By Githua Kariuki, Baltimore, MD-USA
Indeed, every Kenyan politician and leader is morally bound to protect the sovereignty of our country. No Kenyan should ever vote for anyone whose commitment to protecting the sovereignty of the country is suspect. Protecting your own sovereignty sometimes means you have to disagree with friends.
There is nothing personal about it: it is in the nature of protecting the sovereignty of the country.
One thing that is true about Kenyans is that if you give them a puzzle, they turn it over and over again in their heads and come up with a solution. Kenyans can think.
The attached info from WikiLeaks (http://www.nation.co.ke/oped/Opinion/Dont+do+everything+requested+by+the+US+/-/440808/1123298/-/q170evz/-/index.html) finally reveals what some of us have been telling the outsiders for years. The document shows the US pressuring Kenya for support in its bid to be free to send its troops in any country and for its troops to be protected from prosecution.
In simple language, the US wants its troops to commit crimes with impunity!
As soon as Kenya under President Kibaki refused to support this request, the search was on for a more appropriate leader! This is one of the true reasons for US coolness towards President Kibaki. It also tells you and me that anyone who receives or enjoys US support must have agreed to this and other requests.
And in the process, the already limited independence of Kenya is sacrificed.
In the ongoing issue of trying Kenyans at The Hague, the Government is seeking deferral to gain time to create institutions that have the capacity to try the individuals in Kenya thereby reserving some of its sovereignty and in the process admitting that this should have been done but Kenya’s Parliamentarians failed the country.
Beyond that, the Government is saying that the composition of the list of the people who have been mentioned on the Ocampo list is
problematic: In the common sense of anyone walking the streets of Nairobi, the list omits the key planners of the tragedy of 2007-2008 thereby denying the victims any hope that justice will ever be done. The ICC is about to commit gross injustice to those whose lives were lost or whose property was destroyed and whose lives changed adversely for ever. The victims of 2007-2008 post-election violence are being victimized for the second time.
If the trials at the Hague were supposed to bring a sense of healing to the country, they are likely to do exactly the opposite by letting those who masterminded the post-election violence go free or worse, putting them in positions of authority in the country.
Kenyans, please do what you do best. Think. And when we come to voting, vote for people who do not sell the country just to get into office. Kenya is indeed something of value to replace all the time-cherished values that are being discarded as we change.
We should protect the sovereignty of Kenya with as much fervor as Americans defend their country. Nothing less.
Comments