” he said, “we are running a great risk.”
As if to make this point, The Daily Nation, Kenya’s biggest newspaper, published a photo on Wednesday of a displaced man with an arrow sticking out of his chest, a result of a land dispute. The headline was “Agony,” and the man, like so many Kenyans nowadays, was wearing a Barack Obama T-shirt.
Source: New York Times
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